Читать онлайн "Double Trouble [calibre 3.42.0]" - Тови Дорин - RuLit

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 34

18/01/2007 13:06:38

Doreen Tovey

I am a sucker for seal-points myself. The sight of one of those dark pansy faces, anywhere in the world, always stops me dead in my tracks with admiration. But there is something about a blue-point, too. An ethereal Ice Queen quality about their beauty... an impression of frosted moonlight on distant mountains... And when the four of them came tumbling in, I, as well as Charles, was lost.

There it was again. The old Siamese magic. The slanting, sapphire-blue eyes. The round little crew-cut heads. The lift of their little matchstick tails. The shrieks of joy with which they swarmed over the furniture, intent on making the most of what was obviously a special treat.

Mrs Hinks said it was. Normally, she said, they weren’t allowed in the sitting room. They would go up the curtains and it didn’t do them any good.

They were going up them now. Two were near the top, a third was close behind, a fourth – the boy, said Mrs Hinks – was halfway up, swinging busily upside down. Even as we watched he let go, turned a quick half somersault and landed on the back of the settee. That was how she knew it was the boy, said Mrs Hinks. He was the one who couldn’t climb.

Even as we watched, too, the third one dropped deliberately off on top of him and the top two slid down from the heights as if they’d come down in a lift. In a moment it wasn’t the curtains they were demolishing. It was the immaculate, linen-covered settee.

Siamese owners get used to this, of course. Over the years we’d gone through two sets of linen loose-covers ourselves and were now discovering the disadvantages, 35

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 35

18/01/2007 13:06:38

Double Trouble

so far as Siamese are concerned, of the stretch variety as well. This was the breeder’s first litter, however, and though she bravely tried to combat it, every one of those newly-pulled threads must have cut her to the heart.

‘Well,’ I said, scooping two of them off the back of the settee to help her out. ‘They’re lovely kittens. We’re certainly going to have one of them. Which is it to be?’

It wasn’t easy. It never is. To begin with, the boy kept being hauled out in the selection, up-ended and, to his indignation, rejected. Even when Mrs Hinks shut him outside the door, that didn’t help things either. He started bawling under it about What Was Wrong With Boys? His sisters clustered interestedly on the inside all trying hard to see him underneath. It got them off the settee all right, but we could hardly choose a kitten by its bottom.

So we let him in again and the ballet began once more.

Les Sylphides, I thought, struck by the fairy-like quality of their colouring. And then I noticed that one of the Sylphides kept stopping to sit in front of us, staring at us intently with that deep-seeing Siamese gaze. So, long ago, our first blue-point, Sugieh, had chosen us. Now another one had made up her mind that she was the one for us.

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 36

18/01/2007 13:06:38

Four

WE PRETENDED SHE WASN’T at first. We checked the kittens for size; they were all about the same. We checked them for broad-headedness (Sheba had been broad-headed).

Guess whose head, if anything, was just a fraction wider?

We held them up one by one and studied them, trying to judge their intelligence. Guess who stared most seriously back at us, obviously judging ours?

So we brought her away with us. Worrying – there being always something – because she was only eight weeks old and hadn’t been inoculated.

Once kittens were inoculated at six weeks. Now they have the new one-shot vaccine at ten weeks, usually while still with their mothers, and Siamese – the most vulnerable breed so far as feline gastro-enteritis is concerned – are rarely sold without a certificate of inoculation.

She’d wondered about that, said Mrs Hinks when we mentioned it. It was her first litter and she hadn’t 37

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 37

18/01/2007 13:06:38

Double Trouble

been sure what to do. But someone had told her people preferred to have the kittens at eight weeks old, to have the full fun of them, and it was only two weeks to wait and meanwhile the kittens, like human babies, would carry a natural immunity from their mother...

She spoke from her experience as a nurse. Whether Siamese cats followed the pattern was something we wouldn’t have liked to bet on. They regard themselves as human when it suits them right enough, but when it doesn’t there is nobody faster at assuming the role of fragile, fading flowers.

This, I might add, is not just the opinion of a besotted owner. Some catteries refuse to take Siamese, knowing their propensity for pining and picking up germs. Vets, too, have a wary regard for their temperaments. Take cat flu, as our own Vet once pointed out to us... not the feline gastro-enteritis that many people wrongly call cat flu, but the runny pulmonary variety. Other cats, he said, would sneeze and snuffle for a couple of days and then be as right as rain. Let a Siamese go down with it, however, and not only could the cat be really very ill but, if it felt so inclined, it would just give up the will to live and nothing on earth could save it.

I told this doleful tale to Mrs Hinks. Would we like her to keep the kitten for us, then? she said. She’d be perfectly happy to keep it another fortnight and have the inoculation done by her Vet.

But by this time, however, I’d thought up another snag. So far we were the first people to have seen the kittens. If we took one home with us now we knew it couldn’t have been in contact with any infection.

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 38

18/01/2007 13:06:39

Doreen Tovey

Supposing we waited the fortnight, and in the meantime someone came to see them bringing some virus or other?

That, and the fact that having seen them we couldn’t bring ourselves to go home without one – not with Seeley waiting for a companion, we said, though really of course it was for us – decided us.

Mrs Hinks rang their Vet to make sure. Quite all right with kittens as fit as theirs, he said... just so long as we had her done without delay at the end of the fortnight.

We rang our own Vet to make even more sure. Quite all right, he confirmed encouragingly. He’d book us in for a fortnight’s time if we liked.

So we brought her home. Still not completely convinced she’d survive the fortnight unprotected.

Even less convinced when we saw the smallness of her in her basket. Certain of one thing only – that when Seeley saw her he was going to be the happiest Siamese in the country.

Which just showed how wrong we could be because when we took her into the cottage, let Seeley into the living room and opened the basket, fondly anticipating something like the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, Romeo put his ears down flat and said she was absolutely Horrible while Juliet, all five indignant inches of her, bushed her tail and crossed her eyes and said he was Horrible back.

He’d Eat her if she didn’t go away, bawled Romeo. Just let him Try it, retorted Juliet, squaring up to him like a country batsman awaiting the village fast bowler. And that, it was patently obvious, was the end of our plans for getting them together that night.

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 39