The business of his washing her didn't last long, either. Within days she was washing him, and he was expecting it. It was a mammoth task. He used to sit upright for it and it looked as if she'd taken on cleaning the Post Office tower, but it didn't daunt her. As fragile looking as the delicate Oriental silk after which she was named, she reached up to lick his ears as if they were the stars on the twin pinnacles of her ambition – as they probably were. She had a Big Cat to herself. She was Important. Life was Blissful, she kept on telling me.
It was a complete transformation from the timid little scrap I'd first seen in Devon – as if she'd been kept under by the other cats she'd lived with and was now making up for lost time. She consistently climbed things, fell off them, ate things she shouldn't and told the world about it in the loudest voice I'd ever heard in a kitten. She even talked in her sleep. One of my most vivid memories of her kittenhood is of the two of them curled together in front of the fire in the Snoozabed – Shantung muttering dozily away with her eyes shut, Saska regarding her exasperatedly with one eye open. Shebalu never did that, said his expression.
It was during this period that she developed a quirk she retains to this day. She objects to my using a typewriter. I only have to get it out and set it on the small table by the fire and even before I begin tapping on it she will, without opening her eyes, start protesting in a staccato, Morse code-like voice at my doing Any Such Thing while she, with her Sensitive Hearing, is in the room. I am used to it now. I take no notice and eventually the nattering, not unlike the tapping of typewriter keys itself, subsides – but it was pretty off-putting when she started it as a shrimp-sized kitten. None of our long line of cats had ever done that before, either.
Out of doors presented more problems. Situated as the cottage is, in a valley surrounded by pine-clad hills, with the metalled lane ending at the front gate and other than that only rough bridlepaths for horse-riders and a few neighbours' cars to bump over, we used to consider it the safest of places for animals to live in. Then Seeley, Solomon's successor, went out one Sunday morning when he was six years old and was never seen again. He couldn't have been run over – we and our neighbours searched for days and we'd have found his body if he had been. Either somebody stole him or – for like all Siamese he was extremely inquisitive – he must have got into a parked car at the top of the hill or along at the pub and been carried off accidentally. If so, we only hoped, since nobody brought him back in answer to our advertising, that whoever found him looked after him and grew to love him as we had done. But after that we decided that never again would any of our cats be allowed to run free unless we were with them. To lose any animal is heartbreaking, and where Siamese are concerned, with their striking appearance and obvious value, the temptation to people without conscience is no doubt considerable. So we trained Shebalu and Seeley's successor, Saska, to collars and leads; they wore them when Charles exercised them in the morning while I was getting breakfast, or when we took them for walks in the forest; and we put up a chalet and large wire run in the garden in which, when the weather was good, they sunned themselves when we weren't on hand to keep an eye on them. After Shantung came I used to take Saska out for his walk and garden inspection on his lead, then put him in the run and keep Tani, as I soon started calling her, with me while I did the household chores, with occasional sorties on the lawn for kitten exercise where Mrs Binney usually caught up with us and delivered her dismal predictions. Then, when I thought they were sufficiently used to each other for Sass not to pounce on Tani in mistake for a fieldmouse, I started to take them into the garden together.
It would have been impossible to get a collar small enough for Tani, so as in my experience none of our cats, as kittens, had ever strayed far from whoever was with them, I let her and Saska go loose – keeping close behind him so that I could grab him if he tried to make off. He didn't. Indoors, playing with Tani where only I could see him, was one thing. Outdoors he had his Siamese image to think of. So he pretended he didn't know her, stalking across the lawn or along the paths with aloof dignity while she pranced beside him like a furry yoyo trying to get his attention, or – a game she invented for herself as her legs grew longer – rushing up behind him as he walked and leap-frogging clean over him from back to front, which caused him only to swerve and stalk straight on, a look of resignation on his face, while she ran after him, gathering herself for the next leap.
Mrs Binney, watching with raised eyebrows, opined that she'd got St Vitus's Dance – a diagnosis which, as I was pretty sure that cats didn't get it, for once didn't worry me. Father Adams, who had once owned a Siamese himself – Mimi, who'd been given to him when her owner went abroad and whom he'd worshipped till the day she died – said nostalgically that he 'ouldn't mind a little 'un like that himself: minded him of his girl, she did. And Fred Ferry, our reputed local poacher who'd been interested in Siamese potential ever since he'd watched Saska, as a youngster, retrieving fir cones and fallen apples when I threw them and bringing them back to me, said he bet if she was trained she'd be a good rabbit catcher when she got older.
Mrs Binney, continuing her efforts on behalf of her son Bert, meanwhile took the opportunity to lean on the gate one day, remark how thin she thought Shantung was looking, and enquire in a lowered voice whether I knew that Mr Myburn had been complaining about 'they trees up thur'? The Myburns owned a bungalow whose garden and adjoining portion of field abutted on the top of the cottage orchard, and the four trees in question, which were in the orchard hedge, overhung a wooden shed on their property. One of my many maintenance worries had been whether the trees, which were old and gnarled, could possibly come down in a storm and cause damage for which I might be held liable – from which point my imagination carried me on to see myself faced with a large claim which I would be unable to pay. Mr Myburn would undoubtedly be in the line of fire when the shed collapsed, I'd have to sell the cottage, and the cats and I would end up living in a garret... all the things people like me are apt to imagine when so much as a roof tile comes off. The obvious solution was to have the trees taken down by an expert but I knew I couldn't afford that, so I'd done nothing, gone on worrying, and here was Mrs Binney playing on my fears.
Who had Mr Myburn complained to? I asked. 'Everybody,' said Mrs B. encouragingly. 'If they belonged to my Bert he'd take 'em down hisself,' she added, patently confident that if I could be persuaded into selling the cottage the orchard would automatically go with it. 'He says they could fall down any time.'
Glancing upwards to make sure they hadn't done it yet, I made my excuses, picked up Tani, withdrew into the cottage to worry some more, and that evening marched up to see Mr Myburn. I'd heard he was concerned about the trees in the orchard hedge, I told him. He said he was. Well, I volunteered, I couldn't afford to pay for them to be cut down professionally, but I was pretty adept with Charles's electric chainsaw, and if he would help me I thought I could take them down myself. How about it?
Help? he enquired, obviously not seeing himself as a woodsman. If I cut them straight down they certainly would come down on his shed, I explained. They needed to be sawn part way through, then pulled sideways with a rope so that they fell into his field. If he would just help with the rope after I'd tied it on... He could have the wood if he liked, I added. I couldn't possibly drag the trees back down to the cottage...
Brightening visibly at the prospect of a supply of winter logs Mr Myburn agreed, and the following Saturday morning saw me lugging an extending ladder up the steep hillside opposite the cottage to the orchard hedge; carting the chainsaw, its long cable and a can of chain oil up the same way; and bidding a soulful farewell to Tani and Saska, locked in their run with a notice on the door telling whoever it might concern whom to contact if I didn't come back – which, donning my riding hat and rubber boots and gloves (helpful, I understood, if one cut through the cable by mistake), I privately considered a strong possibility.