We lectured her about this, released her – and, the kitchen door being open to let out the smoke, out shot Shebalu and up on to the hillside where, her legs feeling free, no doubt, after the constricting pull of the stitches, she promptly went up a pine tree. Later that day, too, she fell off the piano. Luck was with us, however. The remaining stitch stayed put.
So that was another hurdle over and now we could settle down to a period of quiet domesticity, with the 97
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holidays over, Shebalu safely spayed, little to be done in the garden and the prospect of cosy winter evenings round the fire with neighbours and friends. We never seemed to have time for entertaining in the summer and it was nice, now, to be asking people in again.
Or was it, with two Siamese cats and Charles in on the preparations? I remember one day, when we had people coming, getting out the vacuum to give the place the once-over and discovering that one of the pins was missing from the plug. That, I realised, must have been the long thin brass thing I’d found on the landing the previous morning. But where on earth had I put it? On the bedroom shelf? I could actually see myself doing it
– but when I looked, it wasn’t there. Of course, now I remembered – it was on the spare room tallboy... except that when I went to get it, it wasn’t there either. Or on the Welsh dresser in the sitting room, or on the chest in the hall. So, with an hour to go, I started crawling round the floor with the hand-vacuum. Accompanied by two extremely curious cats with their noses to the ground like bloodhounds.
What was I looking for? That mouse he’d lost?
asked Seeley. Interesting, wasn’t it? said Shebalu, completely engrossed. Surely I remembered what I’d done with it, said Charles. Not the way things were in this house, I said. It was a wonder I knew where I was myself at times.
At last I’d finished tidying the sitting room, however, and the food was prepared and spread round on cupboard-tops and in the refrigerator... no good taking chances with two Sherlock Holmes around. I must remember to put them out in the hall at supper-time, 98
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too, I thought. We didn’t want a repeat of the last time people dropped in.
On that occasion, with Seeley voluntarily in the hall, watching in the moonlight for things moving out in the lane, we’d let Shebalu stay in with us while we had coffee and a snack. Impressed, obviously, by the honour thus conferred on her she sat gravely before the fire, paws tucked under, with the air of being a Big Cat now, thinking on serious things. Until that was, we’d put the table over the top of her. ‘Please don’t disturb her,’ our visitors had pleaded. ‘Dear little soul... we don’t mind her being there.’
Within minutes the dear little soul was discovered stealing the butter. Standing on her hind legs with a blob of it on her nose. ‘Oh – don’t do that,’ our friends protested gallantly as I took the butter dish away to change it – but who fancies butter all grooved with kittens’ teeth?
So I had that in mind... and I cleaned the bathroom...
bath immaculate, polished floor, clean towels on the rails... which produced Charles as automatically as if I’d put a coin in a slot-machine, announcing that he’d finished in the orchard and now he’d have his bath.
Oh no he wasn’t, I said – not with the Allinsons due in half an hour. So he obligingly washed instead and all I had to do was re-clean the washbasin, re-change the towels, pick up the lumps of mud which had fallen out of his turn-ups and repolish the floor and all was well.
Except that just as I was putting the fresh towels on the rails the cats rushed in in a ‘We’ve got visitors coming’
steeple-chase, Seeley went straight up me and I dropped the towels down the lavatory.
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Double Trouble Next, I thought, getting out a fresh lot of towels and refusing to be deterred, for oil in the stove in the hall.
It was working properly now and the night was rather cold. I’d better go up to the garage for the oil myself, though. Charles was changing by this time and I didn’t want to put him off.
So up I went. It is rarely I visit the garage; Charles’s idea of storing things reduces me to despair. This time I came back more despairing than ever, though I had managed to find the oil.
‘Is all that stuff up there supposed to be a burglar trap?’ I enquired. ‘What stuff?’ asked Charles, whose own mental picture of the garage is a cross between an operating theatre and the engine room of the Queen Elizabeth.
‘That brick right in the middle of the side doorway,’ I said. ‘So that when you go in you turn your foot on it and nearly break your ankle.’
That, said Charles with dignity, was for use as a door-stop when the door was open.
‘All those pieces of wood propped up behind the brick, that you have to climb over like a barricade before you can get inside the place?’
Those, said Charles, were lengths he was going to use for Annabel’s new stable. Brought out of store ready, so they were to hand when he wanted them.
‘That old broomhead without any bristles, right where when you’ve mountaineered over the wood you step down straight on to it?’
That, said Charles, very righteously, was there to be brought down for burning. He was starting to clean out the garage. I was always complaining about the muddles.
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Quite speechless, I filled the stove, took off the covers we normally have on the chair arms to protect them from Siamese claws, set the tea trolley... not with any food, of course; that was still on top of the cupboards; just with the china and the cutlery and the cut-glass jug for the cream. At which point (I could have bet on it) the cats appeared again.
Look what She’d found, said Shebalu. Some nice yellow chair arms that hadn’t been clawed yet. Look what He’d found, came a familiar voice from the passage outside the kitchen. All those books had been moved off the tea-trolley and you could play circus cats through the shelves...
So, of course, we had another steeplechase. Over the chair arms, through the trolley – straight through the china, too, but fortunately none of it was broken.
Gathering them up into one large, blue and seal bundle I shut them out into the hall. Almost immediately Charles went upstairs and let them in again.
Now look, I said, fielding Shebalu, carrying her once more out to the hall and depositing her on the chest. I was busy. Couldn’t she behave herself? Did she want to end up in a home for bad cats?
Who? Her? asked Shebalu, rubbing coyly against a jug of flowers. It was Seeley who’d knocked over those cups. She was a Good Girl, she was, she added, rubbing against the jug again for luck.
It was unfortunate that she’d chosen to demonstrate her innocence against my flower arrangement. Absolute ages it had taken me, being hopeless at that sort of thing.
Some sprays of those beech leaves from the bazaar and a few huge, exotic paper poppies… one or two copper-101