Дорин Тови: More Cats in the Belfry

Actually they were curled together in an armchair in front of a log fire in a huge old country sitting-room, with low-beamed ceilings, rugs on a polished oak floor and adult Siamese everywhere – draped over chairs, squatting on the bookcase, one on its back with its feet in the air in front of the big fire-basket in the inglenook, one coming in from the kitchen, another strolling out through the doorway into the hall...

Maybe it was the presence of so many big cats in full colour that made the kittens look so frail. One kitten, actually, at second glance. The other was bigger, more solid and confident-looking, regarding me with the calmest of periwinkle blue eyes. I would have picked her like a shot, but she was already spoken for. She was entered in a show for the following weekend and if she won a top award a breeder was going to have her. It was her sister who was for sale – the one who by comparison resembled a small white mouse and seemed just about as nervous. The moment she saw me looking at her she was flat on her stomach under the dresser, cringing away from me as if I were Sweeney Todd.

She was healthy, I knew. My friend Pauline Furber, a breeder herself, had found her for me. If Pauline said she was good, she was. It was just that she looked so fragile – as if rearing her would be like trying to raise a flower fairy. I thought of Saska and quailed. He was more like a miniature elephant. Rumbustious, clumsy-footed – supposing he stepped on her and squashed her? She looked so solemn, too. I wanted a lively kitten to cheer things up, not one apparently in training for a sainthood.

As if reading my thoughts, 'She's rather reserved,' said her breeder. 'We've never heard her purr yet – but she might be different if she weren't with all the other cats.' Maybe she would. That conclave of superior-looking felines was enough to intimidate anybody, sitting there, except for the one with its feet in the air, like a session of the House of Lords. 'She's got a beautiful head,' said Pauline, who'd come with me. She had indeed. She was a miniature Nefertiti in cat form, even if her sister did have the edge...

Hoping I was doing the right thing, I said I'd have her. It was May Day, a Sunday. I told her she was my small May Queen. It was also one of the worst May Days on record, cold and pouring with rain, hence the log fire at the breeder's. On the way back to Somerset we drove through a tremendous thunderstorm and the May Queen had diarrhoea in her basket. If she hadn't had a nervous stomach previously she certainly did from then on, what with the lightning, travelling in a car for the first time, and meeting up with Saska.

I'd carried her into the cottage in her basket and put it on the floor for his inspection, which was how we'd always introduced new kittens to older cats. The usual procedure was for the cat-in-residence to approach on its stomach, regard the kitten with horror through the wire door at the front of the basket, threaten to murder it if it didn't go away, then slink off, flat-eared, to sit on the sidelines and watch the effect. After a day or two of peering at it round corners and spitting if it came too close, the older one would capitulate, wash it all over to make it smell better (half the trouble in the first place was its having its mother's scent), and the next thing they'd be curled up together on the hearthrug or in a chair, the senior cat looking suitably sheepish at having given in. From then on it was Siamese United against the world.

Through the front of the basket was what mattered. That way the kitten could see its intimidator was another cat. Why Saska had to be different and spy through a gap in the wickerwork back goodness only knew, but Shantung had never seen a seal-point before –­ her world had consisted of blues and lilacs – ­and when she saw his black triangular face staring in at her through the little peephole she must have thought it was a cat-demon. She was very brave. Didn't make a sound. Just had diarrhoea again on the spot.

I did my best. Changed her blanket. Pulled the sofa across in front of the fire, put the basket on it, inserted a saucer of chicken and left the door ajar. In due course the sound of eating came from the depths. She didn't venture out, though. She stayed in hiding at the back, Saska sat on my lap in an adjacent armchair watching television, I worried like mad, and so we passed the evening.

I took her to bed with me that night in case she developed delayed shock. I hadn't a clue what to do if she did. I could hardly have given a kitten that size the kiss of life. But I put her, still in her travelling basket with a blanket and hotwater bottle in it, on the chest at the bottom of the bed and it was from there, once the light was out, that I heard her voice for the first time. She alternated between dozing for a few minutes and then waking up and screeching like a barn owl in the darkness for her mum. I switched on the lamp and brought her into bed with me. She scrambled out, hid in the basket, and yelled for her mum again. At half-past one, in desperation, I went down to fetch her some chicken, waking Sass as I passed his bed in front of the fire.

He came with me to the kitchen and started shouting for chicken himself. He could have been heard at the other end of the valley – probably was. He bawling downstairs, she wailing upstairs, half-past one in the morning and all the cottage lights on – it was like old times, I had to admit, even if it did occur to me that I needed my head read.

I gave him some, took a saucerful up to her. She wasn't backward in eating, that was one thing. The chicken vanished in a flash. She started to purr, which her breeder had said she didn't do. A purr so loud it filled the bedroom. I could hardly believe it. She rubbed her head against my hand. She was making the best of things, of course, as all kittens and puppies do. It is the innate law of survival – if Mum isn't around, tack on to whoever looks as if they might take care of you, the pointer being if they give you food.

For all that, the courage of such tiny creatures is astonishing. Humans would never be so philosophical. I got back into bed and this time she advanced up the eiderdown and crept into my arms like a small white snowflake. Overjoyed, I stroked her ears: upstanding lilac triangles reminiscent of a couple of pyramids on a miniature Egyptian skyline, that were the biggest thing about her. She liked me. Tomorrow would be a new beginning. It wouldn't take her any time to get used to Sass.

Like heck it wouldn't. I took the precaution of taking her basket downstairs ahead of her next morning and putting it on the sofa in case she needed a refuge, though I didn't think she would. I went into the hall and called her. I'd forgotten how steep the cottage stairs were for a kitten. She came down as if she was climbing Everest in reverse, front paws plopping down together, bottom perpendicular in the air. Nothing to that, she announced when she reached the bottom. Lay on, Macduff. Was it chicken again for breakfast?

Unfortunately Saska was crouched in ambush behind the sitting-room door and spat 'Tchaah' at her as she passed. She made for the sofa and into the basket as if shot from a gun and there she stayed for the rest of the day emerging only when he went out of the room, vanishing into the depths the moment he reappeared. When he was around, meals and litter box had to be handed in to her. She wasn't taking any chances. The evening passed like the previous one: Saska on my lap acting as if kittens had never been heard of – couldn't be one within miles – and boy, I gathered from his attitude, wasn't that Western good on the telly, look at those horses run ; Shantung in the depths of the basket not making a sound; me with despondent visions of her living in there on the sofa for ever, and what sort of existence was that going to be for all of us?