by Derek Tangye
I had other fears for Monty which were to prove more tangible. He was too like a fox, for instance. I did not appreciate this until a farmer one day came hurrying up the lane to warn me he had seen a fox in the field close to where we kept the chickens. It was Monty, of course, a Monty with a burnished bracken-coloured coat which, I thereafter realised, certainly did make him look like a fox. The same mistake was made at another time by a man with a gun whom I saw stalking beside the hedge which ran up from the wood. I charged across the field shouting at the top of my voice and when I reached the fellow, flustered and out of breath, he looked at me with disdain. He was about to shoot a fox. Up there in the corner where the winter gorse was in bloom. Can’t you see it? Look it’s moving . . . and Monty, alert at seeing me, came quickly through the grass towards us. These alarms put us on guard about the Hunt. The hounds might mistake Monty for their quarry and so when the Meet was at St Buryan or Lamorna Turn or anywhere else nearby, we used to keep him in all day.
But the hounds only once rushed through Minack and Monty was curled up on the bed at the time; and the reason we have been so lucky is that it is obviously dangerous for the hounds when they run for the cliff. Thus when a fox makes for our area the hounds are called off and the fox, sidling along the hedges of our fields to the inpenetrable brambles and thorn trees which slope steeply to the sea, is safe. My instinct is always to be on the side of the fox. I suppose I have found that when one lives as we live, our daily existence posted like that of the ancient grey rocks which heave out of the untamed countryside everywhere around us, one is incapable of killing for sport. We share our life with the wild. We are part of it. Hence I will kill should an animal become an enemy, but never for fun.
Yet a fox, as everyone knows, can become an enemy; and one summer when Monty was growing old, a fox’s earth was found by a neighbour outside of which were the skeletons of three cats. The discovery thus explained why cats over a period of time had been disappearing from the homes of our neighbours, disappearances which hitherto had been blamed hopefully on the wandering instincts of farm cats. Then, two or three weeks later, a friend of mine saw a fox catch a cat. He saw the cat three fields away from where he was standing, intently looking at a point in the hedge, then poising itself for a jump, so full of concentration that it was deaf to the fox that was stalking through the grass behind it. My friend yelled at the top of his voice but the sound disappeared in the wind. He could do nothing but watch the fox pounce, then hurry away.
I do not believe that all foxes are cat-killers. You get a rogue which develops the taste for them, just as you get a rogue badger which brings calumny on his race by developing a taste for chickens; but whatever the case, whether one fox or two were guilty, a cat-killer was at large around Minack and Monty was in danger. We kept watch on him within the limit of ever being able to keep watch on the peregrinations of a cat; and although he did not usually wander far, he obstinately chose this period to do so. ‘Have you seen Monty?’ I would ask Jeannie, and when the answer was no we would forget the importance of what we were doing, and set out to search. We used to hasten around his known hide-outs, a dozen or so of which found favour in rotation, and when he was in none of these we were inclined to develop a panic.
On one such occasion I ran one way towards the sea and Jeannie another up the field towards the farm buildings at the top of the hill. When I rejoined her she had Monty in her arms, holding him tight and telling him what a fool he’d been. This is what had happened. She had reached the entrance to the field that faced our lane and was looking across the field to the far side when to her horror she saw a red object chasing another red object. She instantly guessed a fox was chasing Monty, and she began to run across the field calling his name; and she had run only a few yards when the second red object stopped and looked back at her. It was Monty. He was chasing a cub. Of course he did not know that it was running back to the earth where the cats were killed.
Soon after this we realised the killer was after Monty. We had proof of this one evening when we heard a fox barking as if on the doorstep followed by Monty flying in through the window. He plummeted at my feet and then turned glaring at the open window, growling. I ran to the door and out to the corner of the cottage which looks down the lane. I saw nothing and all I could do was to make a noise, the human version of an angry animal, which I thought would frighten the fox away. But Jeannie and I were now to behave extraordinarily foolishly.
We accepted the fact we had been stupid enough to allow him out at night without keeping him company, and so we decided from then onwards he would be kept indoors after dusk. Monty was furious. He had lived at Minack for six years and was over thirteen, and for the first time in his life he was forbidden the freedom of the night. He made such a hullaballoo, woke us up so often with his miaowing demands to be let out that three days later – and this was our foolishness – we gave in. All right, you go out, I said, I’m not going to be kept awake by your fuss. I’m tired. I want to sleep. But you look out for that killer. He was after you last week. He’ll be after you again.’
Our bed lay alongside the window so that if Monty was lying on it, then decided he wished to investigate what adventure awaited him outside, he had only to creep from the bedclothes to the sill and jump down on to the flower bed below. There he was tucked in on the bed when on the very next night after his freedom had been foolishly granted, he woke me up with the noisiest growl I have ever heard. I put out my hand and felt him creeping for the window. And then, from the daze of my sleep, I suddenly sensed there was danger. I grabbed Monty with one hand, and with the other found my torch. It was a torch with a new battery; and when I shone it out of the window I saw a magnificent sight.
A fox, the size of an Alsatian. At first directly beneath the window sill. Then gliding away down the lane, so silently, so superbly a thoroughbred that for a moment I forgot he was a killer and I called out to Jeannie:
‘Quick! Wake up! You’ll never see such a beautiful fox!’
And up to now, I have never done so again.
14
There were other hazards beside foxes; and there are two episodes in Monty’s life at Minack that I would like to forget, but which remain painfully in my mind. Yet, and this is the paradox, I like also to remember them because of the happiness which followed, that magical sense of happiness when someone you love is reprieved.
The first took place the year before myxamatosis swept the rabbits away from our area, and when the gin trap was still the method used for their elimination. Such was our isolation at Minack that the fields where the traps were set were in a ring around us; and we were so far from other habitations that we alone suffered the hell of the traps’ successes. We heard the momentary screams and the silence which followed. We lay in bed awaiting the next anguished cry, as we awaited once the next stick of bombs. A long way away those who were responsible for setting the traps would be pursuing their evening enjoyment while Jeannie and I, as if in the midst of a battle, listened.
A chill went through us whenever we heard the signal of traps being laid, the metallic sound of the trapper’s hammer; and if Jeannie heard it first she would run looking for me, and we would both then go looking for Monty. I admit that rabbits had in some way to be controlled but it was the manner in which gin traps were used which was so barbarous. It was seldom that any steps were taken to cut short the pain of the trapped. The traps, set perhaps an hour before dusk, reaped most of their harvest in the first half of the night as the rabbits came out of their burrows. The screams then followed each other as if they were an endless series of echoes and we would have little time to remain tense, waiting for the next; but after midnight we had to wait, ten minutes, half an hour, or suddenly two or three, one after the other, then silence. It was not often that anyone considered it humane to come at midnight and kill those caught during the evening flush. We had to lie there thinking of them.
It was late one lovely May afternoon that Monty got caught in a trap.
We knew that traps had been laid in the field adjoining the cottage but traps were not supposed to be actually set until dusk; and thus Monty should still have had an hour or two in which he could have wandered around in safety. Nevertheless we were nervous for him. We were in the mood to anticipate trouble and I said to Jeannie: ‘I don’t think we ought to let Monty out of our sight for an instant this evening.’ There seemed to be no reason why we should. Our day’s work was ended and we were both pottering about the garden and the cottage while Monty was in one of his benign moods. He was lying half hidden among the wallflowers outside the front door, blinking sleepily, as if he were relaxing after a large meal. He was the epitome of contentment, a much loved, magnificent ginger cat who was at peace with his private world; and heaven knows what prompted him suddenly to go somewhere he had never been before.
Unseen by us, he left his nest under the wallflowers, entered the field where the traps were laid and walked the length of it, miraculously threading his way through the traps until he was caught by one at the far end, close to a gap in the field which led down to the cliff.
I do not think five minutes had elapsed before I noticed his absence from the garden; and instinctively I knew what had happened. I shouted to Jeannie to follow me, then ran the few yards to a bank which rose above the field. I stood on it for an instant while my eyes peeled along the base of the hedge where the traps were set. I saw nothing but young green corn; until suddenly in the far distance I saw an object at ground level languidly flopping up and down. It was Monty’s tail.
The next twenty minutes are a jumble in my memory. We raced across the field, enraged that our care for him had cheated us; and when we reached him and saw his yellow eyes looking trustingly up at us while his little front paw with the white smudge on it was squeezed in the gin, we broke out with curses against those responsible for setting it.
‘I’m going to throw it away!’ Jeannie cried, ‘right away in the sea.’ But this outburst did not help us release Monty. He began to struggle so I put my hands firmly round his body while Jeannie tried to open the gin; and as only a few weeks before she had released a trapped dog she could not understand why, on this occasion, the fangs had stuck fast. Poor Monty; sweat began to moisten his fur and his mouth frothed, and then panic seized him and for an instant he freed himself from my hold.
‘Look out!’ I shouted. He lashed out with his three free legs, claws like spikes, too quick for Jeannie to move away in time and I saw a line of blood on her arm. A second later he was quiet again, lying panting on his side, tongue lolling, uttering little cries, and his paw still trapped.
I do not wish to remember again the ten minutes which followed. A hideous time against the background of a sea-scented evening, larks exultant in the sky, early swallows skimming in from the south, the pilchard fleet chugging out into Mount’s Bay. I do not wish to remember the anguish of those ten minutes; only the sweet relief we had when at last we had him safe. He lay exhausted for a while on the sofa while Jeannie tried to tempt him with warm, sugared milk and we angrily discussed what we should do.
The trap would go into the sea. I would make a complaint. We both, in fact, blistered with fury; and yet, maddeningly enough, there was nothing we could righteously be furious about. We did not possess the field concerned, and so Monty, in the legal sense of the word, was trespassing. Thus the whole incident revolved around the question of standards. The countryman had grown up to expect a layer of cruelty in his life. We had not. Thus when Jeannie threw the trap away and I made my angry complaint, it was inevitable that a feud should begin. We did not mind, of course. We at least had proclaimed our indignation against cruelty. And in any case the vet had seen Monty. No permanent harm had come to his paw.
The other episode took place when he was fourteen years old. We now had a splendid greenhouse a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, and during this particular winter we were growing sweet peas for early spring flowering. We spent hours of our time pinching them out and layering them and it was only natural that Monty should be with us during these sessions. He amused us while we pursued the monotonous task. For no reason at all he would race up and down the rows or ridiculously treat a sweet pea tendril as an enemy, or interupt the flow of our work by turning upside down at our feet requesting his tummy to be tickled. There were no signs that he was an old cat. He looked in magnificent condition and when one day we put him in a basket which hung on the potato scales, he weighed eighteen and a half pounds net.
Yet there were a couple of incidents during the daffodil season – it begins with us late in January and ends according to the warmth of the spring in the latter part of March – that made us puzzle about him. On each occasion he appeared momentarily to stagger and yet so briefly that it could have been an accidental lack of balance and not a signpost to coming illness. In between times he was completely normal, the usual large appetite and as agile as ever.
Then one day at the end of March we went out and did not return till after dark; and as so often happened, the headlights as we came up the lane to the cottage lit up his fierce face as he glared at us from the bedroom window. He had the gift of making us feel we had neglected him. It was an echo of those late Mortlake nights. ‘Where have you been?’ he seemed to be crossly saying.
On this occasion we performed the inevitable rites of apology, picking him up and hugging him, and hastening to bribe him to return our affection by the obvious method of filling his plate with fish. Jeannie had turned to the sink to collect the fish pan when I suddenly saw Monty begin to stagger and half stumble across the carpet to a spot under my desk, where he collapsed.
‘Look at Monty!’ I shouted, and rushed over and knelt beside him, stroking him; and because I met with no response, his eyes seemed to be glazed and unseeing, I picked him up and carried him to our bedroom. He was desperately ill.
‘You stay here,’ I said to Jeannie, not certain whether I was asking her to carry out the best or the worst of the two tasks, ‘while I race up to the farm and telephone the vet. If he’s in he’ll be here within half an hour.’ And miraculously he was in and, within half an hour he was at Minack. We both looked at his face as he carried out his examination, seeking to read the signs we hoped to see. ‘Is it a heart attack or a stroke?’ I murmured, fearing his answer.
He was a quiet Scot with the comforting assurance of his race; and goodness knows why but I always prefer it when advice comes in a Scots accent. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said slowly, ‘you see his eyes are rolling, and look how he’s struggling.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You haven’t been putting any poison down, have you?’ I hadn’t, but I suddenly remembered the sweet peas and the dust we had been using on them to check disease, and I rushed out into the night to find the tin. I brought it back and the vet slowly read the instructions and list of chemical ingredients.
‘That’s the trouble all right,’ he said, ‘he’s been poisoned, though there’s no mention here the dust is dangerous. The fact is he’s absorbed the dust in his fur and body over the months and now he’s got enough inside to hit him.’
He was in a coma for two days and nights. He lay on the pink bedspread in the spare bedroom while one of us sat always with him. The treatment was bicarbonate of soda every four hours and as it required both of us to pour the dose down his throat the one who was on night duty woke up the other when the fourth hour came round. About six o’clock on the second morning we had carried out our duty and we were standing together watching him . . . and suddenly there was a purr.
‘Oh Monty, Monty!’ cried Jeannie, ‘you’re safe. You’re safe!’
For us the remaining year of his life had the delicate pleasure of borrowed time.
15
In previous years we had occasionally to go away, never for more than three or four days, and elaborate arrangements of course were made for Monty’s welfare. A travelling fish salesman supplied fish from his van, and whoever it was we had helping us at Minack at the time would cook it, and keep a s
aucer filled with milk from the farm. Monty was allowed to wander about as he liked during the day but in the evening he would be locked indoors; and when we were going to bed three hundred miles away in London, there was comfort in the thought he was safely esconced within the cottage. We hated leaving him and he in his turn thoroughly disapproved of our absence; and on one occasion he nearly made us miss our train.
We were going by night, and while in the afternoon Jeannie was packing, he sniffed around the suitcases in that apprehensive fashion that both dogs and cats are apt to show when travel is scheduled. He then quite suddenly began to limp. I had never seen him limp before but there he was hobbling about as if he had only three legs. This continued for an hour; and so theatrical were his gestures that Jeannie declared she would not catch the train unless he was seen by the vet. The vet was fetched and he pronounced Monty a malingerer. There was nothing wrong with him at all; and Monty, admitting his bluff had been called, promptly began walking normally again.
Our returns usually had a chilly reception. He liked at first to pretend that he could get on perfectly well without us and it was immaterial whether we lived at Minack or not. The pretence lasted until we went out for a stroll to see how things had been growing while we had been away; and as we walked we would suddenly hear a bellow of a miaow, then see Monty running towards us. We would continue our stroll with him at our heels, while at intervals the bellow was repeated. It was a touching experience for in the sound was the agony of loneliness. We knew then how much he had missed us.