We’d been without a seal-point boy for four months now, and it was already far too long.
We rang Seeley’s breeder. She had met tragedy, too.
Seeley’s father was dead. Not, as we’d always privately feared would be his end, from his habit of wandering off on romantic expeditions – he having been an exception, a pedigree stud-cat who was always allowed his freedom. It happened because the people next door had bought some guinea pigs for their children, and thoughtlessly put down poison for the rats who came after the guinea pigs’ food and Orlando, spending a few quiet days at home for once, had brought in one of the poisoned rats and eaten it. Nine 139
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The Coming of Saska years without a mishap and he’d had to die like that, said his owner. If only she’d called the Vet as soon as he was sick.
But she’d thought at first it was just a stomach upset, and by the time she found the half-eaten rat it was too late.
Orlando was gone. Seeley’s mother had died, too.
There was no possibility of getting a closely related kitten.
Wondering where to try next, we remembered a cat we had gone to see when we were looking for Seeley. Someone had phoned us to say he was sitting, looking lost, in a field about two miles away from the cottage. We’d rushed over at once
– and indeed it did appear to be Seeley, sitting on a plank in a field behind some houses, apparently watching for mice.
If Seeley had gone down through the Valley this was where he would have come out and it was just the owlish way he adopted when he was watching things. Perhaps he’d been hunting in the woods on the way, we thought, and it had taken him several days to get there.
We were sure it was him this time. Charles waited with his basket at the edge of the field while I approached slowly through the long grass so as not to frighten him. I held out my hand and called his name. He turned his face towards me and sat waiting. The size, the big dark back, the expression on his face... my heart rose at every step.
Only when I reached him did I know that, again, it wasn’t Seeley. When Charles and I came back out of the field a man who’d been passing and had stopped to watch us said he thought the cat belonged to people who’d just come to live up on the hill. If we could find out who they were and where they’d got him, it now occurred to us, we might still be able to get a kitten who looked like Seeley.
We managed to trace him. He’d come from a breeder near Bridgwater and of all the extraordinary coincidences, not 140
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only was he distantly related to Seeley, but he and Shebalu had the same father. Shebalu’s mother, a blue-point like her, had been mated to a lilac-point called Valentine. A famous Champion of Champions, he was, owned by a Mrs Furber. We’d never actually seen Valentine, though, and it seemed almost as if it was meant that he should be the father of the cat in the field... and, when we enquired, that Mrs Furber also owned the seal-point mother.
We rang her. She said she had two litters of kittens almost ready but neither of them, unfortunately, was directly Valentine’s. One litter was his daughter’s, though, and his descendants invariably came out like him: we’d be practically certain of getting one from that lot who would look like the cat in the field. On the other hand there was a kitten in the elder litter, sired by Saturn, who was really quite exceptional.
She’d never had a kitten quite like him. Lively, intelligent
– you could see him sizing you up when he looked at you, she said. He stood out from the others like a sore thumb.
He stood out for another reason, too. Inquisitive and enterprising, at three weeks old he’d got his tail caught in a door. It now had a bend in it – at the base end, not a Siamese kink – which spoilt him from being the show cat he otherwise would have been. Apart from this he was absolutely gorgeous and as she knew we liked cats of character... honestly, she said, she couldn’t have picked a better match. He was absolutely made for us.
Sorry, I told her. Our cats had all been perfect. It would seem all wrong to have one with a bend in its tail. Besides, we’d set our heart on a kitten of Valentine’s... if there wasn’t one of his available we’d rather have one of his daughter’s.
All right, she said. If we liked to come and choose one, it would be ready in a fortnight.
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The Coming of Saska We went the following Saturday. We didn’t take a basket.
After all, we were only going down to see them. We walked into the Furbers’ sitting-room without so much as a thought about the kitten who’d bent his tail... and guess who we brought home with us?
When we went in. Valentine’s daughter’s kittens were tumbling around the room like particularly exuberant clowns in a circus. Kittens in the coal-scuttle, kittens whizzing over the chairs and up the curtains... we’d seen it so often before. There is nothing in this world more captivating than a litter of Siamese kittens and I was among them, on my knees, in an instant... only to see, in front of me on the hearthrug, a perspex travelling box with two larger kittens in it. One had a bent tail and was looking indignant; the other had a firmly closed eye. He, said Mrs Furber, indicating the one who resembled Nelson, was one she’d thought we might possibly like to see... in case we wanted to take one away with us, instead of waiting for the younger litter. ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘he was perfect when I fetched him in. I brought the one with the bent tail just to keep him company. I ought to have known better, of course. He’d poked him in the eye.’
It seemed that the one with the bent tail excelled at getting the others into trouble. He was always the one, said Mrs Furber, who led the way up on to ledges in their run that were just about the cat equivalent of climbing Everest – and then, when the others had got themselves all hopelessly stuck, he’d jump down and leave them stranded. She’d seen him do it so often and whenever she went to the rescue there, invariably, he’d be: the little, round-eyed innocent, regarding them puzzledly from the ground. One day, she said, he’d managed to move the prop that held the cat-house 142
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window open: something no other cat or kitten had ever done. He’d got through before the window came down. The others, following after him, had nearly been port-cullised.
She’d better let him out now, she said, looking at the travelling box. She’d put the two of them in there to keep them apart from the younger litter. But he was getting rather restless. He’d be hitting his brother in the other eye at any moment.
She opened the travelling box door and he came out like a small, charging bull. Up on to the settee, where he rolled, waving his paws and arching his back in celebration. Then, hearing me laugh, he got up and galloped to the edge to stare at me. His eyes were almost hypnotic. They bore deeply into mine, as though he was either reading my thoughts or trying to imprint me with some of his. He stood there for several seconds before he lowered his head and charged away, launching himself off the settee to land like a bomb in the middle of the younger kittens who, with frantic squeals for Mum, shot for shelter in all directions. They had been playing with a marble, which Bent Tail now took over. ‘He likes marbles. They’re noisier than ping-pong balls,’ Mrs Furber explained as he dribbled it like lightning round the room. ‘Whatever he’s doing he shows off, wanting to get people’s attention.’
He had ours, all right. He aimed the marble expertly under the settee and flushed out three of Valentine’s grandchildren. The entire entourage disappeared under a nearby chair and we could see odd paws waving wildly about. The marble rolled out... was hooked back again...