Дорин Тови - Cats In The Belfry

Worst of all was the problem of food. When she lived with Anna, Sugieh had, it seemed, eaten her prescribed two cereal meals, two meat meals and four yeast tablets a day with meek obedience. But not with us. As from the second day, by which time she had summed us up as a couple of suckers and dead easy to handle, she refused to eat any more cereal. When we had liver, which she was supposed to have not more than once a week, or bacon which she wasn't supposed to have at all, she sat on the breakfast table, no matter who else was there, and dribbled like Oliver Twist. On the other hand she ate rabbit – which was good for her and so cheap at that time that the butcher looked pained if I asked for less than a pound – only when the spirit moved her, so that I was for ever tipping dishes of turned-off meat into the lane for the benefit of less fortunate little cats. Needless to say as soon as the less fortunate little cats arrived Sugieh went out, elbowed her way through the crowd and scoffed the rabbit with such gusto that one old lady practically wore a groove in the front path coming in to tell us that our dear little cat was eating scraps in the lane, and did we think perhaps we didn't give her enough to eat?

She condescended to eat a little steak occasionally, but even then it had to be tossed to her piece by piece, and aimed so that it landed directly in front of her. If it dropped so much as an inch beyond her reach she ignored it. If it fell on her fur she ran upstairs and hid under the bed, screaming that we had hit her. If we put down a whole plateful of food at any time she shook her back leg delicately in the gesture she used to indicate she had finished with her earth-box and walked away with her ears sleeked back in horror at our grossness.

She liked milk, but only if she was allowed to drink it standing on the table, out of a jug. We got over that by keeping her milk in the jug and filling our own cups surreptitiously, so as not to offend her, from the bottle, which we kept behind the bookcase. People said we were foolish, and we ought to make her drink out of a saucer. They didn't know Sugieh. She was the living example of an iron hand in a small, blue-pointed glove. The only thing she would drink out of a saucer was coffee – and that was only because the coffee cups were too small for her to get her head in.

As for her yeast tablets – obviously Anna had indelibly impressed on her the importance of eating those regularly if she wanted to grow up a big strong cat and keep human beings in their place, but she ate them in such a revolting manner, with her face screwed up and her mouth open, dropping half-chewed tablets onto the carpet and then licking them up again, each time more soggy and repulsive-looking than the last, that we just dumped four of those in front of her every night and bolted into the kitchen, so that we wouldn't have to watch.

THREE

Help! Kidnapped!

When I went home one evening after Sugieh had been with us for about a month and announced that my firm wanted me to go to Liverpool on business and it would mean my being away overnight, Charles looked at me in horror. Who, he asked, was going to look after the cat?

He was, I said brightly. There was nothing to it. Just give her shredded rabbit for supper, making sure there weren't any bones in it; fish for breakfast – be very careful about the bones in that and be sure it didn't boil over on the stove; change her earth-box night and morning – if she yelled at him with an urgent expression on her face it meant it wanted changing in-between as well; wipe her if she got wet; see that she didn't play with Mimi, who had designs on being the only Siamese in the district and was inclined to try to murder Sugieh if nobody was looking; make sure she had her yeast tablets and didn't stay out after dark; see that she didn't—

At that moment there was a loud splash, followed by a wail. Sugieh, who had been looking for fresh fields to conquer ever since she was barred from the bathroom, had fallen down the lavatory. She couldn't have chosen a worse time to do it. If I had, even for a few brief seconds, hoped that Charles would agree to looking after her, that moment was now past. He took one look at her as I hauled her squirming and yelling from the depths, shuddered, and said he had just had an idea. We would ask my grandmother to have her for the night, then he could drive me up to Liverpool by car and we could both have a rest.

My grandmother loved animals and had, fortunately, not encountered Sugieh to date, so we had no difficulty in fixing that up. What we hadn't bargained for was that since that first journey out from town, when she sat sedately on my lap watching the traffic with wide-eyed interest and occasionally – hypocrite that she was – smirking affectionately up into my face, Sugieh had developed a Thing about cars.

The moment I got into the car with her the morning of that ill-fated trip, before Charles had even so much as pressed the starter, she began to yell: Charles patted her on the head as she sat on my lap and told her not to be a silly girl, she knew she liked carsy-warsies. With Sugieh, of course, that was just asking for trouble. By the time we got to the top of the hill leading to the main road she was standing on her hind legs, clawing frantically at the window and shrieking for help. Charles said it was the noise of the bottom gear upsetting her; once we got on the flat road she'd be all right. I have no doubt at all that Sugieh understood every word we said, because by the time we were halfway to town and the road had been flat as a pancake for miles all the other drivers were gesturing violently at us as they passed, threatening to punch Charles's nose for swerving all over the place and not giving signals, and Charles himself was shouting that if I didn't get that damblasted cat off his neck she'd have us up a telegraph pole.

It was even worse on the return trip. First of all we had my aunt to contend with. My grandmother's concern for animal welfare had always gone to extremes. When she was younger she had had a tame owl called Gladstone whose favourite perch was on top of the bathroom door. My father swore that sometimes it was so draughty with the door open you could see waves on the bath water and in the winter my grandfather used ostentatiously to bring a hip bath down from the attic and wash in his bedroom instead, but it made no difference. Grandma wouldn't have the door shut. She took the line that human beings could look after themselves but poor dumb animals couldn't, so you either took your bath with Gladstone glaring ghoulishly down at you – as like as not with a piece of dead mouse lovingly provided by Grandma in his claws – or not at all.

I can remember her myself hurrying down, armed with my old push-chair and scarlet with indignation, to fetch home a collie which somebody told her had been pledged at the local pawnshop. Actually the pawnbroker had taken the dog in, without any hope that the owner would ever redeem it, rather than see it starve; and he had looked after it quite well. Nothing would convince my grandmother, however, that it hadn't been heartlessly ticketed and stacked with the rest of the goods in pawn. She wheeled it home in the push-chair telling everybody she met that it couldn't walk and reducing them practically to tears with the harrowing story – quite untrue – of how she had lifted it off the pawnshop shelf with her Own Two Hands. I remember it so well because for a fortnight after that I was the one deputed to push Baldwin, as she called him – this of course was years after Gladstone had eaten his last mouse on top of the bathroom door – to the park in the pram every day for an airing. And when at last Grandma decided he was strong enough to stand on his own feet again, I was the one – Grandma said she knew I loved poor dumb animals just as much as she did and God would reward me for it – who was persuaded to take him for his first walk and, in consequence, had to face the music when he promptly jumped into the first pram he came to and sat on the baby.