Nine
The cat house was part of our security plan. The remembrance of Seeley's disappearance was always with us and, to guard against the same thing happening again, either Charles or I was always with Sass and Shebalu when they were out and it took up a great deal of time.
We ought to have a house and run for them, I kept saying. They could be out in it in good weather, enjoying the sunshine, while we got on with other things. We'd still accompany them on walks, of course, and watch over them while they hunted, but we wouldn't be continually panicking in between because they'd managed to vanish in a row of cabbages.
Charles, agreeing, said he'd put up a cat house himself. It would only take a couple of weeks. The question was, two weeks from when? He already had three major jobs on hand on which he spent an hour or so in turn when the spirit moved him. That way, according to him, they got done before one realised it. One day there they were – finished.
The conservatory wasn't for a start. He'd been renovating that for years. People sometimes asked, seeing him on the ladder, whether he was putting it up or pulling it down. Fencing the field beyond the cottage was another of our projects. We'd bought it as an additional paddock for Annabel. Charles had so far put one side fence up really expertly, but it wasn't much use without the others. Thirdly – the item which had top priority at the moment – he was building a dresser in the kitchen.
That, I must admit, was entirely my own fault. The previous autumn, when we'd measured the kitchen for the pine dresser I'd fancied when we brought home the sack of onions, it was to discover that a normal-sized dresser was too small and would look silly and one of the big ones would be far too long. In an unguarded moment I'd thought of the old sideboard out in the woodshed, stowed there years before by Charles. I measured it. It fitted the space exactly. If we used that as a base, I said – faced it with pine-cladding, tiled the top, built pine dresser shelves above it – it would look like a super Swedish-style dresser and make some room in the woodshed into the bargain.
Charles, fired with enthusiasm, said he'd enjoy doing that. Wasn't I glad now he'd kept that dresser? The pine-cladding part wouldn't take more than a week. He'd have the whole thing finished by Christmas.
He might have done if it weren't for the fact that Charles is the world's top perfectionist. When, for instance, he found that the sideboard was veneered he insisted on removing all the veneer before he started. Why I couldn't imagine, since pine-cladding was to go on top of it, but Charles said when he did a job he did it properly. Stripped of the veneer, there were cracks to be filled in and rubbed down. Again I couldn't think why, until Charles explained that the finish was now so perfect it would be a pity to pine-clad it at all. He would varnish it instead, to bring out the grain, which would be quicker and he could start on the top part even sooner.
Unfortunately the varnish turned it a peculiar red colour so he reverted to the idea of pine-cladding. He also decided to give it a new back, and new shelves inside. New bottoms to the drawers, too, while he was at it. I didn't want them sticking, did I? he asked when I said but that would take ages.
Oh boy, I said, just give me the chance! Thinking I'd be able to store things in the sideboard from the start, as soon as we'd brought it inside I'd agreed to moving the old kitchen cabinet out to the porch to give Charles more room to work in. I now trudged miles a day carrying cups and plates and cutlery, leaving trails of sawdust behind me, while Charles sawed inspiredly away as if he were Sheraton and the cats played games through the empty drawer holes. Never mind about them sticking. Give me just one drawer I could actually use, and I'd stand on my head in celebration.
Add a cat house to the list? Not on your nelly. We, I said firmly, were going to buy one. Even so the thought was with me that, even if we bought the house itself – there were plenty of wooden sheds with windows on the market – Charles would still have to build a run around it and we'd have Project Number Four under way. At which point, while I was wondering whether my nerves would stand it, the Francises decided to close their Siamese boarding cattery at Low Knap.
Probably the best-known Siamese cattery in England – at one time it was said to be unique in Europe – it is nearly thirty years since Dr and Mrs Francis set the standard for modern cat boarding. Individual houses – separated, not in rows; large, individual runs; complete disinfection when a boarder moved out, even down to the blow-lamping of the earthboxes. Infra-red lamps over beds that were deep-sided and private, cushions to sit on in the windows – there were Siamese who'd boarded there for as long as three years while their owners were over-seas.
That in itself was a tribute to the proprietors. Siamese are peculiar creatures. Some catteries refuse to take them at all, saying they are more trouble than any other type of cat. The Francises, knowing this, specialised in the Oriental breeds, boarding only Siamese, Burmese and Havana. It was like visiting a top racing stable to walk past the runs, seeing an aloof-looking aristocrat in each. In some cases there were two or three aristocrats from the same household, lying there like a pride of lions, gazing with disdain at the rest of the world but keeping a hopeful eye open for the Francises.
Now they had retired. Rather than pass the business on and risk their standards not being maintained, they had closed, which was why we'd bought a caravan. Our cats had always boarded there. Sugieh had been mated there. We'd always left them with every confidence. No place, we said, could ever come up to Low Knap. In future we'd have to take the cats on holiday with us.
Not that I looked forward to it. I was already waking in the clear cold light of dawn envisaging trouble with Sass over his earthbox and positive mayhem when it came to the cooking. Always, in the kitchen, I had to watch out for stealthy paws. Sass in particular could materialise from nowhere. How would I manage in a caravan, cooking with two of them present and no handy door through which to dump them?
It is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good, however. The closing of Low Knap might have landed us with the prospect of taking the cats on holiday – I only hoped I was going to survive it – but it also meant that the Francises had some first-class cat houses and runs to dispose of, and we were able to buy one.
We hired a do-it-yourself van to bring the sections up from Dorset. The rumour went round that we'd been seen driving a lorry piled high with hen houses. According to Father Adams they were speculating at the Rose and Crown as to whether we were planning a caravan park in the new field we'd acquired or had been carried away by watching The Good Life.
I explained to him that the field was for Annabel and the 'hen houses' comprised a single cat house. Ah well, he said, he weren't goin' to tell 'em. What with the things they reckoned we were up to, and what young Bannett were doin' with the graveyard, it gave he the belly-ache laughing just to listen to 'em.
So the cat house lay in sections on the lawn throughout the winter, covered by a tarpaulin. We wouldn't need it till the spring and Charles was still busy with the dresser. Meanwhile Tim Bannett had bought a field further up the lane from ours because he was planning to expand in the goat business. Polly was ready for mating, he said, and he thought of getting a second nanny – he'd need more room than he had at the cottage. Couldn't he graze them round the edges of the graveyard? I asked. He could always fence off the mounds. After all there are still villages where they graze sheep actually in the churchyard, following the medieval custom...