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Double Trouble sprayed teazles and some dried achillea to fill it out... It looked quite good now, even though I said it myself...
until Shebalu, busily pursuing her demonstration of being a good girl, went right round the jug in a circle; tail raised, pushing lovingly against the leaves... and the whole arrangement, being lightweight, sailed round with her and ended up back to front.
Even that wasn’t the end of it. Hastily re-shuffling the flowers – though obviously they’d never look the same again – we were ready on time, our friends arrived, the cats were shut out in the hall while we ate, according to plan...
I did think I heard a bang a while later, but it was followed by the scampering of feet so obviously all was well. Probably Shebalu had fallen off the piano again, I thought. Or Seeley was practising jumping off the bed.
What it actually was was Shebalu putting paid to my flower display for good and all. After supper one of our friends, going out to get her handbag, came back to say that something was lying flat on the floor in the hall.
A few bits of leaves, when I looked, and an overturned container. The rest had fallen – or had it been pushed?
– behind the chest.
How on earth had that happened? said Shebalu, advancing innocently down the stairs as we stood there looking at it. That was the trouble – those artificial things were always so light. Then, with Seeley behind her, she made her entrance into the sitting room. Everybody waiting to see them? they said.
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Eleven
WE WOULDN’T HAVE HAD things otherwise, all the same.
Seeley’s insistence on having his breakfast in the conservatory even though summer was over... Shebalu’s perambulations with the dish-mop, the pot-scourer and now – her latest addiction – empty egg-shells which she stole before I could put them in the dustbin, prowled round with them in her mouth for ages being a Sinister White Jungle cat with her prey and then, when she decided she wasn’t impressing us any longer, poked primly under an armchair to demonstrate how feminine and tidy she was... these expressions of individuality were why we had Siamese cats.
True we had our moments when we wished they weren’t quite so individual. When, for instance, holding a plate aloft like a wine-waiter, announcing
‘Breakfast for Seeley’ loudly as I went because that was part of the formula and he wouldn’t go without 103
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Double Trouble it, preceded by a large Siamese cat who also bawled about it being his Breakfast every inch of the way
– when that little procession rounded the corner on its way to the conservatory, and it was blowing half a gale or raining and someone happened to be sitting in a car in the lane... at times like that I did feel rather embarrassed. As I did these days when visitors pushed back their armchairs and under them, however much I’d searched, there was always the odd abandoned half of an eggshell.
But then there were the times when they showed their affection for us. Shebalu perched on Charles’s shoulder while he read, for instance, pretending she was reading herself, her eyes deep-crossed in utter bliss. Or Seeley seeking me out for one of his bouts of snogging, which was one of his individualities. For this he jumped on a table or chair-back – anything that gave him height
– reared himself up at me and put his paws on my shoulders. Then, eyes closed, he’d rub his head against my face – a big long swoosh across one cheek and then across the other. He’d keep it up, on alternate cheeks, for minutes at a time. General de Seal, Charles dubbed him, watching him do it – and in fact it was exactly like someone giving an accolade.
They were so fond of each other, too. Talking to one another, calling if one was missing, lying before the fire together, their outstretched paws intertwined. Though Seeley sometimes now slept underneath his rug indoors
– a thing he used to do only in his cage. Was he expecting a cold winter? we wondered. Or did he hope that way to get some peace from Shebalu who, if she wasn’t asleep herself, would never let him alone?
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Doreen Tovey
He pretended to get annoyed when she tormented him – flattening his ears and jumping on her and biting her furiously back. Didn’t know what children were Coming To, he’d wail at her aggrievedly. He’d leave home if she wasn’t careful. He’d go up to the pub, only he didn’t drink.
That was when we were around. When he thought we weren’t, he’d be under the rug but with his tail sweeping seductively across the hearth like a pendulum, and Shebalu prancing and pouncing on it with delight.
Nobody talking about leaving home now. Only, when Shebalu looked like stopping, a large black paw coming out and slyly poking her to egg her on again.
So we moved on towards the winter – and if one aspect of its approach which puzzled passers-by was my marching solemnly through wind and weather conducting Seeley to his breakfast in the conservatory, another, which mystified them even more, was Charles transferring his fish.
When he’d built the pond in the yard he’d constructed it with a deep centre edged with stones and a shallow rim around that which was only some six inches deep.
Normally the pond was filled to the brim and the fish could enjoy themselves all over it. They did, too
– basking under the water lily leaves, gliding gracefully out over the stones, racing each other in excited shoals the length of the long outer rim. When and if they spawned, however, which we encouraged by putting water-weed in the shallow part – the idea then was that one lowered the level of the water, confined the large fish to the centre, and left the eggs, and later the fry, out in the rim beyond the stones, safe from the risk of being 105
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Double Trouble eaten. That was the theory. In practice, as fish spawn principally after spring and summer rain, which puts oxygen into the water and generally brisks things up, we never could keep the level down. The rain always raised it again, the fish got out over the stones... wriggling sideways over them or on their stomachs and that didn’t do their skins any good... and either they had a cannibal feast or, if we got there first, we rescued the eggs with a teaspoon and hatched them out in jars.
All that happened in the shallow part, in fact, was that they ran races in it, spawned in it – and, in the winter, got frozen in it. However much we baled it out, trying to keep them in the deep part for the winter, it always rained, re-filled the rim, the fish got out into it – and a night or two later it froze and the fish were trapped in the ice. We rescued them, revived them in tepid water, returned them to their wiser relatives in the centre – but so often the slimy protective covering of their bodies had been damaged by the ice or stones, and when the weather warmed up the fish got fungus on the damaged parts and died.
Charles was attached to his fish and, having reared them from inch-long tiddlers to fine, fat, king-sized carp, was determined not to lose any more of them this winter.
He was going to bring them indoors, he announced.
Where? I enquired, having visions of their spending the winter in the bath. In the conservatory, said Charles. In what? I asked. He’d think of something, he said. And, sure enough, he did.
If passers-by (and, as there is only a low wall round the cottage garden, our activities are as open to the public gaze as the stage in Shakespeare’s time)... if passers-by 106