by Doreen Tovey
If there was a sort of despairing note in her voice just then we never noticed it. We were too busy dreaming a happy dream of one of those dear little kittens installed in our own cottage. Not for our own sakes, of course, but for Solomon and Sheba.
Give them a kitten, we said enthusiastically as we drove home in the car that night, and it might reform them on the spot. Give them something to think about—to protect and cherish and play with—and it might be the making of them. Maybe, said Charles—choking slightly as Solomon, finding a fresh hole in the basket, thrust his paw through it, hooked Charles expertly in the hood of his duffel coat and pulled—it would even cure Solomon of this.
It was unfortunate that in the course of conversation the Francises had mentioned that all their kittens were booked. If they hadn’t, when by the following weekend we had decided quite definitely to adopt another kitten, we should have gone to them for one. They knew a lot about Siamese psychology, and they also knew Solomon and Sheba. They could have told us it wouldn’t work. That an orang-utan was about the only animal we could put with those two, for instance, and expect it to survive. Or, as Charles said on Sunday night in a mood of deep despair, suggested that we had our heads read.
As it was, hardly able to wait to have a dear little kitten around the place again, we got one from another breeder. From a very nice lady who said his name was Samson and wouldn’t that be sweet with Solomon and Sheba, and who asked, as we packed him into Sheba’s basket (which was the only intact one we had) if we would mind taking him to bed with us for the first night or two. In case, she said, blinking back a tear at the thought of parting with him, to begin with he felt lonely.
She wouldn’t have worried about that if she’d seen the reception our two gave him when we took him in. Asleep they were. Curled affectionately together in a chair before the fire. With, as we entered, two heads—one big, beautiful and black; one small, intelligent and blue—coming up in a loving, cheek-to-cheek pose that a photographer would have given his pension for. She wouldn’t have worried if she’d seen the way the next moment, with an incredulous sniffing of the air, they were on their stomachs, ears flat, whiskers bushed, fighting ridges raised on their backs—creeping across the carpet like a pair of special agents.
She wouldn’t have worried either—not about where he slept, anyway—if she’d witnessed the spectacular scene when they reached the basket. When they crouched down one at each end like a pair of snipers and hissed long, warning hisses through the air holes—while Samson, the moment the lid was raised, gave one despairing hiss back and leapt straight into the air.
As Charles said, standing on a chair and trying desperately to unhook him from the curtain rail while our two informed him from below that if he dared set foot on their carpet, in their house—in their valley, roared Solomon, his tail lashing from side to side like a whip—they’d eat him. As Charles said, she’d have had a fit.
Nine
The Great Siamese Revolution
Samson at first sight reminded us very much of Solomon. He had the same big ears, the same big feet, and the same aggravating swagger when he walked. He had the same old bounce too. Our initial glimpse of him, when the breeder opened the door to us that wet September night, had been a small white streak hurtling across the hall, passing us like a petrol advertisement a clear foot off the ground, and disappearing with a roar into the darkness.
That, said the breeder, while five other kittens peered suspiciously at us from behind her ankles, was Samson showing off. He’d be back as soon as she closed the door, she said. He didn’t like the dark. And sure enough—Solomon all over, said Charles emphatically when he heard it, and we weren’t having that one—as soon as the door was shut there was an ear-splitting wail from outside and Samson, screaming the place down to keep off the spooks, had to be let in again.
Samson, after that scare, had to use his box. Not with reticence, like a normal kitten, but importantly, to show what a narrow escape he’d had. Samson after that again—obviously he was already used to visitors—had to climb the ironing board. It was behind a heavy curtain in an old strange house, and when he reached the top and without warning a curtain-clad object swayed out into the room—and, as he changed position, swayed silently back again—there was no need for his owner to tell us not to laugh. We turned quite pale on the spot.
Samson was so like Solomon that we wouldn’t have had him at all except for one thing. We wanted a tom—and he was the only tom of the lot. We wanted a tom so that when he grew up he would, we hoped, be able to stand up to Solomon on an equal footing. Most important of all, we wanted a tom so that Solomon wouldn’t get ideas. Adopt another she-kitten—give old Podgebelly the idea he had a harem—and, as Charles said, even if he couldn’t do much about it, he’d never stop showing off. On his back with one each side washing him—that would have been Solomon. Head on one and feet on another when he slept. Knocking ’em down like ninepins when he felt like it—the way he knocked Sheba down now, only more so on account of the effect.
So we had Samson—and it was just as well we did. If a she-kitten had had to endure the treatment Samson suffered in the days that followed, I doubt if she’d have survived at all.
Sometimes I wonder how I survived myself. The first night, remembering our promise, we took Samson to bed with us, and while he spent all night on guard on the tallboy—hiccuping at intervals because they’d frightened him at suppertime into swallowing a piece of rabbit whole—the other two howled like timber wolves under the spare-room door. The second night, to even things up a bit, we shut Samson in the sitting room with a hot-water bottle and took them to bed with us—but that didn’t work either.
By that time Solomon and Sheba, having failed to persuade us to put Samson in the dustbin, were ostentatiously not speaking to us. And, so that we shouldn’t overlook the fact, instead of curling up at the bottom as she usually did Sheba insisted on lying and sighing heavily on my shoulder while Solomon, determined not to be done out of his usual perch, huddled morosely on top of her.
Solomon was heavy, and the upshot of that was that every time he moved or I eased my arm Sheba stopped sighing and spat. Every time that happened Solomon got down and sulked under the bed. Every time he did he jumped down with such a sad, dejected thud that he shook the floorboards and woke Samson, who immediately started to wail downstairs. What with spits, thumps, wails, and every now and again Solomon’s sad, self-pitying sniffles as he crept dejectedly back to bed, life certainly reached a low ebb that night. Only towards dawn, with Sheba still sighing and Solomon still sitting miserably on her head, did I doze off—and the moment I did the alarm clock went off, Sheba spat once more, and I, racked to breaking point and scattering cats in all directions, leapt clean out of bed.
It would have been bad enough if it was only at night we suffered—but by day it was even worse. The silence affected us as much as anything. For four years now we had lived to a continuous accompaniment of cat noise. Cats bawling to go out. Cats informing us that they had come in. Cats yelling because they were locked in cupboards—or, if it was Solomon’s voice, anguished and coming from an unnatural level, because he’d once more attempted his ambition to go out through the transom window and, having made the jump upwards, was as usual too darned scared to jump down.
Even when we had settled down for the evening and things were normally quiet, with Charles and me reading and Solomon dreaming of blackbirds on the hearthrug, Sheba was usually nattering away. Giving us a running commentary on what she could see out of the window, sitting in the coal scuttle threatening to use it if we didn’t let her out—or, when all else failed, sitting bolt upright in front of Charles, serenading him in a small, hopeful monotone, and every time he acknowledged her, giving a loud and loving squawk.
What with that, the sounds of happy conflict when they fought each other for the hot-water bottle at bedtime and the noise, common to all Siamese, of a demolition squad at work anytime they were left alone upstairs, the silence af
ter Samson came was quite uncanny. Particularly since the impression was not, oddly enough, of a house suddenly without cats, but of a house absolutely swarming with them.
I’d no sooner see Solomon sniffing sadly round the kitchen for crumbs (he’d always eaten them anyway, but it made a jolly good act to pretend he had to, now we had Samson, or Starve) than I’d pass him on the stairs. I’d no sooner leave him there, gazing wistfully after me with a look that indicated he didn’t suppose he’d be with us much longer but he hoped I’d remember him when he’d gone, than I’d find him under the bed. And no sooner would I get up from there after a vain attempt to coax him out (the look that greeted me then was the one where he had reached the end of the road and was just going to sit there and Die) than he’d be back in the kitchen again, with Charles shouting up had Solomon had any breakfast because he’d just stolen all the ham.
Sheba was just the same. She went round the place so fast—scowling simultaneously at Samson from behind the clock and the top of the curtain rail, peering from behind chairs and glaring—or so it seemed—from all six shelves of the bookcase at once, that sometimes there appeared to be dozens of her.
As for Samson—he apparently had roller skates. One minute he was climbing the hall curtains, the next he was the bump travelling mysteriously round inside a just-made bed. One minute he was industriously eating his cereal on the kitchen rug so that he could grow up a big strong cat and hit Solomon, and the next—my heart nearly stopped beating when I discovered it—when I opened the refrigerator he was in there. For the Same Purpose, he informed me, looking happily up from a leg of chicken and adding that at this rate he’d soon be a match for old Fatty. At this rate, I corrected him, hauling him speedily out—it was obvious that another of my little tasks in future would be to search the refrigerator for Samson before closing the door—we’d soon be having him with cherries on top for dessert.
Unfortunately Samson was like this only when we were alone. In the early morning, for instance, when Solomon and Sheba—who presumably imagined we kept him in the garden overnight—rushed out through the front door the moment they were up to see if he had gone. Samson then was as we first met him. Zooming round the floor like a bumblebee—all Siamese have their peculiarities and this was one of his. Travelling up the insides of the curtains—which was obviously another, though as we didn’t keep the ironing board behind them the effect was never the same. Clambering hungrily on to the breakfast table from one chair and, as soon as he was pushed down, vanishing for a few seconds and appearing undaunted on the next. When, realising that we were beaten, we covered the milk and the butter, huddled protectively over our plates and let him do his worst, Samson even talked.
This, he would say—piping away in his shrill seagull voice as he nipped under my elbow to get at the bacon or dodged expertly through Charles’s guard to lick his egg—was fun. If he could only stop having those nightmares about a big cat who walked funny and a blue one with crossed eyes he’d be as happy as could be. Then he would have a thought. They were nightmares, weren’t they? he would ask, sitting suddenly down on the table to stare at us with round blue eyes. We didn’t have cats like that here really, did we—or if we had, we’d send them away now he’d come?
There was never any need to answer. By that time Solomon and Sheba, having cased the garden like a couple of bloodhounds and found no trace of him, had had a thought themselves. By that time they were on the windowsill. Glaring in at him with narrowed eyes and fiendish expressions that practically sizzled when they saw him eating their liver and licking their plates. Samson, when he asked his question had only to follow my gaze to the window to see whether they were nightmares or not. One look at them and, with a short, sharp prayer to his guardian angel, Samson was gone.
It should have been obvious to us then that it would never work, but still we struggled on. Sometimes, for a change, the silence of the jungle war that was being carried on all round us was broken by shrill, tremolo screams which meant they’d got Samson in a corner and could we please rescue him quick, they were going to hypnotise him. Sometimes by loud, indignant wails which meant that Solomon had been so busy out-flanking Samson he’d got himself in the corner by mistake and now Samson was looking at him. When we heard spitting it meant Sheba was around. Not necessarily spitting at Samson. It could quite easily mean Solomon was under the table and Sheba was spitting at him.
Sheba was so mad these days she didn’t care who she spat at. She spat at us, she spat at Sidney, she spat at the milkman. Most of all, however, apart from Samson, she spat at Solomon. Whether she decided that as they were so alike they must be related we never knew, but Solomon, creeping round these days like misery on wheels, left home twice and had to be fetched back from the woods.
Samson left home twice too. The first time we found him up an apple tree with Solomon sitting a few feet below and Sheba, growling angrily at the bottom, threatening to saw it down and do the pair of them. The second time, with Samson missing and Sheba slinking back down the lane with her back up, I dashed off after him only to be informed by the small boy I met halfway up that he’d shot him. It was the one in the cowboy hat, armed this time with a catapult, who seemed these days to be in on all our misfortunes. If he had, I assured him, tearing on up the lane, I’d come right back and shoot him. And his grandfather, whoever he was, I yelled as a tearful voice called after me that if I did he’d tell his granfer.
I didn’t discover who Granfer was that day. Samson—shot, fortunately, only in Wyatt Earp’s fertile imagination—was still alive. Almost out on the main road, with his fur stuck up like a crew cut to scare off wolves and his small black tail hoisted to give him courage. Determined, he said—trembling like a leaf when I picked him up, and struggling to get away—never to come back again.
But for Charles Sheba would have had a jolly good hiding when I got home. There was no doubt that she had deliberately driven Samson away. There was no doubt, either, of her rage when she saw him again. She spat so hard when we went in she nearly blew her teeth out.
Once and for all, I said, shutting Samson in the hall for safety, that cat would have to learn her place round here. It was Charles who said she didn’t mean it. It was Charles who, in spite of the fact that she’d done nothing but spit at him for the past week, gathered her lovingly into his arms and said she was his little friend. It was, I am afraid, nothing but poetic justice that in the battle that took place a few seconds later, Charles was the one who came off worst.
Solomon, who all this time had been sitting in the yard eating the bacon rind I’d thrown out for the birds (he never touched it in the normal way, but it came in handy now he was practically Starved, particularly when it pitched between the paving stones and he could put on a heart-rending display hooking it pathetically out with his paw) suddenly ambled in. He was an absolute genius at appearing at awkward moments—and he’d certainly chosen one this time.
Sheba—eyes crossed, hackles up, wild with fury at the reappearance of Samson—took one look at him as he came in, leapt from Charles’s arms and charged. Solomon, scared nearly out of his wits, rushed for the hall door—only to find it was shut and Sheba had him cornered. In less time than it takes to say, the cat fight of the year was raging in our sitting room, with Charles and I trying desperately to part them and Samson screaming his head off in the hall.
Sheba won the first round. She bit Solomon on the paw. Sheba also won the second round. As I dived to separate them she bit me in the hand. The third and final round went unquestionably to Solomon. As Charles, grabbing the first piece of cat he could find, hauled him bodily from the fray Solomon—back to the wall and frenziedly battling everything in sight—caught him a clanger on the nose.
Ten
The Defeat of Samson
We were a sorry sight as we trudged up the hill next morning to fetch the papers. Charles with sticking plaster on his nose, I with sticking plaster on my hand, and Solomon limping three-leggedly along in the rear. Like the Retr
eat from Moscow, said the Rector, opening his window in greeting as we passed, and which of us was meant to be Napoleon?
Alas, it was no laughing matter. Charles, from what I could gather, was expecting to die of blood poisoning at any moment. Back in the cottage Samson, quivering like an aspen, was locked in our bedroom for safety, while Sheba—vowing vengeance on everybody and, from the peculiar bumping noises we could hear when she stopped for breath, apparently busy dynamiting the airing cupboard—was imprisoned in the bathroom. We only had Solomon with us because when he saw us starting out he’d roared so hard about his foot and leaving him to be massacred we were afraid somebody might call the police. Now, as Charles said disgustedly, he was putting on such a show limping along behind us somebody’d probably call them anyway.
Charles was thoroughly annoyed with Solomon. Particularly the way he was showing off. Who hit him on the nose he’d like to know? he demanded as we passed the Post Office, and why the hell couldn’t he be carried like a normal cat, if he was hurt? Whereupon for at least the sixth time since we started out Solomon, one paw suspended pitifully in the air, stopped to inform him reproachfully that it was an Accident, he’d meant it for Sheba, and if we were ashamed of him exercising his poor, bitten foot we’d better put him in a home.
It was at that point in our affairs that Dr Tucker came out of the Post Office and asked what was the matter. He wasn’t our personal doctor, but he did happen to be the owner of Ajax. And as he said, what with the pair of us patched with plaster and Solomon howling his head off in the middle of the road he certainly knew a Siamese crisis when he saw one.
