Tovey, Doreen - Raining Cats and Donkeys

Annabel didn't die of eating bacon-rind either, which was our next domestic hiatus. She ate a lot of peculiar things these days including the goldfish food, which we discovered her sucking surreptitiously off the surface of the pond under guise of having a drink. That, however, was biscuit meal and harmless. Apart from making sure the fish didn't vanish as well, we didn't worry about it.

We wouldn't have worried about the bacon rind except that it was just our luck, the morning she ate it, there'd been a talk on the wireless about donkeys. Yew trees and meat were fatal to them, warned the speaker, at which we'd raised our eyebrows superiorly. Yew trees, yes. We'd heard of animals dropping dead with sprigs still in their mouths. But meat... Donkeys wouldn't touch it, we said, with memories of a hiker once giving Annabel a ham sandwich and Annabel spluttering it indignantly back at him.

That was at breakfast time. Within half an hour that donkey had come into the yard, gone over the flagstones with lips questing as inquisitively as an elephant's trunk as was her wont, gathered up all the birds' crumbs as was her wont also, now that she was eating for two – and scoffed while she was at it, all the bacon-rind.

She'd never touched it before, but deciding that it was her condition didn't help much during the vigil that followed. We dared not ring Mr Harler. A leg of lamb, yes. Four pieces of bacon rind – no. There was a limit to the situations with which we could confront him. We sweated it out ourselves.

Two hours later, with Annabel still on her feet, Charles said it was obviously all right if it was cooked. Maybe it was, but we took no more chances. After that the bacon rind was put out of her reach on the bird-table, and on the occasions when she came into the kitchen we made sure the refrigerator door was shut so she couldn't get at anything raw.

We had no illusions about her nosing it out otherwise, if she felt like it. She'd been coming into the kitchen since she was a foal, and it held no mysteries for her. She knew as well as we did that sugar came out of the bottom cupboard, apples were in a bowl on the dresser and it was Nice if you stood by the convector. Lately she stood by it more than ever. It was good for Julius, she informed us – Julius being the expected foal, so-called because we anticipated him in July.

There were times, of course, when, while it was convenient to have Annabel in the yard, because we knew then where she was, it wasn't convenient to have her in the kitchen. When we had visitors, for instance, and they might not have fancied little donkeys sniffing at the saucepans, or if I wasn't there myself to keep an eye on what she was doing. On such occasions I used to shut her out. It was no use that winter. It was so wet that the door swelled with the dampness and, as Annabel soon discovered, the lock developed a habit of sticking. One biff with her head, open it would fly and in, with a triumphant snort, would come Annabel to warm Julius some more. The only remedy was to bolt the door – which, if I did, resulted in the cottage being shaken to its foundations as Annabel determinedly rammed it, and my rushing to open it anyway, before Julius came loose from his moorings.

Unfortunately it wasn't only Annabel who could open the door. Solomon could do it too, tugging from the inside with his incredibly powerful claws. Try as I might to make sure it was firmly shut, the moment I left it Solomon would rake and claw and howl and roar until a sudden ominous silence would inform us that he'd done it again. Forced the door and was away on trouble bent.

It was as a result of this that eventually he had his last great fight with Robertson. Finding the door open I'd gone out to check on him as usual. I'd looked. Listened. There was no sign of anybody. No howl for help. No sound of battle. He must, I decided, have gone up behind the cottage where Robertson never went. He was safe up there and the air would do him good. Even Solomon had been indoors a lot during the recent awful weather...

He'd gone up behind the cottage all right – and so, for once, had his enemy. When Solomon came back a while later he had the most dreadful fight wounds I have ever seen on a cat. His ears were bleeding, his stomach gouged by ripping claws, his paws so savagely bitten that the bites went right through his pads. But for the mud and the smell, where Robertson had apparently rolled him on the ground and sprayed him in defeat, and the tell-tale fur-tufts, ginger and Siamese mixed, that lay like drifts of dandelion clocks where they'd met and fought under the rowan tree, I'd have thought he'd met up with a fox.

The fight had been so fiendish that that was obviously why it had been so silent. Nobody had had the breath to howl. The smell was fiendish, too. Solomon reeked like a Venetian canal. I sponged him as best I could without disturbing him, but when Sheba joined him on the hot-water bottle that night, just when our wounded warrior was at his lowest ebb and Sheba cuddling up to him would have given him comfort, she positively reeled. He Stank, she said, spitting at him and fleeing from the chair in horror.

No Florence Nightingale was Sheba. For days, while Solomon lay in his chair unable to walk, feeding wanly from our hands, struggling weakly to his haunches when he wanted to use his box, which was a signal for us to lift him down, and looking mutely at us when he'd finished, which was the signal to lift him back, Sheba slept relentlessly on the settee. Want her to catch something? she bawled, leaping indignantly from the chair if we tried to put her with him. Want her to smell like that? she demanded, when Charles said why wasn't she kind to him.

Three weeks later, however, when the sequel to the fight occurred, Solomon no longer smelled, Sheba was back to sleeping with him – and that was how our next traumatic drama took place.

We'd had to take Solomon to the Vet. He'd recovered by now from his wounds. He had countless bare patches where they'd been, of course, and eventually, as well we knew, he'd grow white hairs there for a while as a result of the shock. He had done since he was a kitten, this time he was going to look spotted as a rocking horse and Sheba would no doubt start nattering about catching those too, in due course – but it wasn't that that was worrying us.

Solomon was off his food. Badly off his food. As a result of shock, we'd thought at first, or maybe because of his distress at being defeated. Now, three weeks later, he wasn't eating at all; he was thin and light as a feather; and, most ominous of all, we hadn't heard him speak for days.

Vitamin deficiency said Mr Harler when, for the umpteenth time, Solomon once more stood woefully on his surgery table being gone over with thermometer and stethoscope. But wasn't it the same as last year? I suggested anxiously. When Solomon fought Robertson, if he remembered, and caught a virus, and he'd given him aureomycin? It was the aureomycin I wanted to remind him of. By now I was expecting Solomon to collapse at any minute, aureomycin had pulled him round before, and I didn't want any mistake about it.

Mr Harler eyed me sternly. Last time, he said, this cat had had a temperature. This time he didn't. Aureomycin wouldn't have any effect. He didn't have a virus. Maybe this was the result of shock – such deficiency sometimes was – but it was Vitamin B he needed, and it was Vitamin B he was going to get . Saying which he got out a syringe, fixed an ampoule to the end of it, tested it, applied it practisedly to Solomon's rear – and the contents shot straight through the back of the syringe and over Charles.

'Stuck' said Mr Harler resignedly, obviously wondering how we did it. He fetched another syringe and ampoule, fixed things up again, and this time Solomon got the dose intended for him. Within minutes Mr Harler was seeing us relievedly off from the surgery steps, telling us to let him know tomorrow if he wasn't any better but he thought that would do the trick.