A Comfort of Cats

by Doreen Tovey

  I remembered it all so vividly when, two weeks after Christmas, the friend who'd brought her over rang to say that Mrs Laye was dead.

  I was stunned. I'd had a letter from her just before Christmas telling me all she was doing – practising for carol-singing with a party from the church, helping at a Christmas bazaar, organising an old people's social, Father Francis had been to tea... She'd had to put her Christmas tree in the hall because Franz kept taking off the decorations. He particularly liked walking around carrying a little glass bell in his mouth – he loved to hear it tinkle. She finished by saying she was looking forward to our visiting her in the New Year. How glad I was now that I'd said we would.

  She'd been found sitting in her armchair in front of the fireplace. It was a peaceful way for her to go. The thing that upset me most, that freezing January day, was to hear that Franz was missing.

  Someone had noticed that Mrs Laye hadn't taken in her milk and a neighbour had gone in through the back way. Naturally his first concern had been for her. He hadn't given a thought to the cats – who, said her friend, were never let out on their own so they must have been in there with her. They must have been cold and hungry. She had been dead two days when she was found and the cats had never missed a meal in their lives. They would have been frightened, too, by someone suddenly coming in; they would probably have hidden somewhere.

  In the confusion that followed Belinda must have slipped out through the door – she'd been found sitting on the doorstep that evening and was being looked after by an elderly couple whose dog had just died and who were absolutely delighted to have her. But Franz, so intelligent, so full of zest when he was on his own with Mrs Laye but so nervous in the presence of strangers – especially men, and there had been police and a doctor and ambulance men trampling through the house – Franz had completely disappeared.

  What could they do? asked Mrs Laye's friend. If she liked, Charles and I would come over and help search for him, I said, but as he was such a nervous cat, it would be better for neighbours who knew him better to call him – and put food down for him and watch for his return. Most likely he'd come back like Belinda – and if there was any question of finding a home for him when he did, we'd do our best to find him a good one and look after him in the interim.

  We waited for news. Three days later one of Mrs Laye's neighbours phoned me. There was still no sign of Franz, she said. She didn't think he'd run out like Belinda, though – he was too nervous. She was sure he was still inside the house. She'd searched for him herself as soon as she'd heard the news – the police had given her permission. The first place she'd looked had been Mrs Laye's bed, knowing that Franz always slept with her and that that was where he went when strangers came and he was scared. There had been no trace of him anywhere. Another neighbour had searched later, and so had the police. But she still had a feeling that he was in there somewhere, and now he'd been without food for almost a week. Mrs Laye's next of kin was a cousin, but she didn't know her name or where she lived. Mrs Laye had talked about me so much. Could I do anything? I'd do what I could, I said, and I rang the police.

  It was late on a Saturday night, but they were most co-operative. I asked if it was possible for Charles and me to go to the house with them and put food and water down. If there was a cat in there it must be starving, and it didn't bear thinking about.

  They'd searched the house twice for the cat already, said the sergeant, but if I thought it might still be there... They couldn't let me in themselves. The keys had been handed to Mrs Laye's solicitor who couldn't be contacted till Monday morning. But things were quiet at the station. He'd send a constable round right away to look through the windows with a torch and if he did see a cat he'd let me know.

  I thanked him. How could I explain to someone who didn't know cats that even if Franz were starving he wouldn't sit in the middle of a room while somebody shone a torch on him? His instinct would be to hide. I wondered all the same why, if Franz were in the house, he hadn't been seen at a window. Our two would have been bawling for help long ago.

  First thing on Monday morning I rang the solicitor, who arranged to meet Charles and me at the house at two o'clock. He had several appointments that day and after lunch was the earliest he could manage. I was on tenterhooks all morning. If Franz was still in there he must be so hungry. By now it was more than a week.

  When we met the solicitor there was another delay. He didn't have the keys. He'd left them, he said, with a

  local shopkeeper – there was only one set and police and relatives had had to go in and that seemed to be the simplest solution. He'd just called to fetch them, but the shopkeeper was out. It was his half-day and he'd gone to town, and wouldn't be back until five o'clock. If we'd like to come back then...

  If we'd gone round the house with the solicitor it might have been different. I would have left food and water as I'd intended. But he had another appointment – the shopkeeper would go round with us, he said. Perhaps we'd let him know if we found the cat.

  The shopkeeper, when he returned, was tired and cold, and he too knew very little about cats. All this fuss, he said... He and a policeman had searched the house twice – even moved out furniture and looked. The cat wasn't there. He'd bet us a thousand pounds we wouldn't find it. Just because the neighbours had got this idea... However, to satisfy us and as the solicitor had said we could, he'd get the keys and take us round.

  We looked in every room and peered up the chimneys, though there was no sign of soot in the fireplaces. Under and behind furniture. Charles turned armchairs upside down. Under beds. Charles got down and peered up into the springs. He wouldn't be there, I said. In each room the shopkeeper stood and watched us, sighing exasperatedly and rattling the keys. He closed each door as we came out. When I suggested leaving the food and water he said there'd been untouched food in the kitchen when he'd first come in – he'd had to throw it away because it was smelling. There was no point in our putting more down. The funeral was the next day. Friends and relatives would be coming there afterwards – they would only throw it out. He couldn't leave the doors open, either. This was how he'd found them. Shut.

  We parted from him on the pavement, he understandably irritated at what he considered our interference. As he'd predicted, we hadn't found the cat. I was sure myself now that Franz couldn't be in there. For one thing there hadn't been any smell, which one would certainly have expected if a cat had been locked for a week in an empty house. I could only think, now, that Franz had run out and had found himself a home somewhere else. Maybe someone had taken him in who didn't want to part with him and was keeping quiet about his turning up.

  I hoped that was so. I couldn't get out of my mind Mrs Laye's account of Franz walking round carrying the bell off the Christmas tree. Only a few weeks ago he'd been sheltered, loved, and had never known what it was to be cold or hungry. Now where was he? I shivered in the icy night. Please... Not lost, like Seeley...

  I wish I'd taken the shopkeeper up on his bet. The RSPCA would have been a thousand pounds richer. A fortnight later – three weeks after Mrs Laye's death – Franz was at last discovered.

  He was in Mrs Laye's bed. He couldn't have been there all the time – it was the first place the neighbour had looked in and she assured me that she had opened it right up, knowing it to be his favourite refuge. But three weeks later Mrs Laye's cousin and the friend who lived with her, a retired nurse, had been packing a suitcase with some of her belongings on the bed. They'd been doing it gradually in the fortnight since the funeral and had been at the house quite regularly. They, too, had looked for Franz every time they went there and had been certain he wasn't there. They had packed several cases on the bed during that time and would certainly have noticed any disturbance. Nevertheless, that particular afternoon they noticed a bump in the bed, pulled back the bed-clothes and there he was. All there seemed to be of him, said Mrs Laye's cousin's friend, the nurse, was a pair of numbed blue eyes.

  He must have crawled th
ere to die. They dropped everything and rushed him home. The Vet was away and couldn't come until next morning. Meanwhile the nurse gave him hot milk and took him to bed with her. In the middle of the night, she said, Franz – still only semi-conscious – suddenly wet her and the bed.

  The Vet, when he came, thought that had possibly saved his life – through fear or cold he'd somehow retained his urine and that had prevented him from dehydrating. As it was, it was an absolute miracle that he had survived for three weeks without food or water. We'd been told, when Seeley was missing and we were searching for him everywhere, that a cat would die without water after a fortnight.

  I got regular bulletins. Franz was taking chicken broth. Franz was now eating chicken. The Vet had said he was going to be all right, and his kidneys were quite undamanged. There was just one thing, said the nurse on the phone. They'd heard how anxious I'd been about him. They knew Mrs Laye had talked about me so much. Did I think perhaps I had a prior right to him? He was such a loving, gentle cat. They'd dearly love to keep him...

  Goodness, I said, nearly sobbing down the phone. Who had more right to him than they did? His owner's cousin and her friend, who had found him and saved his life? I could only give thanks that they had done and kick myself for not insisting that night on leaving the doors of the rooms open and putting food and water down, so that Franz might have come out from his hiding place to have it.

  He lives the life of Riley in Bristol now. He bosses Mrs Laye's cousin's cat, Jamie, around unmercifully and has completely taken over the household. He likes chicken and carrying things round in his mouth and is the image of Sass. Mrs Laye, I know, would be happy for him. I hope she would think, too, that Charles and I did our best – though I shall always feel sick at the thought that we'd gone into the house where he must have been all the time and had been unable to find him.

  Fifteen

  It was a long while before I could think of Franz without turning cold at the thought of his ordeal. But life goes on, bringing humour as well as sadness and, while it was still winter, Dora and Nita came to supper and we had a little light relief.

  They arrived in a gale. They always arrive spectacularly. Once they came when it was snowing. Another time the stream was on the verge of flooding and they had to paddle up the path. This time it was a gale and they were practically swept into the cottage – where, the fire having been perfectly all right until half an hour before, smoke was now billowing in big black clouds out of the chimney and rolling relentless around the room.

  When it does this, it is always when we have visitors. I remember it happening once when some people were coming to see the cats and I'd lit the fire to set the rural background. It set the background all right. One shouldn't open a window to let smoke out – it only draws more down – but if you only have one reception room and you can't see across it and the air is filled with floating smuts... one must open the windows, said Charles, opening all three of them, whereupon the smoke poured lustily out.

  At that moment the visitors arrived. They got out of the car and just stared. It must have looked odd – smoke pouring out of all three front windows like a Mississippi steamboat and Charles waving a welcome to them through the smog. Even more odd when they came inside. Because of the open windows it was like the Arctic and another lot of smoke had just belched down, and the cats were on their stomachs under the table with their ears down flatly refusing to come out. The visitors didn't stay long, which was a pity, because half an hour later the wind had dropped. It didn't drop the night Dora and Nita came to supper, however. It darned well stayed with us all night.

  We put up with the smoke at first. Dora and Nita are very resourceful – both were Guide Captains for years. When I apologised they said not to worry – don't forget they were used to camp fires. The thing to do was to get below the smoke, because it rises. Suiting their action to the words, the pair of them lay down on the hearthrug, Charles stood opening the window in short bursts and I, holding on to the cats to stop them diving through it, wondered why it always had to happen to us.

  Eventually it became obvious that the gale wasn't going to abate and that the only thing to do was to let the fire down. Charles said right-ho, he'd just fetch the electric one – at which point the lights went out. This is another favourite happening when we have gales or visitors – our electricity comes by overhead cable and if it isn't that the wind has brought the wire down or lightning struck the transformer, somebody has probably been reversing outside in the lane and knocked down the pole with their car.

  In this case it was the cable down and the electricity was off all night. Fortunately we were having a cold supper. We ate it by candlelight, warmed bleakly by a paraffin stove, while I tried to boil a saucepan of water for coffee on what was left of the fire. There wasn't much, but what there was made the water taste of smoke. I made the coffee. We sat there drinking it – Dora and Nita, of course, were by this time upright. I just happened to look across at our big oak table, on which I'd placed lighted candles in candelabra – a present from Elizabeth Linington, an American writer, which goes most effectively with our decor – and there was Sass, just about to touch one of the candles with his stretched out nose.

  I yelled. He jumped. So did everybody else.

  'He's burnt himself,' said Charles. Nonsense, I said; he wouldn't be so stupid. But he jolly well had. For weeks he had a pink scar on his nose where he'd put it against the candle.

  What was more, our friends were going to a party the following night. They had to wash their hair next morning to get the smell of the smoke out. Dora, wanting to wear the same long tartan skirt, said she'd hung it out on the line for hours but it had still reeked of smoke. She'd hopefully sprayed it with air-freshener, but it hadn't really helped. She'd had to explain to the people she sat next to about having come to supper with us. Funny, she said. She only had to mention our names and the other people said 'Say no more.'

  I wonder sometimes whether having Siamese cats creates the atmosphere for untoward happenings, even when the cats are only remotely involved, or whether it is that people prone to such occurrences inevitably become the owners of Siamese cats.

  Take, for instance, my friend who had the Siamese that got roaring drunk on sherry. When she bought her first Siamese kitten there were no such things as plastic bowls and the breeder told her to get a large enamel pie-dish or roasting tin to serve as an earthbox. She went to the hardware shop. The man showed her two sizes of dishes. No, she shook her head; those were too small. Halfway up the ladder to where there were some more stores on a high self he called down 'Is it for a turkey?'

  'No,' she called back, 'for a cat.' The shop was full of customers. Mia is Swiss by birth. She said that though eventually somebody began to laugh, for a moment all those English people looked at her in stunned silence, obviously wondering whether it was right about foreigners eating cats.

  Take, again, the story of a Tabby Point Siamese called Oliver, who belongs to a friend of mine in Oxford. Oliver developed rhinitis and the Vet prescribed a disposable plastic syringe, graduated into six doses, with which Marjorie had to put medicine into his mouth. By the time it got to the third dose, Oliver had had enough. He bit the business end off the syringe and swallowed it.

  Panic-stricken, Marjorie rushed him to the Vet who laughed till she cried when she heard the story. She said the syringe end would probably pass right through and do no harm but in case there was any trouble, here was another syringe containing liquid paraffin and if necessary Marjorie should give him one dose. Marjorie said she came away with a dismal picture of his biting off that one, too, and starting an endless cycle of swallowed syringe ends. Fortunately, however, the first end reappeared and she didn't have to give him the paraffin... Which is but one small incident in the life of a sober Doctor of Literature who is owned by a Siamese.

  Take, once more – just to show it isn't only in England that people are ruled by their cats – a story told me by Elizabeth Linington of what happened
to some friends of hers one Christmas. She lives in California, they live in a small town halfway across America. Ringing them in mid-December she heard a woeful story of how Christmas was going to be a disaster because all the local supermarkets were out of a certain brand of turkey cat-food which was the only kind their ten-year-old cat would eat. He'd gone on strike and they had visions of him starving. The supermarkets wouldn't be having fresh supplies in until the New Year. How could they have a happy Christmas?

  Elizabeth went to her own supermarket in California. They had the turkey cat-food there all right. She bought two cases and despatched them by air – there is an internal airmail service in America. She phoned other friends who lived nearer the couple and got them to send consignments as well, in case hers didn't get through as it was so near Christmas and there might be a delay in the mail.

  On Christmas Eve she rang them again, certain that by this time the cat-food would have reached them and there'd be two happy people and one contented cat blissfully awaiting Christmas. The cat was contented. The food had got through. It was the husband, Wilbur, who answered the phone. Cathy had her leg in plaster, he said. She'd broken every bone in her ankle and it wouldn't be right for months. It had had to be set under general anaesthetic... What? No, she hadn't slipped on the ice. She'd gone to open a tin of the turkey cat-food and had fallen over the cat.