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It came perhaps, this zest for food, from being brought up with so many other cats. Eat It Quick And Decide What It Was Later was probably Mum’s advice to her young. That, no doubt, was why I found him in the sink one day sampling the washing-up water. And that, no doubt, was why I found him on another occasion – one day when we had visitors, the cooking preparations had been hectic and as usual the kitchen was a welter of pans and dishes – standing on the cooker, his back feet parked in a bowl with an inch of cream in it, while he ecstatically licked the gravy from the grillpan I’d put in the window. Not, I should explain, that he didn’t also like cream; presumably standing in it staked his claim to it while he dealt as fast as possible with the gravy.
No wonder he was growing – though, from the size of his feet, he was going to be a lot bigger yet. His whiskers were emerging where he’d singed them, too. I could scarcely believe it. They were growing out like Solomon’s.
Spotted…
He was five months old exactly now and it was almost time for him to be neutered. Around six months was the best time, we knew. I rang to make the appointment.
‘You’re sure it is a male?’ the Vet enquired. I said there was no doubt about it.
No doubt about it indeed. ‘Fine pair of tonsils he’s got, h’ant he?’ said Father Adams admiringly one day, unfortunately in the presence of poor Miss Wellington.
Miss Wellington, shocked to her very foundations, still turned scarlet when she thought about it.
So there we were, with neutering day coming up, and just then we had some visitors. The two schoolteacher sisters who, in the dark days when we’d lost Solomon, had phoned 110
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us with the telephone number that led to Seeley. For weeks we’d been saying they must come and see him, and first there’d been a cat flu scare in the district and we hadn’t dared get together, and then it had been Christmas and all of us so busy. Now it was the New Year and over they came to see him. He was absolutely on his best behaviour. Telling them his life history after he’d decided they hadn’t come to kidnap him. Rolling on the hearthrug for them. Sitting on their laps. We’d never known our Seeley so attentive.
The sisters had Siamese themselves. Twin seal-point females called Sugar and Spice. Any Siamese owner will recognise it as inevitable as dawn follows dusk that if one of those cats was going down with some thing, it would be when it or its owners had been in contact with another Siamese.
Sure enough, the very next evening one of the sisters rang up in a panic. Spice was ill, she said. They’d called the Vet.
They’d heard that cat-flu was going round in their village.
We’d better watch Seeley for symptoms… They’d never forgive themselves if he was ill, she said – but truly, Spice had been positively bounding the previous day…
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I’ve no doubt she had. And a short while later she was bounding again though there was one day when she was very, very ill. What she had had, they never knew. Personally he didn’t think it was cat flu, said the Vet; and her sister, Sugar, hadn’t caught it.
Meantime, needless to say, we had our own per sonal Siamese crisis. Two days after the first phone message I rang to enquire how Spice was getting on. On the road to recovery, thank goodness, said her owner, though the previous day they’d really thought they were going to lose her. ‘How’s Seeley?’ she asked with trepidation. ‘Oh, he’s absolutely full of beans,’ I replied. ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t ring yesterday,’ she said relievedly. ‘We really thought it was cat flu then, and if I’d had to tell you…’
It was inevitable, of course. When I went downstairs next morning, for the first time ever Seeley wasn’t sitting on the 112
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bureau-top waiting to greet me. He was lying, eyeing me languidly, in his bed before the fire. He was tired, I told myself firmly. And, when he then got up, as strong-looking, apparently, as ever ‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said. But he didn’t come to me. He went to his waterbowl. And if for a moment I was able to dismiss that, too, with Why shouldn’t he have a drink – it was natural first thing in the morning
– it was soon obvious that something was wrong. He didn’t want his breakfast. He kept going back to drink. Eventually
– heart-sinkingly – he was sick. Only a very small bilious-looking sick which he then regarded with interest, but we gazed at it as forebodingly as if it were the plague.
Five minutes later, during which time we hit rock-bottom with the conviction that he had cat flu, cheered ourselves up with the fact that Spice had recovered from whatever she’d had and then remembered apprehensively that she almost hadn’t, Seeley announced that he felt better. Six minutes later he was eating like a hunter. Ten minutes later he was raucously demanding Out. It had, thank heaven, been a false alarm.
That was what came of drinking dishwater, Charles told him severely. Gosh, he hadn’t half felt Ill, said Seeley.
Whatever it was, there was one thing we could bet on. We weren’t – it was very obvious – going to have a peaceful life with him.
No one who takes on a Siamese ever does, of course.
Take the owners of Sugar and Spice. They’d come to see us, some eight months earlier, unhappy because their old dog had died. A poodle, they said, and they felt they could never replace it. Did we think it would be a good idea to have a Siamese cat?
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Two Siamese cats, we advised them. Two were much better than one. They kept each other young and were company, particularly when one had to leave them alone.
They’d probably be driven mad, we warned them, but they’d never again feel dull. What about their father, who was ninety? they queried doubtfully. It would probably put new life into him, I said, secretly crossing my fingers.
Some months later we received a letter from them. A record of catastrophe, if ever there was one, begin ning with one sister’s eighty-mile journey to fetch the kittens home.
When she got home, to her delight Spice straightaway used an earthbox while she – her name was Dora – stood there in blissful contem plation of her dear little, clean little cat.
She didn’t stay blissful for long. Once out of the earthbox
– Gosh that was Good, said Spice relievedly – the kitten decided to climb something to celebrate. Straight up the nearest pole she went – which happened to be the leg of Nita, Dora’s sister – and Nita departed to her bedroom with laddered nylons, footprinted blouse (Spice just having emerged from the earthbox) and her shoulders furrowed like a ploughfield where Spice had light-heartedly landed.
‘Within five minutes of bringing them into the house,’
said Dora with awe. And Nita, with equal awe, recalled how she’d gone into her bedroom, prayed for help, and wondered if they could possibly send one back.
All that was in the past, however. Nita was now as devotedly their slave as Dora – which was just as well, since Nita was the one (being at home during the day to look after her father) who had to cope with the situations which the kittens proceeded to develop.
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It was Nita, for instance, who had to fetch the Vet when Spice got stuck in the clock. It was a grandfather clock and she crawled in under the bottom and got firmly wedged under the weight. The weight was almost at the bottom and moving steadily downwards; a couple of frantic wriggles and Spice was trapped. First she’d howled, which was simply terrifying, and then she’d gone silent, which was even worse