Of course this could just be another of her calls and not where she lived at all. I heard footsteps behind me, and the sort of old man you always refer to as an elderly gentleman stopped at my elbow.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I was just watching the cat.’
‘Oh she’s back, is she?’
He pushed open the gate and faced me from the other side.
‘She’s a roamer is that one.’
‘Yes, she’s just been to see me.’
He had the tang of best bitter on his breath, and he shifted his foot so that he could use the gate as a bar-rail.
‘She’s not happy here. It was my daughter’s cat, you see, she’s gone to Canada with her two lads, so we took it in. Couldn’t take it with her.’
The cat was listening as though she knew we were talking about her, and she came a little closer.
‘My wife can’t stand cats – she’s allergic to ’em, you see, but we thought we’d give it a try. She can’t be in the same room as a cat and I have to organize ’em so as they don’t ever meet up.’
‘She’s called to see us a couple of times.’
‘She will have. She’s been in everywhere. I’ve had her brought back more times than one. I think she’s decided she’s not stopping here and she’s sizing everybody up.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
She had certainly given us the once-over. It was as though an estate agent had given her the details.
The cat moved in closer still. A stiff breeze rippled the bushes and it wasn’t easy for her to hear from over there. The man bent down and stroked her head.
‘Do you want her?’
‘I’m not sure – we’ve got one already.’
‘There’s a cat-flap goes with her. I bought it when she came but I haven’t got round to putting it in yet.’
I was weakening. A couple of months ago I wouldn’t have entertained the thought. I had kidnapped Thermal on an impulse – I didn’t need the responsibility.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘If she comes to see you again you have my blessing. You don’t have to send her back.’
The cat looked up at me.
‘It’s your move.’
The man looked up at me.
‘It’d make my life a lot easier for me.’
It was my move.
‘All right then – let’s see what she decides. I live in the house on the …’
‘I know which one’s yours – it’s that big ’un. You’ll have plenty of room over there. I’ll bring the cat-flap round when she’s made her mind up.’
We shook on it and said good night, but I had only gone about ten yards when the most beautiful tortoiseshell cat in the world sailed past me. The old man still leaned on his garden gate.
‘I think you’ve got yourself a cat.’
She was heading off down the lane as though she wanted to be the first to tell Aileen and Thermal. She hadn’t even bothered to pack her pyjamas – I didn’t even know her name.
‘What do you call her?’
‘Her name’s Tigger,’ he shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I pushed open the door, very gently so as not to make a noise, and she was lying there, stretched out on the sunbed. She should have been wearing goggles, I suppose, the ultraviolet rays might hurt her eyes, but we only had one pair and Aileen was wearing those.
Unlike Aileen, who was stretched out naked beside her, Tigger had wisely decided to take it in stages and she still had her fur coat pulled tightly around her.
They were both fast asleep, but Tigger opened one eye and yawned as she heard the floorboards creak under the bedside rug.
‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t wake up.’
I slipped my hand underneath her and stood her on her feet. She fell over, so I tried again, this time holding on to her and steadying her against Aileen’s thigh.
‘It won’t take a minute.’
I dipped my spare hand into my trouser pocket, but the tape measure was in the other one and so I had to lean forward, bend sideways and cross my left hand over to my right-hand pocket and then, just as my fingers touched the tape measure, something went in my back and it didn’t half hurt.
I let go of the cat and sank to my knees. Tigger fell over again and then the door swung open and Thermal marched in.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Shhh!’
‘I haven’t been in here before.’
‘Be quiet – you’ll wake Aileen.’
He jumped on the bed and was surprised to see the other two stretched out under the canopy.
‘Hello.’
He stood both his front paws on Aileen’s stomach and began pounding, as though he were kneading dough.
‘She hasn’t got any clothes on.’
Aileen stirred, and her half-smile budded into a generous half-moon as he began his massage.
‘Mmmm!’
My back eased off slightly and I dug the tape measure out of my pocket. Tigger watched Thermal with interest. For all she knew this was our regular Sunday afternoon routine and she might have to take over one day if he wasn’t very well.
She moved in a little closer to study his technique in fine detail, and as she passed by me, I stopped her and took her inside leg measurement.
Three and a quarter inches? That couldn’t be right. I tried again and it was. I had no idea she was such a low-slung cat. When she walked across a room it was as though her legs went right up to her nostrils, but then I saw that she had sunk up to her knees in the mattress.
I lifted her on to the bedside table and measured again. Ten and a half inches! That couldn’t be right either.
‘Stop stretching.’
Some cats are good stretchers. Thermal isn’t – at his best he can manage a modest hump-back bridge. But Tigger is the most liquid of cats, and whenever she arches her back she becomes the perfect croquet hoop.
I waited until she came down again and measured once more. Five and a half inches. That seemed about right. I measured again and it had gone up an inch. Aileen was waking up.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m taking Tigger’s inside leg measurement.’
‘What for?’
‘The cat-flap.’
There was a silence as Aileen considered this little nugget of information. I can’t stand silences and I have to fill them in. ‘That’s what it says on the box – that’s the way you get it at the right height.’
‘What about Thermal – are you going to build him a ramp?’
‘He’ll grow into it – eventually.’
He was concentrating on her navel now, pulverizing it with smooth, even strokes.
‘Not if he doesn’t pull his claws in he won’t.’
‘Sorry.’
‘That’s better.’
With the cat-flap came a booklet on how to train your cat to use it. It was written by ‘A well-known consultant on animal behaviour’ and it said to put the cat on one side of the flap and a tempting bowl of food on the other. I couldn’t help thinking that consultants in animal behaviour get their money very easily.
I had fixed the flap in the cellar door. It seemed to make sense – I wasn’t going to vandalize a front door that had stood guard for a hundred years, and round at the back I would have had to puncture three doors before the cats could work their way through to the hall. It would have been the Horse of the Year Show for them every time they went in or out.
So the cellar it was. There was already an old settee in there and I pulled it up close to the central-heating boiler so that they could sit round the fire and spin yarns.
I looked around at my handiwork with pride – a few magazines and a kettle and they would want for nothing. They could lounge about in comfort here until I opened the inner door and let them trot upstairs.
What remained of the weekend was devoted to ‘on the job training’ – an intensive course in cat-flap
technology. As was the following week, the rest of the month and a large part of the ensuing year. Even today I still run a regular series of booster courses which have been specifically designed for cats which are, not to put too fine a point on it, as thick as two short planks.
Tigger’s objections were on aesthetic grounds. There was no way she was going to bang her head against a plastic flap. It wasn’t natural and it was humiliating. Thermal’s initial reaction was that it hurt.
I crouched on the cellar side of the flap and wiggled it to demonstrate the general principle. They sat outside and watched. I dropped the flap and waited.
And waited and waited. Twenty minutes later I lifted the flap and peered through the hole and they had both fallen fast asleep on the step outside.
I took the consultant’s advice and placed a bowl of steaming hot fish just inside the door. I waved it under their noses first and Thermal became quite agitated.
Eventually I heard the thundering of hooves and there was an almighty crash as he launched himself at the flap. He only made it halfway and hung there, draped like a condom over the school railings, the plastic flap banging against his head.
I pulled him in and he seemed both excited and bewildered to find that he had actually travelled through a solid door. The problem was – would I always be there to lend a hand?
We tried again – this time with a block of wood either side of the door – and it did help to elevate the shorter legs of the shorter cat. But not enough – his back legs caught at a critical stage and he hung for a moment like a pheasant in a fishmonger’s before thrashing himself loose and crash-landing down on the bowl of fish.
A tortoiseshell paw reached under the door and clawed out a sizeable chunk of spilt fish. If I had thought of extending the gap by a couple of inches I wouldn’t have had to bother with the flap.
By mid-week I had acknowledged the fact that I was never going to get the message across on my own and I had taken on an assistant who was well versed in the subject.
Chico Mendes O’Connell is a small ginger tom-cat of nervous disposition. He lives with Bridie just across the lane and had been named after the man who saved the rain forests.
The combination of being born in Yorkshire and raised by an Irishwoman, who had taught him Gaelic from the moment he could walk, had served to give him a rather befuddled air. Being saddled with the name of a Colombian folk hero had proved the final push towards a nervous twitch that would stay with him for life.
He was a friendly little cat and willingly offered his help. Bridie brought him over because he didn’t like to cross the lane on his own.
Tigger was having a lie-down in the airing cupboard when he arrived, and so Thermal was able to benefit from a spot of personal tuition. Chico proved to be a natural-born teacher, and if Thermal had proved to be a natural-born pupil we might well have got somewhere.
Aided by his beautiful assistant, Bridie, who was there to give him a helpful shove up the bottom at crucial moments, Chico put on a stunning, paws-on, demonstration of cat-flap agility the like of which had never been seen before – certainly not through our cat-flap.
He showed Thermal the various techniques in slow motion; the paw-on-ledge, the gentle head-butt, the back-leg-thrust, and finally the four-paw-balance and leap. Then he went through his repertoire once again, this time at a tremendous rate of knots, leaping in and out like a gazelle.
Thermal was amazed. He hadn’t realized it was an Olympic sport, and he couldn’t wait to have a go.
Where he made his mistake was – he shouldn’t have taken off sideways. Both nearside paws came through, but nothing else followed. Since most of him was hanging on outside we had to open the door to get at him, and that was when he fell off.
*
Chico had enjoyed himself thoroughly. The professional in him was more than a little disappointed that he hadn’t managed to bring his pupil up to scratch, but he was delighted to find that he hadn’t lost his touch.
I paid him in Whiskas and then accompanied him and his lady assistant up the steps. Behind us, in the cellar, we heard a dull thud as Thermal’s head hit something rather solid.
The light was fading in the courtyard and Bridie and I didn’t see Denton at first, but Chico did, and in the blink of an eyelid had hit the dirt, like a commando, behind a stone in the rockery.
Unlike a commando, Chico wasn’t coming out – he had clashed with Denton before and he hadn’t enjoyed it one bit. Bridie, however, is made of sterner stuff and she doesn’t expect her menfolk to tremble in public.
‘Come on out, Chico – remember you’re an O’Connell.’
Chico remembered exactly what had happened to more than one O’Connell during the Troubles, and stayed exactly where he was. He also remembered what had happened to Chico Mendes, and he was taking no chances.
As we moved across the courtyard the security lights came on and caught Denton in the beam, like a prisoner about to go over the wire.
I shouted at him and he turned. He was the most evil-looking cat I had ever seen. His fur was constantly on the alert and even his ears had split ends.
‘Leave him to me,’ muttered Bridie, ‘I’ll throw something at him.’
‘I’ll see to him,’ I told her. I thought she might throw Chico.
He stood his ground as I moved towards him, and then began to spit as I drew closer. He didn’t move until I almost trod on him, and then only because he saw Tigger up on the balcony, staring down at him.
He was up the steps like a shot and racing towards her.
I couldn’t get there in time and stood mesmerized like a rabbit, watching the scene from below.
He stopped six inches away from her, back arched and breathing fire. He was twice the size of her and spitting out the most terrible threats.
She sat facing him, as calm as a village pond, her whole body at peace with the world.
He spat again, and a shudder of disgust crossed her gentle face. Very slowly she raised one paw, and then, with great deliberation, she placed it right on his nose and pushed.
He sat down with a thump and looked totally bewildered as she stood up, enjoyed a long luxurious stretch, and then wove her way lazily around him before floating down the steps to join us.
Chico fell in love with her at that very moment. From behind his rockery stone he joined in the round of applause as she tripped down off the final step. He would have come out to congratulate her in person, but his leg was playing him up.
She took it all in her stride and gave me a modest smile, then shook her head as she turned to go down the path.
‘Men!’
Meanwhile, down in the cellar, there was a small off-white kitten who knew nothing of all this. He was having a battle of his own with a plastic cat-flap and things were not going all that well.
I had forgotten about him, and it was an hour or so later when I went down to see how he was.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That thing’s stuck.’
‘No it isn’t – look.’ I flipped it open with my finger.
‘It was.’
‘Well it isn’t now.’
‘Well it was when I tried it.’
‘I’ll show you what we’ll do.’
I took a couple of clothes-pegs from out of the basket and tacked one each side of the lid.
‘There – it’ll stay up now.’
He gave it a try. He jumped out through the hole and then he jumped back in again. Then he jumped out again and peered in at me with a cross little face.
‘Why the hell didn’t you do that in the first place?’
I tried to make it up to him. I had the car to put away in the garage, so I picked him up and tucked him under my arm.
‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll find out.’
I plonked him on the passenger seat, but by the time I arrived round at the driver’s door he was up on the rear she
lf playing nodding-head alsatians.
We went once round the block to see how he would take to it and he took to it like a duck to water.
‘Can I drive?’
‘No.’
He pulled a face through the window at Mrs Bramley’s dog Alfred, and then tried to peel the AA sticker from its moorings.
I pulled down the lid of the glove compartment and he jumped in. I slammed it shut and he was as quiet as a mouse until I eased the car into the garage and let him out.
Tigger was sitting on the wall waiting for us. I gave her a wave and set Thermal down on the drive before reaching up for the door. It’s an up-and-over door and it’s a devil if it’s been raining – it holds the water in a vast lake and when you tip it over it’s like Zambezi Falls.
No problem today, though – it had been as dry as a bone. I yanked it down, and Denton came flying off the end like an Olympic skier.
It’s not true that cats always land on their feet – Denton didn’t. He crashed down on to the concrete with a sickening thud, and for a minute he didn’t move a muscle.
He must have been sunning himself up there with not a care in the world, and then all of a sudden the earth was pulled from underneath his paws.
He nearly landed on Thermal, but he didn’t hang about to take his revenge. As soon as he had gathered his wits together he made for the hills like all good rustlers.
Thermal was totally bemused – he didn’t know what had happened – but I thought Tigger was having a hernia over there on the wall.
The battle with Denton was by no means over, but at the moment it stood at two–one to the good guys.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was the perfect way to spend a crisp winter’s evening. A roaring fire, whisky and water in a crystal glass and a lovely woman stretched out beside me – her head on my lap, the firelight burnishing her hair with the rich glow of copper.
And over there in the easy chair lay a very contented tortoiseshell cat, licking the head of a small stubby kitten who was fast asleep and snoring in stereo.
The Cat Who Came In From The Cold Page 10
