The Coming of Saska puddle in the peat-box and we went to bed congratulating ourselves that we’d won. He had a fresh blanket to sleep on – in the armchair this time – and, which he obviously liked very much, a hotwater bottle tucked inside it, and a cushion to keep out the draughts. In front of the chair, where he couldn’t possibly miss it, we put an earthbox filled with peat. When we came down next morning, he’d wetted the blanket again.
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Fifteen
LOOKING BACK, WE CAN only conclude that he did it because he was so intelligent. According to his lights – you could tell it by the earnestness on his face – he was being the cleanest of kittens. He’d come to a strange house where the first thing that had happened was that a big cat had frightened him into using a blanket as an earthbox. Ergo, if it was woollen things... blankets and sweaters and such... that people used as earthboxes in this house... who was he to argue? Blankets and sweaters he’d use.
That, at any rate, is the only explanation we could find for the fact that during the weeks that followed we’d get him for maybe as much as a day or two to use a box of peat or sawdust... looking terribly worried while he did so but if we insisted, said his expression... then, presumably scared at what his guardian angel would think of such a relapse, back he’d go to the smell of wool again. We had to harden our hearts and make him sleep without a blanket. He looked 149
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The Coming of Saska so small and forlorn, curled in the armchair on a cotton cushion. We even had to wrap his bottle in a towel. Wrap it in wool and he’d wet it – and then, to show how clean he really was, drag the whole thing out of the chair and dump it in the middle of the hearthrug. Couldn’t sleep with that smell, he said. Lavatories belonged on the Floor.
By making him sleep on cotton for a while we cured him of wetting wool. When it wasn’t available he used his earthbox quite happily. Nowadays he sleeps on a blanket without a second thought. We even trust him with expensive sweaters. For a while, though, obviously to placate that guardian angel, he surreptitiously used the corner of one particular rug in the living-room. We discovered it by seeing him hovering around the spot and looking furtive when he knew we were watching him. After that we put him out in the hall the moment we recognised his rug-using expression – following which, protocol having been decided for him, we would hear him tear up to the spare room to use the Big Cat’s box. At night, besides providing him, with about half a hundredweight of peat, we covered that particular rug with a big rubber groundsheet. Putting it down, putting two peat-boxes at one end, weighting the other three sides with a table, the kitchen stool and a horse bronze (otherwise, following the dictates of his conscience, he would pull back the groundsheet to use the rug)... I wouldn’t change Sass for anything, I said. But why did it have to happen to us?
Because he was a Siamese, of course, with his own ideas on things, and because, in his first few impressionable moments in his new home, Shebalu had scared him into it. Just as the introduction of a new cat next door to them had led two other Siamese we knew into spraying. Their 150
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names were Sugar and Spice and they belonged to Dora and Nita, who were friends of ours, and who also had a Scottie called Dougal. The cats were in residence before Dougal arrived but they graciously condescended to accept him. He in turn adored his girls and considered it his mission in life to defend them – to which end, when this ginger cat started coming into the garden, strolling around as if it owned it, Dougal would dash out, all bark and big feet, and vociferously see it off. This in turn would rouse Sugar and Spice, who’d go out to see what was doing – and, as their contribution to the defence of the realm, obligingly started to spray.
She didn’t know girls could, Dora said. They could if they were Siamese, I informed her. We’d had a stray cat around the cottage once and our first Sheba had gone round performing like a flit-gun. One day, presumably to mark me among her possessions, she sprayed my gum-boots while I was in them.
They wouldn’t have minded so much if Sugar and Spice had confined it to outdoors, said Nita, but they started spraying indoors as well. Over the long velvet curtains –
they had plastic bags tacked over those, which they took off when anybody came. Over the sink. On the sitting-room wall – Sugar used spraying for blackmail now; if she wanted to go out and they wouldn’t let her, she’d stand on the side-table so they could see her and raise her tail intimidatingly at the wall. She didn’t perform immediately. In the first place she’d just stand there and threaten.
We fell about laughing when we heard about the cooker.
On a couple of occasions, it seemed, one of the cats (probably Sugar, said Dora: she was the one with the most Machiavellian mind) had stood on the cooker and sprayed 151
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The Coming of Saska the panel which held the control knobs. We could imagine what a time they’d had cleaning those. But the culminating incident had been the time they put the joint in the oven, set the timer and went to church- and when they came back, expecting to be met by the smell of roast beef, they found the oven was still cold. Somebody had sprayed straight into the timer clock and stopped it, and the automatic switch hadn’t come on. ‘Nobody’d believe it, would they?’ asked Nita. Knowing Siamese cats, we would. At least, however, we were able to cure Sass of his fixation in the end. Sugar and Spice still have their moments.
A good deal of Sass’s training was carried out by Shebalu.
After four days of slinking round like Lucrezia Borgia, looking sinisterly at him round corners, she decided to take him in hand. By this time he’d begun to take on the scent of the place and obviously didn’t smell quite so repulsive.
He’d also fallen in the fishpond, which had probably helped quite a lot.
Both Solomon and Seeley had fallen in the pond in their time – it seemed to be a tradition with our boys – so I wasn’t really surprised when, watching over him while he zoomed round the yard, he chased after a stray late gnat and went into the water with a splash. What did surprise me, rushing to the rescue, was to find there was really no need. Sass, head up, all nine inches of him completely confident, was swimming like a retriever across the pool. I stood there dumbfounded as he climbed out on the other side, his bent tail raised in triumph. He wasn’t afraid of water, he informed me. They had a big river where he was born.
I took him indoors and towelled him down, thus removing even more of his original scent, and that evening, while he was curled on Charles’s knee, Shebalu climbed cautiously 152
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up beside him. She stretched out her neck, did a tentative lick... from the tiny white bundle came an enthusiastic purr... until Shebalu, progressing, tried to clean the inside of his ears, where the smell of his mother still lurked.
‘SCH... AAAH’ spat Shebalu. Up went Sass. And Charles started telling me about his nerves.
It wasn’t only his nerves that suffered during those early days. Sass, dividing his affection scrupulously between us, decided that I was the one to Love Him – to which end he would follow me round looking for any convenient height (the edge of the bed, for instance, or the bathroom stool) from which he could launch himself at my chest. It was a good thing it was winter and I was wearing hefty sweaters
– and there, clinging to me like a koala bear, he would talk to me confidingly while I carried him about.