Cats in the Belfry Read online

  We rose next morning to a pouring wet day and another crisis. Sugieh hadn't used her earth-box. The breeder had advised us, as Sugieh wasn't yet used to a garden, to continue using an earth-box until the weather was better, and we had obligingly provided her with our biggest enamel baking dish filled – as the garden was absolutely sodden and Father Adams said Siamese cats got chills from using damp earth-boxes – with a bag of Shorty's sand. We had shown it to her the night before and she had affected not to see it, which was understandable because Siamese cats are very refined and we had only just met. But now it was morning and Sugieh had been with us twelve hours, and still the sand in her box was as untrodden as the Sahara.

  All through breakfast Charles and I kept darting out into the hall and dibbling our fingers encouragingly into the sand. Sugieh darted too, and dibbled happily with a small blue paw. But she wouldn't get into the box. When the time came for us to leave for town I was frantic with worry, for we wouldn't be back until evening and by that time, I felt sure, Sugieh would have burst.

  When we got home that night the box was still unused and Sugieh was sitting firmly on the floor. Unburst, but obviously reluctant to move. We were halfway through supper, anxiously wondering whether we ought to call the vet, when Charles had his inspiration. Perhaps, he said, she didn't like sand. It was still raining, so we tried her with sawdust. She didn't like that either. In desperation we cast Father Adams's theories to the wind, filled the box with mud straight from the garden, and put that in front of her. The result was miraculous. With one yell Sugieh was in the box and had flooded it to high-water mark. Supper forgotten, Charles dashed out into the rain at top speed, refilled the box, and offered it to her again. There was no false modesty about Sugieh. She leapt into it once more, raised her small spike of a tail and speedily reseated herself, thanking heaven at the top of her voice that we had at last realised Mother had taught her it was Dirty to use anything but Earth.

  That was that crisis over. But there were plenty more to follow. There was the first time she went into the garden, for instance. The path was bad enough – she grumbled all the way out that the gravel was hurting her feet – but when we put her down on the lawn and the stubbly grass prickled her paws for the first time she let out one shriek and fled straight up my leg, swearing something had bitten her. She did the same when she saw her first dog, only this time she went on up over my face and stood on my head for extra safety, bawling at him just to try to get her now, that was all.

  It was most discouraging. Blondin used to do that too, when he was frightened. One old man I know nearly signed the pledge on the spot the night he met me in the lane just after closing time and saw a squirrel yelling defiance at him from the top of my head with his tail bushed out like a flue brush. All the thanks I got, too, for assuring him that it really was a squirrel and not the first sign of DTs, was that he made a gate-to-gate tour of the village telling everybody I was potty. What they would say when they heard I went round now with a screaming cat on my head I shuddered to think.

  When Sugieh's feet toughened up and she began to venture outside on her own we had more trouble. The first time she went into the garden unaccompanied she climbed up to the garage roof, slid down the back slope and fell into the water-butt. She got out by herself, stalked into the house stiff-legged with indignation and delivered such a harangue, while green, stagnant water dripped steadily off her tail onto our poor Indian carpet, that Charles slunk out in self-defence and made a cover for the butt on the spot. Unfortuntately the next time she went into the bathroom and saw Charles lying in the bath she remembered her own narrow escape, gave one horrified yell, and plunged in to the rescue. Charles had his eyes shut at the time and when Sugieh landed on his stomach screeching like a banshee it frightened him so much he leapt up and nearly stunned himself on the first-aid cabinet, which had been fixed over the bath in the first place to keep it out of Blondin's reach.

  After that Sugieh fell into the bath so often trying to save us from drowning that we had to tie a notice to the taps reminding us to lock the door before we turned them on. Then – presumably to counteract the effect of getting wet so much – she took to standing, when she talked to us, with her rear bang up against the electric fire. Twice she caught the tip of her tail alight, though she was so busy lecturing us she never noticed it. On each occasion Charles threw himself across the room in a magnificent rugby tackle and put out the flame before it touched her skin, but he said it was bad for his heart at his age, and it wasn't doing mine much good either. In the end we had to buy small-mesh guards that completely spoiled the look of any room they were in, and tie them to every fire in the house with string.

  Worst of all was the problem of food. When she lived with Anna, Sugieh had, it seemed, eaten her prescribed two cereal meals, two meat meals and four yeast tablets a day with meek obedience. But not with us. As from the second day, by which time she had summed us up as a couple of suckers and dead easy to handle, she refused to eat any more cereal. When we had liver, which she was supposed to have not more than once a week, or bacon which she wasn't supposed to have at all, she sat on the breakfast table, no matter who else was there, and dribbled like Oliver Twist. On the other hand she ate rabbit – which was good for her and so cheap at that time that the butcher looked pained if I asked for less than a pound – only when the spirit moved her, so that I was for ever tipping dishes of turned-off meat into the lane for the benefit of less fortunate little cats. Needless to say as soon as the less fortunate little cats arrived Sugieh went out, elbowed her way through the crowd and scoffed the rabbit with such gusto that one old lady practically wore a groove in the front path coming in to tell us that our dear little cat was eating scraps in the lane, and did we think perhaps we didn't give her enough to eat?

  She condescended to eat a little steak occasionally, but even then it had to be tossed to her piece by piece, and aimed so that it landed directly in front of her. If it dropped so much as an inch beyond her reach she ignored it. If it fell on her fur she ran upstairs and hid under the bed, screaming that we had hit her. If we put down a whole plateful of food at any time she shook her back leg delicately in the gesture she used to indicate she had finished with her earth-box and walked away with her ears sleeked back in horror at our grossness.

  She liked milk, but only if she was allowed to drink it standing on the table, out of a jug. We got over that by keeping her milk in the jug and filling our own cups surreptitiously, so as not to offend her, from the bottle, which we kept behind the bookcase. People said we were foolish, and we ought to make her drink out of a saucer. They didn't know Sugieh. She was the living example of an iron hand in a small, blue-pointed glove. The only thing she would drink out of a saucer was coffee – and that was only because the coffee cups were too small for her to get her head in.

  As for her yeast tablets – obviously Anna had indelibly impressed on her the importance of eating those regularly if she wanted to grow up a big strong cat and keep human beings in their place, but she ate them in such a revolting manner, with her face screwed up and her mouth open, dropping half-chewed tablets onto the carpet and then licking them up again, each time more soggy and repulsive-looking than the last, that we just dumped four of those in front of her every night and bolted into the kitchen, so that we wouldn't have to watch.

  THREE

  Help! Kidnapped!

  When I went home one evening after Sugieh had been with us for about a month and announced that my firm wanted me to go to Liverpool on business and it would mean my being away overnight, Charles looked at me in horror. Who, he asked, was going to look after the cat?

  He was, I said brightly. There was nothing to it. Just give her shredded rabbit for supper, making sure there weren't any bones in it; fish for breakfast – be very careful about the bones in that and be sure it didn't boil over on the stove; change her earth-box night and morning – if she yelled at him with an urgent expression on her face it meant it wanted changing in-between as
well; wipe her if she got wet; see that she didn't play with Mimi, who had designs on being the only Siamese in the district and was inclined to try to murder Sugieh if nobody was looking; make sure she had her yeast tablets and didn't stay out after dark; see that she didn't—

  At that moment there was a loud splash, followed by a wail. Sugieh, who had been looking for fresh fields to conquer ever since she was barred from the bathroom, had fallen down the lavatory. She couldn't have chosen a worse time to do it. If I had, even for a few brief seconds, hoped that Charles would agree to looking after her, that moment was now past. He took one look at her as I hauled her squirming and yelling from the depths, shuddered, and said he had just had an idea. We would ask my grandmother to have her for the night, then he could drive me up to Liverpool by car and we could both have a rest.

  My grandmother loved animals and had, fortunately, not encountered Sugieh to date, so we had no difficulty in fixing that up. What we hadn't bargained for was that since that first journey out from town, when she sat sedately on my lap watching the traffic with wide-eyed interest and occasionally – hypocrite that she was – smirking affectionately up into my face, Sugieh had developed a Thing about cars.

  The moment I got into the car with her the morning of that ill-fated trip, before Charles had even so much as pressed the starter, she began to yell: Charles patted her on the head as she sat on my lap and told her not to be a silly girl, she knew she liked carsy-warsies. With Sugieh, of course, that was just asking for trouble. By the time we got to the top of the hill leading to the main road she was standing on her hind legs, clawing frantically at the window and shrieking for help. Charles said it was the noise of the bottom gear upsetting her; once we got on the flat road she'd be all right. I have no doubt at all that Sugieh understood every word we said, because by the time we were halfway to town and the road had been flat as a pancake for miles all the other drivers were gesturing violently at us as they passed, threatening to punch Charles's nose for swerving all over the place and not giving signals, and Charles himself was shouting that if I didn't get that damblasted cat off his neck she'd have us up a telegraph pole.

  It was even worse on the return trip. First of all we had my aunt to contend with. My grandmother's concern for animal welfare had always gone to extremes. When she was younger she had had a tame owl called Gladstone whose favourite perch was on top of the bathroom door. My father swore that sometimes it was so draughty with the door open you could see waves on the bath water and in the winter my grandfather used ostentatiously to bring a hip bath down from the attic and wash in his bedroom instead, but it made no difference. Grandma wouldn't have the door shut. She took the line that human beings could look after themselves but poor dumb animals couldn't, so you either took your bath with Gladstone glaring ghoulishly down at you – as like as not with a piece of dead mouse lovingly provided by Grandma in his claws – or not at all.

  I can remember her myself hurrying down, armed with my old push-chair and scarlet with indignation, to fetch home a collie which somebody told her had been pledged at the local pawnshop. Actually the pawnbroker had taken the dog in, without any hope that the owner would ever redeem it, rather than see it starve; and he had looked after it quite well. Nothing would convince my grandmother, however, that it hadn't been heartlessly ticketed and stacked with the rest of the goods in pawn. She wheeled it home in the push-chair telling everybody she met that it couldn't walk and reducing them practically to tears with the harrowing story – quite untrue – of how she had lifted it off the pawnshop shelf with her Own Two Hands. I remember it so well because for a fortnight after that I was the one deputed to push Baldwin, as she called him – this of course was years after Gladstone had eaten his last mouse on top of the bathroom door – to the park in the pram every day for an airing. And when at last Grandma decided he was strong enough to stand on his own feet again, I was the one – Grandma said she knew I loved poor dumb animals just as much as she did and God would reward me for it – who was persuaded to take him for his first walk and, in consequence, had to face the music when he promptly jumped into the first pram he came to and sat on the baby.

  She was just as firm in her convictions even when, in later years, she grew too old actually to look after the animals herself. The first time we left Blondin with her, for instance, in spite of our assurances that he would be perfectly happy locked in the spare room with his basket and climbing branches she insisted that my Aunt Louisa had him in her bedroom in case he was lonely.

  If he had been locked in the spare room Blondin would have settled down quite happily in the wastepaper basket filled with old pullovers which he used in the garden house, but when he saw my aunt's comfortable bed it proved too much for him. He grabbed a nut, dived under the eiderdown, and there he stayed all night, rattling his teeth like castanets every time the poor soul moved.

  She complained about it the next day but my grandmother merely asked sternly whether she was man or mouse, to be afraid of an innocent little creature who had come to her for comfort. After fifty years of living with Grandma poor Aunt Louisa was, alas, indubitably mouse, so for the next fortnight she shared her bed with Blondin and his nuts, hardly slept a wink, and discovered on the last morning that, tired of sleeping under the eiderdown, which presumably allowed draughts to seep in through the gaps, Blondin had chewed a hole in the cover and was blissfully asleep inside. My Grandma was furious about that, I remember, but not with Blondin. With my aunt who, she said, shouldn't have allowed him to do it.

  It was a foregone conclusion of course that if we left Sugieh with them Grandma would make my aunt take her to bed too, but we didn't see much harm in that. Sugieh, despite our original resolutions, often slept with us. Within a week of her arrival she had worked out that if she nipped smartly upstairs when she heard the hot-water bottles being filled and hid under the dead centre of the bed we couldn't get her out. Then, when the room was in darkness and she judged we had had time to go to sleep, she would creep out, climb on to the bed and insert herself so gently under the bedclothes and into my arms that I hadn't the heart to move her.

  Apart from snoring, the only disturbance she caused us was when, promptly at five in the morning, she got up and stropped her claws on the padded top of the blanket box, but as my aunt didn't have a blanket box we thought there was nothing to worry about. How were we to know that Sugieh would choose her visit to develop a Thing about woollen clothes?

  We learned later that among other dark, Oriental aspects of their nature which only come to light when they have firmly established themselves in some soft-hearted household, Siamese are often confirmed wool-eaters. A breeder who is something of a cat psychologist told us that he believes they do it to comfort themselves when they are lonely, in the same way that children suck their thumbs, and it is a fact that our present cats, having each other for company, never eat wool except when travelling. We put them in separate baskets then and Solomon, Sugieh's big, burly son, invariably drags the end of the car rug in through the wickerwork and chews it steadily, between muffled sobs, all the way to his destination.

  My aunt, however, was no psychologist. When she went up to bed that night and found that Sugieh had eaten several large holes in her bedsocks she just got so plain, unpsychologically mad that she tucked the sheets firmly round her head and refused to let our dear little kitten get in with her. Sugieh, unused to such unfriendly treatment, got so mad in turn that when Aunt Louisa, who always wore wool next to her skin, woke up in the morning, she found holes in everything she had taken off overnight as well. She got no sympathy from my grandmother, who laughed her head off when she heard about it – and Sugieh, locked in the spare room to prevent further damage, spent the day swearing horrible oaths at the top of her voice and leering under the door at my Grandma's fat black neuter, who sat transfixed with horror on the other side. That upset my aunt too. She worried so much in case the two cats got at each other and had a fight that by the time we arrived, late in the even
ing, she was practically hysterical with suppressed guilt because she had been too scared to open the door and give Sugieh any food and too scared, afterwards, to confess it to my grandmother.

  We drove home in silence, shaken by the impact of one small Siamese kitten on that tranquil Victorian household, while in the back seat Sugieh continued happily with her game of Kidnapped. This time, while there was nobody else about, she sat there quite quietly, bolt upright with her paws together, her tail tucked primly round them, and the expression on her face of a dowager duchess returning from the theatre. The moment she saw lights, however, whether in a house or a passing car, she flew to the window, pressed herself pathetically against it and screamed wildly for help. She staged a magnificent performance going past a cinema just when the late-night audience was coming out, beating her paws against the window with a frail, pathetic frenzy that would have done credit to Lilian Gish. But where she really excelled herself was when we drew up at the traffic lights at the busy town centre. Most Siamese sound uncannily like human babies when they cry, but Sugieh that night outdid any Siamese or human baby I have ever known. She sobbed, she wailed, she howled, until people on the pavement began peering into the car with set faces looking for the little orphan who was apparently being simultaneously beaten, starved and tortured inside. By that time, needless to say, Sugieh was out of sight, doing her ventriloquist act from under Charles's seat. The only thing that saved us from being mobbed by a crowd of angry passers-by was the last-minute changing of the lights and the fact that Charles, having been something of a racing driver in his gilded youth, was away off the mark like a shot.