I hear lots of stories about intelligent cats. Not always Siamese. All breeds, including 'ordinaries', have their A-level types. There was the tale I heard from a chemist in a neighbouring village, whose enormous, battlescarred ginger neuter suddenly took to staying out for hours at a time and then coming home smelling of Chanel No.5, which the chemist recognised because he sold it in his shop. Intrigued, one day he followed the cat, which walked a long way up the road, scorning the lesser houses, and finally turned in at the gateway of the local 'big house', proceeding up the drive as if he owned it. He went to the front door, lifted the low-level letter-box with his nose and let it drop. Within seconds the door opened, a voice said 'There you are darling, come right in' and the cat disappeared inside – to reappear at his home several hours later smelling once more of Chanel No.5. The chemist said a wealthy old lady lived in the big house and was obviously feeding and making a fuss of him, hence the smell of the expensive scent, which the cat apparently didn't mind. 'Yet he looks like a prize-fighter,' he said incredulously.
The same cat, more in keeping with its appearance, once ate all the fish in the chemist's friend's garden pond. The friend, who also lived a long way up the same road, said he couldn't understand why his fish were vanishing. 'Perhaps a heron's taking them,' suggested the chemist, who had no idea of the truth – until one day he met his cat walking down the middle of the road with the last – and largest – goldfish in its mouth, tail flapping on one side, head wagging on the other. The chemist tried to rescue it, but the cat wouldn't let go, so he had to carry the cat home, fish and all, as fast as he could, before anybody could see them. Next time he met the fish-owner the man said he was re-stocking the pond with small ones. Presumably they were beneath the cat's notice, as he never took any again. 'Can you beat that?' asked the chemist. I had to admit that I couldn't.
Neither could I beat the story about somebody, living in the country with two cocker spaniels, who in an unguarded moment adopted a black half-Siamese kitten from a friend who lived in town. On arrival the kitten stalked into the kitchen, put the spaniels in their places by slapping them on the nose, and took to country life straight away. The following day his new owner heard puffing and snorting coming from an adjoining field and found the kitten smacking the nose of a cow which was standing over him looking threatening. The cow was likewise put in its place. Later, while his owner watched in horror, the kitten leapt on to the back of a bullock, clung to the curls on its neck, and hung on like a rodeo rider while it careered round the field. Encouraged by his success, he was next found sitting behind a cow batting happily at her tail, which the cow, presumably thinking an outsize fly was after her, was swishing angrily from side to side. On another occasion he stalked a magpie, grabbed a tail-feather as it took off, and was airborne until the feather came away. Picking himself up, the kitten took the feather indoors and it was a treasure for days until it became too dilapidated to play with or take to bed. And when he wasn't dicing with death, finished his owner, he liked to sit in a holly tree by the front door eating the leaves and removing the prickles from his mouth with his paw. What did I make of that? I could only say, weakly, 'It must be the Siamese in him.'
Half-Siamese resulting from unplanned matings with domestic cats, typified by their elegant lines, plush coats and foghorn voices, are often black and invariably more catastrophe-prone than ordinary cats. The modern pedigreed Orientals which are the result of deliberate crossings between Siamese and other selected cats also have this reputation, but I find it hard to believe, after my own experience and all the hair-raising tales I've heard, that there is anything to beat a full Siamese for causing trouble. Consider the story I was told by the woman who took her Siamese kitten – the first she'd ever had, and she was captivated by the way it accompanied her everywhere like a dog – to a house a couple of streets away to buy potatoes from an old man who sold vegetables to supplement his pension. Frightened by the traffic, which it hadn't experienced before, as soon as the man opened the door the kitten ran up his leg. 'His bad leg, of course,' said my informant resignedly.
She peeled the protesting Alfred off the old man's back and took him home, and the next time she went round for potatoes – without Alfred for obvious reasons – she was duly shown the wounds on the door-step. Up went the old man's trouser leg. 'See where 'e got I? Cor, I felt that. Hummin' all night it were,' he informed her. Not that she could see anything. She was too busy praying that nobody spotted the display and reported them for indecent exposure.
'The number of people who say what a beautiful cat he is and then spoil it by saying they knew he must be mine...' she finished.
I am continually hearing stories like this, though there are people who insist I make it all up and that no cats could ever behave as I say Siamese do. They are non-Siamese owners, of course, and I can only suggest they try it for themselves – like the woman who rang me one day about her chocolate-point Siamese, the first she'd ever owned, wondering if I could help her.
I shuddered the moment I heard his name. In my experience, to call a Siamese Ming, as being the epitome of Oriental fragility and perfection, is courting disaster. All the Mings I've ever come across have been outstandingly diabolical as if their one mission in life is to disprove the connotation, and this Ming was no exception.
His owner, Connie, explained that she had recently retired from teaching science at a girls' boarding school and had moved into a new flat. The garden of her previous flat had opened on to a large field in which it had been safe for Ming to roam while she was away, and there he'd set up his personal dictatorship. He'd fought all the other neighbourhood cats – in particular one called Ginger Bates, whom he'd loathed with deep Oriental loathing. He'd stolen things from the neighbours and brought them home to her as gifts and she'd had to find out whom they belonged to and return them. He'd walked the world like a feline Dick Turpin and now that his owner had brought him to a flat more convenient for her – near the first one but round the corner on the main road, with the garden wired in for his safety and Ginger Bates and his beloved field on the other side of an eight-foot fence – he'd embarked on despotic revolution.
He'd always been a despot, his owner informed me. He'd originally belonged to her vet who had two other Siamese whom Ming, as a youngster, had bullied till their lives weren't worth living – and, as she was catless at the time, the vet and his wife, who were friends of hers, had asked her to take him on.
He'd settled well with Connie. He liked electric fires, and prawns and steak, and being treated as an only cat of special importance. But he disapproved strongly of the new flat when they moved, and particularly of the wired-in garden. They'd been in residence for three weeks, during which time he'd patrolled the bottom of the fence every day, clawing at the wooden supports, yelling because he couldn't get over or under it, and her new neighbours had started to complain. What could she do, short of finding another flat and moving away? she asked. She couldn't part with Ming. He was her friend.
Get a water-pistol, I advised her, explaining how it had worked with Saphra. I could sense horror coming down the phone wire at the suggestion. What about a flower spray? she asked at last. I understood her predicament. She lived very near the school where she had taught, and still took part in its extracurricular activities. An ex-senior mistress going round with a water-pistol – or spotted in the local toy shop trying to buy one – would hardly set a good example to the pupils.