Cats in the Belfry

by Doreen Tovey

  It was the same when Sheba, balance-walking along the ridge of the cottage roof one day after it had been raining, slipped on a wet tile and lost her nerve. There was no audience for the half hour during which she sat terror stricken on the ridge bawling for Charles to save her and Solomon, apprehension in every line of his triangular black face, howled in sympathy on the lawn; nobody to help us when at last, convinced that she really was stuck, we heaved the long extending ladder up on to the hillside and from there across to the roof. No sooner had Charles crawled along it, however, and got himself equally stuck on the ridge than the valley was suddenly alive with onlookers. Father Adams on the way to the pub, the riding school out for morning exercise, and a detachment of boy scouts disembarking for a nature ramble from a bus on the corner. It was no good, either, trying to explain to any of them why he was up there. By that time Sheba had come down off the roof all by herself and was merrily chasing Solomon round the lawn.

  One expects that sort of thing from Siamese, of course; but in time it tells. Three years ago I hadn't a white hair in my head. As for Charles – even as I have been writing this last chapter he has fallen downstairs again.

  For all that we wouldn't be without them. It is as impossible to imagine the cottage now without Siamese cats as it once was without a squirrel. They are coming down the hill now as I write. Sheba marching in front, putting down her small blue paws with the precision of a WAAF sergeant-major; Solomon ambling along in the rear, stopping occasionally to sniff at a daisy or to look over his shoulder in case there should be something interesting behind, and then having to run on his long, spindly black legs to catch up. In a moment they will come tearing up the stairs to stand side by side in the doorway, gazing at me as suspiciously as if it were I, not they, who left the ball on the stairs for Charles to slip on. Long – even Charles, tenderly bathing his bumps in the bathroom, says he agrees with me – may they continue to do so.

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