Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

A good deal of Sass’s training was carried out by Shebalu.

After four days of slinking round like Lucrezia Borgia, looking sinisterly at him round corners, she decided to take him in hand. By this time he’d begun to take on the scent of the place and obviously didn’t smell quite so repulsive.

He’d also fallen in the fishpond, which had probably helped quite a lot.

Both Solomon and Seeley had fallen in the pond in their time – it seemed to be a tradition with our boys – so I wasn’t really surprised when, watching over him while he zoomed round the yard, he chased after a stray late gnat and went into the water with a splash. What did surprise me, rushing to the rescue, was to find there was really no need. Sass, head up, all nine inches of him completely confident, was swimming like a retriever across the pool. I stood there dumbfounded as he climbed out on the other side, his bent tail raised in triumph. He wasn’t afraid of water, he informed me. They had a big river where he was born.

I took him indoors and towelled him down, thus removing even more of his original scent, and that evening, while he was curled on Charles’s knee, Shebalu climbed cautiously 152

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up beside him. She stretched out her neck, did a tentative lick... from the tiny white bundle came an enthusiastic purr... until Shebalu, progressing, tried to clean the inside of his ears, where the smell of his mother still lurked.

‘SCH... AAAH’ spat Shebalu. Up went Sass. And Charles started telling me about his nerves.

It wasn’t only his nerves that suffered during those early days. Sass, dividing his affection scrupulously between us, decided that I was the one to Love Him – to which end he would follow me round looking for any convenient height (the edge of the bed, for instance, or the bathroom stool) from which he could launch himself at my chest. It was a good thing it was winter and I was wearing hefty sweaters

– and there, clinging to me like a koala bear, he would talk to me confidingly while I carried him about.

Charles he delegated as the one to play with him – to which end, besides trailing ties and pieces of string wherever he went around the cottage, Charles was also expected to throw things for him. Sass, as keen a retriever as Shebalu had been as a kitten, would bring back his catnip mouse or his bean-bag with a bell on it over and over again. Charles, trying to read at the same time, would feel for it with one hand and throw it. Sass, watching with impatience the delay which this involved, eventually took to placing the toy on Charles’s foot – and, when the groping hand didn’t immediately locate it, jumping on it to show where it was and in the process puncturing Charles’s ankle. The resultant yells were absolutely blood-curdling.

Charles took to sitting with his trousers rolled up when he was reading, even when Sass didn’t appear to be around.

It was no good my saying it looked as if he was taking a mustard bath and what would anyone say if they happened 153

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The Coming of Saska to call in. He never knew when the attack would come, he said, and when I said but that wouldn’t help his ankles...

Maybe not, he said, but at least scratches would heal. That little devil was ruining all his trousers.

So Sass pursued his intrepid way, unmoved by Charles’s yelling. He brought his toys for me to throw, too, as a variation from Charles. Then... obviously I didn’t come up to scratch on the toy-throwing, either... he started offering them to Shebalu. I looked in from the kitchen one morning when things seemed unnaturally quiet, to see Sass trot across the floor with his bean-bag in his mouth and put it down in front of Shebalu. He sat back hopefully and looked at her.

She regarded it for a moment, picked it up in her mouth, shook it gently to rattle the bell, and quite deliberately tossed it. It went only about a foot and she didn’t do it again – but it was obvious our blue girl was trying.

How much she loved him was made clear one day when I was giving the living-room a belated clean. She was asleep upstairs on the bed – being so aristocratic she wasn’t the least bit interested in housework. Sass, on the other hand, was pottering about with me... turning somersaults on the cushions, continually rushing up my legs. A moment earlier he’d disappeared in pursuit of a pingpong ball and was diving about under the dresser. I finished dusting the mantelshelf, stepped back hard on poor Sass who must have right that moment come zooming back to climb me, and there was a screech as if he’d been flattened.

Immediately there was a thump from upstairs and Shebalu came tearing down to see what had happened.

Apologetically I held him out for her to inspect. He was all right, I said. ‘Just you be more Careful with him, all the same,’ said her look as she licked him proprietorially.

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Everybody loved him. Tim Bannett, calling in the morning after his arrival, was so struck by the size of his ears – and by the fact that Sass decided Tim could Love Him too and spent the visit attached like a limpet to his chest – that within minutes of Tim’s departure Liz arrived to ask if she could see him. ‘Gosh, he’s gorgeous,’ she said, looking at him admiringly. Sass pointed a pair of ears like big black yacht sails at her. Like him to sit on her sweater too? he asked.

Miss Wellington burst into tears as soon as she saw him, saying he was so like Seeley as a kitten. Father Adams reached out a wistful finger to stroke him. He had once owned a Siamese. It had been our admiration for her, all those years ago, that had led us to getting Sugieh. ‘Minds I of Mimi,’ he said now. He still pronounced it My-my. ‘If I were ten years younger, darned if I ’ouldn’t ’ave another.’

He needn’t worry about that, I told him. Sass was willing to share. I put Sass on Father Adams’s waistcoat, where he obligingly did his limpet act. ‘How about I then?’ Fred Ferry enquired. Sass was transferred to him. Never did I think I’d see sour old Fred stroking a Siamese kitten.

‘’Ouldn’t mind takin’ he up to the pub,’ he said – and patently there’d have been no objection from Saska.

Charles and I had brought him home, however, fully determined on one thing. Neither he nor Shebalu were ever going to be out of our sight – except when we went on holiday and they went to board with the Francises.

Out of doors that was, of course. Indoors it was a different matter. For the sake of our nerves and digestion they had to be shut out in the hall at mealtimes. Which was why, every Siamese worth his salt having his own idea of how to tackle important problems, Sass started trying to chew his way back in via our new mustard carpet.

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The Coming of Saska I could have banged my head on the wall with despair.

One has to accept, of course, that Siamese are destructive.

Solomon had ripped a hole in the stair-carpet by way of sharpening his claws: he and Sheba, over the years, had demolished two sets of loose covers between them: Seeley’s penchant, when he was shut out, had been removing the draught excluders from doors: Shebalu had recently started on a chair. But carpets . At the price they are now . And not just clawing them but chewing them till they were bare, fringed canvas at the corners... ‘What have we let ourselves in for this time?’ I wailed, clutching my brow in desperation.

‘Another cat who reasons for himself,’ said Charles. ‘You know you wouldn’t want it any other way. In the end you’ll think it funny.’