A Comfort of Cats Read online

  He was, as is the case with most people's garden activities round here, in full view over the wall.

  'Now I've seen the lot,' said Father Adams, after he'd walked past specially to take a look.

  'Sure he ain't dead?' asked Fred Ferry, always out for a sensation.

  'Thee dussn't half have 'em round here,' opined the third member of our Hear All, See All, Tell All brigade, Ern Biggs, who, by virtue of his working as an odd-job man in our village but living in a neighbouring one, attributes anything that happens here to the fact that, as a village, we're all peculiar.

  Actually Tim was lying there combining a much-needed rest from his self-sufficiency activities – up at dawn to feed the chickens, hoeing potatoes, grinding wheat by hand for Liz to make home-made bread – with an experiment into the theory of gaining better results from bees by communicating trust and friendship to them. Some people do it by talking to them. Tim was endeavouring to do it by thought transference. He obviously hadn't transferred much trust so far since one of the guard bees had stung him on the nose, but one had to give him full marks for trying.

  'Why han't he got no clothes on?' enquired Ern Biggs when the motive was explained to him – but there was a reason for the bathing shorts, too. Bees, Tim explained, were angered by the smell of sweat. This way he wouldn't get so heated.

  All very well, but the village had its eye on him and when it came to the goats...

  Goat-keeping might well be described as the buttress of self-sufficiency, provided one has the space. They supply their owners with milk, cheese, yoghurt – even butter if one can stand the taste. Many people buy a goat in milk and start out that way. Tim and Liz began the other way round. They arranged to buy a female kid – the offspring of a goat belonging to some other self-sufficiency enthusiasts – which they proposed to have at six weeks old, rear by hand till it could look after itself, mate at the end of a year and so go into the goat business gradually.

  They prepared a small house and yard, put up a hayrack and feeding trough, bought a collar, chain and tethering pin. We thought it overdoing things a bit when, invited to inspect the preparations, we saw a milking-stool and stainless steel can hanging in readiness from the ceiling, but apparently that is one of the tenets of self-sufficiency. Buy now, while things are still about. By the time civilisation does fall apart there won't be a milking-stool or can to be had. They'll all be lying stacked in other people's goat houses and you'll have to barter for them with sacks of turnips.

  It was also, said Tim, with an air of practicality, to show the kid from the start what was expected of her. There could be no room for sentiment in survivalism. She must produce milk at the earliest possible moment – and her proper quota – or goat's meat would be the order of the day.

  We knew better than that, and sure enough the day came when the breeders brought the young kid over. Not to leave her – that was still more than a week away, but for a visit, with her mother, by way of introduction. The Bannetts rang us excitedly. They'd bring her down to the Valley so we could see her, they said, and in due course the procession appeared. Tim and the man, both with patriarchal beards and in clothes that looked suitably rural. Liz and the man's wife in the long skirts and cloaks that young people these days affect. A couple of children frolicked on ahead. Tim was encouraging a minute black and white kid to walk beside him. There was no sign of the mother goat. Presumably this was an experimental solo outing.

  They went past the cottage looking like a rural scene by Constable and I called to Charles to come and watch. Obviously they were going for a stroll up the Valley and would call on us on the way back. I was just commenting what a picture they made when there was a sudden commotion in the ranks. Back up the hill shot the little kid with Tim running like mad behind her.

  It seemed that Tim, our idealist, had refused to put her on a lead saying he wanted her to follow him from affection. She'd trotted along with the nice man for a while but then the thought of Mum, back on the Bannetts' lawn, had been too strong. She was bounding back up now in spectacularly curving leaps, the height of which beat even Saska's. Tim did a spectacular leap himself in an attempt to grab her, but slipped and fell flat on his face. Up he got. On the pair of them went. The rest of the party waited at the bottom. Eventually he came back carrying her, having caught up with her at the cottage.

  We went out to look at her. She was an entrancing little thing. Long-legged, pale-eyed, about the size of a Siamese cat, with hooves like polished thimbles and a coat like astrakhan. 'Whass be going to do with she?' asked Father Adams, appearing as if through a trapdoor on .the scene. 'Keep her?' he echoed, as if he hadn't heard aright. 'Whass be goin' to feed her on, then?'

  It was a question that Tim must have asked himself often during the weeks which followed. They called her Polly. Within a week she'd eaten all the foliage in the Bannetts' garden – there wasn't much spare space there anyway what with the bees, the goat house and a couple of chicken runs – and, notwithstanding concentrates, hay and regular milk-feeds they gave her, something had to be done about providing her with greenery.

  Tim seemed to be everywhere with that one small goat. Hovering on the hill with her on a lead while she avidly cropped down the verges. Frantically cutting waste grass with a scythe and toting it back for Liz to feed her during the day. 'Some people don't half look for work,' said Father Adams. 'If theest ask I, t'ould be cheaper to buy a pinta.'

  They still were buying it, of course. Plus the concentrates. Plus hay. Plus special powdered milk which had to be made up, warmed to the right temperature and bottle-fed to her at regular intervals. Tim was as fussy about this as a first-time mother over baby feeds. Liz had a timetable as to what to do during the day. So had we when, on the rare occasions when they took time off – usually to go to a farm sale to buy implements that were years out of date, or old-fashioned crocks for Liz's cooking – we fed and shut the chickens in for them and were given the honour of looking after Polly.

  The chickens were easy save for having to go into the runs crouched down like King Kong. Tim had adapted the old earth closet (boarded over at the top to half its height) as a roosting hut for one lot and a large wooden cider barrel for the other. The runs were in front of these and, owing to Tim having acquired a bargain lot of chicken-wire which was only three feet wide, that was the height of the runs and the difficulty was obvious.

  Not so much to Tim perhaps, who was used to it and in any case always closed the huts at dusk. But to Charles, six feet tall, venturing bent double into one of the runs to shut the door of the barrel... while it was still quite light because the door was a peculiar shape and he wanted to see what he was doing... 'Whass be up to now then?' came the inevitable question over the wall. Charles, turning to answer, collided with one of the random poles that supported the roof-wire, and before my own and Father Adams's very eyes the run collapsed on the floor.

  That was a minor incident, however. It was Polly who presented the biggest problem. If the Bannetts were going to be away for more than a few hours they brought her down to us, together with the number of feeding-bottles necessary to keep her going till they returned; a small bowl of concentrates with which, when it was her going-home time, we were supposed to entice her up the hill; her chain; a two-foot-long tethering pin shaped like a giant corkscrew; and a list of instructions as long as my arm.

  'Be sure the pin is screwed right down to the base in the ground – you'd be surprised how strong she can be', was one. 'Make sure the milk is warmed to blood heat and don't let her suck air', was another.

  A chance would have been a fine thing. The moment that goat saw her milk-feed coming she was at it like a commando on an assault course. She made a jump for it, went backwards tugging like a rope-puller on it – I had a job to keep hold of the bottle. I had no chance to expel the air before she got at it and it wouldn't have made much difference if I had. She gulped in so much round the sides, sucking away like a corporation drain-clearer, it was a wonder she didn't blow up
and float off.

  She survived though. Goats are obviously tougher than text-book writers imagine. She even appeared to like us. When Tim brought her down to the Valley to graze along the verges she'd start running as soon as she saw us. Hard down the road, trailing her lead, Tim following indulgently behind. She didn't bother about the gate. She came over the wall and rushed at us, ecstatically wagging her tail. Wasn't it wonderful, enthused Miss Wellington, how that dear little animal adored us?

  To a degree it was, but it didn't do the wall much good. It is dry-stone built and easily falls down. If Annabel was on the lawn, too – she didn't like Polly at all – Polly would put her head down and pretend-butt at Annabel. Annabel would turn her rear to kicking position. A pair of warning legs jutted backwards like the ready-cocked hammers of a shotgun – we were always having to jump in hastily to whip Polly out of firing range.

  It was no easier if the cats were with us. Shebalu crouched, crossed her eyes and growled like a tiger while Sass took up attack position. Back arched like a hairpin, tail bushed like a flue brush, he advanced sideways at her on long stiff legs with his head down, like a crab. The effect was somewhat spoiled by his tail sticking out at the wrong angle but there was no doubt that our dark man meant business. Tim would grab Polly's collar, I would pick up Saska – who would immediately take advantage of this to start up the most blood-curdling howling. Lucky for her I was holding him Back, he would announce from the safety of my shoulder. If he was down on the ground right now – gosh, he wouldn't half Fight.

  He might have done at that. He is the most fearless cat we have ever had, though whether it is innate bravery or thick-headedness we can't determine. Certainly neither the cats nor Annabel would have countenanced our having a goat of our own, though we liked Polly so much there were times when we thought of it. Only fleetingly, however. Something always seemed to happen to bring home the disadvantages of goat-keeping. Like the time we might have been arrested, had the public been more observant.

  It was, as I remember, one day in February. Tim and Liz were going to be away for the afternoon. They might be a little late back, said Tim. It would be all right for Polly to be in her yard till it got dark. But could we lock her in, and give her her bottle, around half-past five?

  Of course we could. Normally I would have heated the bottle in the kitchen and just carried it up the hill. That afternoon, however, we had to go to town to get a car battery, as our current one was patently failing. It was a dismal day and I shrank at the thought of coming home, heating the feed and taking it up the hill again in the cold. It was then that I had my idea.

  It was, quite simply, to take a thermos of boiling water, the cats' hot water bottle and Polly's feed with us in the car. Before we left town I would fill the hot water bottle from the thermos, wrap it against the feeding-bottle in a car rug... in the half-hour it took to get back to the village Polly's bottle would warm up nicely and we could nip in and feed her before we drove on down the hill.

  Why didn't I save all that trouble and just put the heated feed in the thermos? Because Charles is particular about germs. Goodness only knew what the composition of the goat-feed was, he said when I suggested it. He didn't want it in a thermos he was likely to drink from.

  Fair enough. Showing considerable forethought, in fact. Where we slipped up was that neither of us remembered Polly's bottle before we left town and we were half way home before I thought of it. I yelled to Charles to stop. He immediately pulled in at the roadside. Carefully I filled the hot water bottle. OK now, I said, having wrapped it against the feeding-bottle in the car rug. It would be just about right when we got home. At which point Charles pulled the self-starter and nothing happened. The battery had completely given out.

  'It could be worse,' said Charles, trying to look on the bright side. 'At least we've got the new one in the boot.' Then he peered sideways out of the window. 'Great Scott!' he said. 'Do you realise where we've stopped?'

  Outside the local RAF station and it was at the time of the bomb scares. It couldn't have happened to anybody but us.

  I can see us now. Me shining a dimming torch into the boot while Charles lifted out a black, rectangular object. Cars catching us in their headlights by the dozen while he carried it round to the front. Putting it down by the offside wheel where it managed to look most sinister. And of course the most traumatic moment of all, when he disconnected the old battery and all the lights on the car went out. We must have looked like Guy Fawkes and his assistant, flitting about in the dark, both bonnet and boot of the car up and a black box standing in the road. Any moment we expected to hear the sirens of police cars, or a bugle calling out the RAF guard at the double.

  Charles tightened the connections like greased lightning. We were in and on our way home as if jet-propelled. So much that we forgot to stop on our way down the hill and had to walk up with Polly's feed after all.

  'Everything all right?' asked Tim when he rang later to thank us. Even he could hardly credit it when I told him.

  Four

  There were times – just occasionally, when Annabel happened for once to be out of sight around the corner, not watching us like a police-check from up on the hill; when the cats were indoors sleeping the sleep of the contented and there was no goat perched like a mountain chamois on our wall – when the cottage looked as somnolent and non-eventful as if time had passed it by for a hundred years.

  I was working in the garden one such afternoon, battering away with a fork with one prong missing at a flower bed that was as hard as iron, my mind churning busily over various problems, when a woman came meandering along the lane.

  She was acting like a RADA student making her first attempt at Ophelia. Breaking off branches, holding them in the air and tilting her head at them, stooping to pick up bits of moss which she placed carefully in a basket. She added a piece of stone and looked to see if I was watching. 'I collect these,' she informed me brightly.

  That being obvious, I just said, 'Oh.' Presumably I was supposed to ask why. Deciding, as I didn't, that my horizons needed extending, she came over to the cottage gate.

  She couldn't understand, she said in the course of conversation, why, just because they lived in the country, women seemed to let themselves go. Not just the way they dressed. (I had on a sagging sweater with holes in it. She was wearing a hat with feathers and a matching coat.) But mentally. Intellectually. There were other things than cleaning the house and digging the garden.

  Women owed it to themselves to expand their potential, she went on. Men appreciated them all the more. She herself did Japanese flower arranging. Had I any interest like that?

  Well no, I said. I didn't have time... One should make time for culture, she reproved me. There was no need for anyone to turn into a cabbage... She would come and see me again.

  She drifted on up the lane, picking an odd-shaped branch here, a sad-looking seedhead there, hard at work being a floral artist. Fred Ferry told me later that she'd just moved out from town. I wondered... should I have enlightened her?

  The broken fork, for instance, which her glance had dismissed as slovenly – that had history behind it. Charles had snapped the tine off years before, despatching an adder which had threatened the cats. Actually it was more useful with only three prongs; it fitted more easily between the plants. The flower bed was like concrete not on account of neglect, but because two cats, a donkey and a goat kept prancing over it. As for the faraway expression I wore – it had nothing to do with being bored. As a matter of fact I'd been thinking about Sass. Wondering what made him tick.

  We were always wondering that. There'd been the instance, a few days after his arrival, when Shebalu introduced him to grass. She'd loathed him to begin with, but now he'd begun to take on the smell of the cottage and she'd decided he wasn't too bad. So out she'd gone, sniffing a Daisy She Owned here, chattering at a Bird Who Was Frightened Of Her there, greeting Charles with a matey 'Waaaah' as she and Sass passed him – and, by the garage, at a clump s
he'd always favoured, stopping to eat Her Grass.

  Never had she chewed it so appreciatively, head on one side, eyes closed in satisfaction. Delicious, she announced. Been eating it for Years and Years. Nobody but her ate This Grass.

  They did now. Sass, having adopted her as his Mum and mentor, which meant faithfully copying everything she did, put his head down as near to her as he could get and started to chew it as well. There was a look of earnest owlishness on his face we were soon to learn to recognise. It meant that Sass was thinking. In this case presumably why big cats ate grass and deciding it must be on account of its colour. That was the only reason we could think of why from that time on he ate everything he came across that was green.

  Cabbages, brussels sprouts, watercress – he chewed industriously away at the lot. He smelt like Covent Garden, but we told ourselves it was doing him good. I remember the watercress particularly – I'd bought it to garnish a duck one day when we were having friends to supper, and when I nipped into the village shop for another bunch just on closing time, explaining that Sass had eaten the first... 'He ate the watercress?' echoed the proprietor in a voice that was loud with astonishment. 'Wasn't he interested in the duck?' The heads of the other customers swivelled like lightning. They thought I was talking about Charles. I explained about Sass liking green stuff, however, which they accepted as reasonably credible... One woman said she knew of a cat that ate cucumber. Another had a dog that liked rhubarb. A day or two later the first one turned up at the cottage bringing a bunch of watercress for Sass as a present.