Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

It seemed that the one with the bent tail excelled at getting the others into trouble. He was always the one, said Mrs Furber, who led the way up on to ledges in their run that were just about the cat equivalent of climbing Everest – and then, when the others had got themselves all hopelessly stuck, he’d jump down and leave them stranded. She’d seen him do it so often and whenever she went to the rescue there, invariably, he’d be: the little, round-eyed innocent, regarding them puzzledly from the ground. One day, she said, he’d managed to move the prop that held the cat-house 142

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window open: something no other cat or kitten had ever done. He’d got through before the window came down. The others, following after him, had nearly been port-cullised.

She’d better let him out now, she said, looking at the travelling box. She’d put the two of them in there to keep them apart from the younger litter. But he was getting rather restless. He’d be hitting his brother in the other eye at any moment.

She opened the travelling box door and he came out like a small, charging bull. Up on to the settee, where he rolled, waving his paws and arching his back in celebration. Then, hearing me laugh, he got up and galloped to the edge to stare at me. His eyes were almost hypnotic. They bore deeply into mine, as though he was either reading my thoughts or trying to imprint me with some of his. He stood there for several seconds before he lowered his head and charged away, launching himself off the settee to land like a bomb in the middle of the younger kittens who, with frantic squeals for Mum, shot for shelter in all directions. They had been playing with a marble, which Bent Tail now took over. ‘He likes marbles. They’re noisier than ping-pong balls,’ Mrs Furber explained as he dribbled it like lightning round the room. ‘Whatever he’s doing he shows off, wanting to get people’s attention.’

He had ours, all right. He aimed the marble expertly under the settee and flushed out three of Valentine’s grandchildren. The entire entourage disappeared under a nearby chair and we could see odd paws waving wildly about. The marble rolled out... was hooked back again...

there was what sounded like a rugby scrum. Whoever came out behind the marble, I announced eventually, was the kitten we would have. I was cheating, of course. I knew 143

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The Coming of Saska who’d come out. He emerged behind the marble, bent tail triumphant. I picked him up. Again I got that solemn, hypnotic stare. ‘Welcome to the family,’ I said.

Accompanying the solemn stare was a solemn little seal-point nose that reminded us of the saskatoon berries we’d seen in Canada. That was why we named him Saskatoon Seal, which has since become Saska, or Sass. Then Mrs Furber took us out to see his father, whom she said he was very like. On the way we saw Valentine, Shebalu’s father, who was sitting regally in his run. A beautiful, elegant lilac-point – we could see where his daughter got her looks from. He rubbed his head on the run-wire when Mrs Furber spoke to him. He had a wonderful nature, she said. She could go into his run and handle him even when he had a queen with him for mating.

Saturn now, she said – leading us over to another run from which a big seal-point male was regarding us with undisguised suspicion – when he had a queen in there with him he treated the place like an Eastern seraglio. Flew at the wire when anyone as much as passed, in case they were trying to steal her. He was as lovable as anything at other times – but a real Tarzan character, not a bit like Valentine.

‘Look at their runs,’ she said. ‘Valentine’s is always so neat and tidy – I never mind anyone seeing it. But Saturn absolutely refuses to use an earthbox and he will spray over his house.’

Valentine’s run indeed looked as if it ought to be in Ideal Homes and the paint-work on his house was immaculate.

Saturn’s run appeared to have been dug to plant potatoes; and the paint, where he persistently sprayed on it, was yellowed and peeling in strips. It was as if he’d put up a notice ‘This is My House- Keep Off ’, and we laughed. He certainly was a character we said. We hoped Saska would 144

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take after him. A remark I remembered next morning when we found that Sass, too, had a quirk about earthboxes.

To be fair, it might have been traumatic. We’d arranged to take him home with us in the evening – we had to go on to Watchet and we called for him on our way back. It was dark by then and, as we hadn’t a basket, I tucked him inside my coat. He was warm, but we were strangers and he was frightened. He spat at us all the way back. None of the others had ever done that: I hoped he was going to be good-tempered, I said. It was the darkness, Charles assured me. He was scared because he couldn’t see us, and of the noise of the engine, and of the lights of the other cars going past. It showed what a plucky little chap he was – so frightened, but he wouldn’t give in.

He was scared all right. When we got home I put him in our big, wire-fronted cat-basket. He’d feel more secure in there, I said. then we let Shebalu in to meet him. We thought she’d be a little wary at first. When we first brought her home as a kitten, Seeley had been terrified of her for days.

What we weren’t prepared for was Shebalu marching up to the basket, glaring in at him with her face to the cage-front and giving a tremendous, explosive spit. I jumped yards at the vehemence of it and I wasn’t even on the receiving end. Sass jumped as high as he could in the confines of the basket and had diarrhoea on the spot.

Shebalu slept with us as usual that night, while Sass stayed down by the fire. I’d cleaned out the basket, put a blanket and hotwater bottle in it, and another blanket on the hearthrug in front of the fire. I left the basket door open: he could sleep inside it if he felt safer, or out on the second blanket, nearer the fire, if he preferred. It would be his own small retreat till Shebalu and he got together.

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The Coming of Saska I thought that, like his father, he would feel more secure with a lair of his own.

We gave him his supper, put down water and an earthbox for him and, collecting Shebalu from the kitchen where she was shouting her head off from the top of the cooker with a spit from him as we passed the basket, we went hopefully to bed. It was always the same, we told ourselves. There were always these ructions at first. But Shebalu was young, and a female – she’d soon get round to mothering him. It wasn’t the same as having Seeley back, but it was good to have two cats again.

Even when we came down next morning and discovered that his earthbox was dry as the Sahara but the blanket in front of his basket was wet, I wasn’t particularly perturbed.

When our first Siamese, Sugieh, had had kittens, they had done that at first – wetted the old dressing gown I’d wrapped round their basket as a draught-excluder until Sugieh trained them to a box. Sass, Charles and I decided, had just been following his primeval instinct. What with being parted from his Mum, and Shebalu frightening him, and finding himself suddenly alone in a strange place, he’d nipped out from the basket, used the blanket as the nearest thing... probably in his mind he was staking out his terrain... He’d be perfectly all right now it was daylight and he could see it was safe to use his box.

To which end, as Shebalu was slinking sinisterly round the room crossing her eyes at him from behind chairs, I gave him his breakfast in our bedroom, showed him his earthbox filled with peat in the corner, and put him and a freshly-filled hotwater bottle in a nest of sweaters on the bed. A time-honoured refuge, this: it had been a favourite with all our cats. I left him curled in it blissfully; such 146