Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

It was just as well I did go back because when I rounded the bush Shebalu was experimentally patting at an adder.

A young one, rather sleepy – she must have scented it and scooped it out of the undergrowth – but an adder, potentially lethal, all the same. I remember looking at it disbelievingly, thinking ‘Not this, as well as Seeley’ – and in an instant I had grabbed Shebalu, thrown her away to safety down the hillside, and hit the adder with the golf-club I always carried when out with the cats. I killed it, hating the necessity, but there was nothing else to be done.

It obviously had a hole under the under-growth and, had I left it, Shebalu would have searched it out again. Followed 137

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The Coming of Saska by her, I carried it back to the cottage draped over the golf-club and called Charles to look at it. He confirmed that it was an adder. We might have lost Shebalu. Honestly, we wondered, what on earth was going on?

We guarded her even more carefully after that. Being Shebalu, she enjoyed it. She slept with us at night. She followed me like a shadow during the day – upstairs, downstairs, perched importantly on the kitchen table or the bathroom stool, her small blue face jutting urgently as she nattered at me non-stop. Did she like being the only one? More probably, we decided, she was lonely, and in the absence of Seeley was attaching herself more closely to us. Certainly, even after weeks had passed, there were still times when she sat watching expectantly out of the window

– or, when she was eating, looked round as if another cat should be there.

For ourselves, we missed Seeley as much as ever –

stretched out luxuriously on the hearthrug; yelling for the hall door to be opened... he never learned to open it for himself. Bounding down the stairs ahead of us, his back legs spread wide in exuberance. A dark head, as well as a blue one, thrust enquiringly into the refrigerator. We still hoped we would find him – but now it was November. Four months since he’d vanished, and the hurt hadn’t grown any less. For our sake, as well as Shebalu’s, we decided to get another kitten... and hope that, Siamese being so contrary, that might bring Seeley back.

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Fourteen

WHEN SOLOMON DIED WE were determined to find a successor who’d grow up to look as like him as possible. Armed with his pedigree, and photographs of him as a kitten, it had taken us a month to find Seeley. Now, in turn, we wanted a kitten who’d look like him – and we wanted one as soon as possible.

We’d been without a seal-point boy for four months now, and it was already far too long.

We rang Seeley’s breeder. She had met tragedy, too.

Seeley’s father was dead. Not, as we’d always privately feared would be his end, from his habit of wandering off on romantic expeditions – he having been an exception, a pedigree stud-cat who was always allowed his freedom. It happened because the people next door had bought some guinea pigs for their children, and thoughtlessly put down poison for the rats who came after the guinea pigs’ food and Orlando, spending a few quiet days at home for once, had brought in one of the poisoned rats and eaten it. Nine 139

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The Coming of Saska years without a mishap and he’d had to die like that, said his owner. If only she’d called the Vet as soon as he was sick.

But she’d thought at first it was just a stomach upset, and by the time she found the half-eaten rat it was too late.

Orlando was gone. Seeley’s mother had died, too.

There was no possibility of getting a closely related kitten.

Wondering where to try next, we remembered a cat we had gone to see when we were looking for Seeley. Someone had phoned us to say he was sitting, looking lost, in a field about two miles away from the cottage. We’d rushed over at once

– and indeed it did appear to be Seeley, sitting on a plank in a field behind some houses, apparently watching for mice.

If Seeley had gone down through the Valley this was where he would have come out and it was just the owlish way he adopted when he was watching things. Perhaps he’d been hunting in the woods on the way, we thought, and it had taken him several days to get there.

We were sure it was him this time. Charles waited with his basket at the edge of the field while I approached slowly through the long grass so as not to frighten him. I held out my hand and called his name. He turned his face towards me and sat waiting. The size, the big dark back, the expression on his face... my heart rose at every step.

Only when I reached him did I know that, again, it wasn’t Seeley. When Charles and I came back out of the field a man who’d been passing and had stopped to watch us said he thought the cat belonged to people who’d just come to live up on the hill. If we could find out who they were and where they’d got him, it now occurred to us, we might still be able to get a kitten who looked like Seeley.

We managed to trace him. He’d come from a breeder near Bridgwater and of all the extraordinary coincidences, not 140

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Doreen Tovey

only was he distantly related to Seeley, but he and Shebalu had the same father. Shebalu’s mother, a blue-point like her, had been mated to a lilac-point called Valentine. A famous Champion of Champions, he was, owned by a Mrs Furber. We’d never actually seen Valentine, though, and it seemed almost as if it was meant that he should be the father of the cat in the field... and, when we enquired, that Mrs Furber also owned the seal-point mother.

We rang her. She said she had two litters of kittens almost ready but neither of them, unfortunately, was directly Valentine’s. One litter was his daughter’s, though, and his descendants invariably came out like him: we’d be practically certain of getting one from that lot who would look like the cat in the field. On the other hand there was a kitten in the elder litter, sired by Saturn, who was really quite exceptional.

She’d never had a kitten quite like him. Lively, intelligent

– you could see him sizing you up when he looked at you, she said. He stood out from the others like a sore thumb.

He stood out for another reason, too. Inquisitive and enterprising, at three weeks old he’d got his tail caught in a door. It now had a bend in it – at the base end, not a Siamese kink – which spoilt him from being the show cat he otherwise would have been. Apart from this he was absolutely gorgeous and as she knew we liked cats of character... honestly, she said, she couldn’t have picked a better match. He was absolutely made for us.

Sorry, I told her. Our cats had all been perfect. It would seem all wrong to have one with a bend in its tail. Besides, we’d set our heart on a kitten of Valentine’s... if there wasn’t one of his available we’d rather have one of his daughter’s.

All right, she said. If we liked to come and choose one, it would be ready in a fortnight.

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The Coming of Saska We went the following Saturday. We didn’t take a basket.

After all, we were only going down to see them. We walked into the Furbers’ sitting-room without so much as a thought about the kitten who’d bent his tail... and guess who we brought home with us?

When we went in. Valentine’s daughter’s kittens were tumbling around the room like particularly exuberant clowns in a circus. Kittens in the coal-scuttle, kittens whizzing over the chairs and up the curtains... we’d seen it so often before. There is nothing in this world more captivating than a litter of Siamese kittens and I was among them, on my knees, in an instant... only to see, in front of me on the hearthrug, a perspex travelling box with two larger kittens in it. One had a bent tail and was looking indignant; the other had a firmly closed eye. He, said Mrs Furber, indicating the one who resembled Nelson, was one she’d thought we might possibly like to see... in case we wanted to take one away with us, instead of waiting for the younger litter. ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘he was perfect when I fetched him in. I brought the one with the bent tail just to keep him company. I ought to have known better, of course. He’d poked him in the eye.’