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‘Absolutely enchanting... I thoroughly recommend it...

One of the few books which caused me to laugh out loud, and it sums up the Siamese character beautifully’

www.summerdown.co.uk

‘Every so often, there comes along a book – or if you’re lucky, books – which gladden the heart, cheer the soul and actually immerse the reader in the narrative. Such books are written by Doreen Tovey’

Cat World

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Praise for Cats in May

‘If you loved Doreen Tovey’s Cats in the Belfry you won’t want to miss the sequel, Cats in May.

The Toveys attempt to settle down to a quiet life in the country but, unfortunately for them, their tyrannical Siamese cats have other ideas. From causing an uproar on the BBC to staying out all night, Sheba and Solomon’s outrageous behaviour leaves the Toveys at their wits’

end. This witty and stylish tale will have animal lovers giggling to the very last page’

Your Cat magazine

‘No-one writes about cats with more wit, humour and affection than Doreen Tovey. Every word is a delight!’

The People’s Friend

Praise for The New Boy

‘Delightful stories of Tovey’s irrepressible Siamese cats’

Publishing News

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DOUBLE TROUBLE

Michael Joseph edition published 1972.

Bantam edition published 1994.

This edition published by Summersdale Publishers Ltd in 2007.

The right of Doreen Tovey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77

and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd

46 West Street

Chichester

West Sussex

PO19 1RP

www.summersdale.com

Printed and bound in Great Britain.

ISBN: 1-84024-569-7

ISBN 13: 978-1-84024-569-1

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Also by Doreen Tovey Cats in the Belfry

Cats in May

The New Boy

Donkey Work

Life with Grandma

Raining Cats and Donkeys

Making the Horse Laugh

The Coming of Saska

A Comfort of Cats

Roses Round the Door

Waiting in the Wings

More Cats in the Belfry

Cats in Concord

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One

TIME PASSES, EVEN IN a quiet country backwater such as ours. Sheba, our blue-point Siamese, was now a staid old lady of sixteen. Solomon Secundus, better known as Seeley, whom we’d bought to comfort her and us after our first great Solomon died, was a strapping young Seal Point of eighteen months. Annabel, our donkey, was nine...

Not that she looked it, mind you. Not that she acted like it, either. As I start this book it is with a thumb that feels as though it will never be the same again, thanks to Annabel’s idea of a joke.

It so happened that one Monday morning Charles decided to put her out to graze in the Forestry lane which adjoins the cottage – Monday being when the local riding school takes its day off, so there was no chance of her pursuing her favourite pastime of holding 9

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Double Trouble

the horses at bay by stretching her tether rope across in front of them.

It also happened that there were, that morning, two private individuals out riding. The first one, whom we didn’t know, Annabel let go by without hindrance. When I looked over the gate to check on her she was eating innocently from the side to which she was tethered, neck stretched industriously up to reach a bramble, small rounded bottom tucked neatly out of the way, without so much as a glance at the passing horse.

When the second rider came by, however – and this one was known to us all right; a certain young lady who rode round the place with the air of Elizabeth the First making one of her progresses and she hoped we yokels appreciated it... when she came on the scene Annabel was eating, apparently quite by accident, from the opposite hedge, with her rope stretched tight across the lane like a customs barrier.

‘She would,’ I said when Charles, who’d come tearing down from the orchard, said Annabel was holding up the Robart girl and would I come and help him shift her.

Which was why, mortified at the thought of the spectacle we were going to present trying to move that little so-and-so while the other one sat her horse and watched us, I rushed out, not stopping to pick up Annabel’s bridle (without which, small as she is, one might as well try to move Mahomet’s mountain), untied her tether rope and tried to pull her out of the way on that.

The spectacle began without delay. Annabel reared like a Lippitzer, I fell down in the mud, my shoe came off and, as I got up, Annabel came waltzing backwards and trod on my poor bare foot.

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Doreen Tovey

‘You all right?’ enquired Charles, who would ask that, I have no doubt, if I were falling straight down the crater of Vesuvius.

I didn’t trust myself to reply.

‘Grab her collar!’ I muttered between anguished teeth.

‘Grab her collar, or she’ll start playing up again.’

Thrusting my foot into a mud-filled shoe, doing my best not to limp and grasping Annabel in a grip of iron by one side of her collar while Charles held her firmly by the other, we led her towards her field. There was a patch near her gate where the lane was even muddier and it was necessary to skirt it in single file along the hillside; I in front, Annabel in the middle and Charles, trying to look insouciant, in the rear. And there, finding it difficult to keep his balance while holding her from behind, Charles let go of her collar, Annabel kicked up her heels and shot back down to the lane and I, the victim as usual of the pair of them, was hauled down behind her like a donkey cart.

I let go of her collar too, of course. But her tether rope was round my thumb, I couldn’t get it loose, and although I ran like mad the moment came when Annabel was running faster than I was; only the fact that I eventually tripped, sat down in the road and so acted as a drag anchor on our dear little donkey prevented my being towed up the hill like a kite.