More Cats In The Belfry

  I dashed out and gazed wildly round the field. Nothing but that solid backcloth of vegetation, like an enormous herbaceous border gone wild, into which they must have disappeared. Unless they'd gone out to the lane... I rushed to look along that. There was no sign of them. Back to push like a frantic swimmer through the rose-bay willow-herb and golden rod towards the line of trees and rising hillside at the back, wildly calling their names, but there was no sign of them. They could have been a matter of feet away but in that tangle I wouldn't have seen them. On as far as the trees themselves, up and running along the barer hillside, where there were still tracks trodden flat by Annabel. Nothing. But I knew, there would be adders about in the sunshine. Seeley had, as a kitten, been bitten by one up there. I stamped heavily as I ran, to scare them away, and tried not to think of it. On, everywhere I could think of, but there was no sign of them.

  In the end I had to give up searching and wait in the cottage with all the doors open, hoping that they'd come home by themselves. They always did, Father Adams had said when I met him down in his part of the lane while I was hunting. They don't always, of course. Seeley had gone out that morning all those years before and never been seen again. So when blaming myself for taking my eyes off them for even for a second, wondering where they were and what had befallen them, I turned away from the kitchen counter where I was half-heartedly making a cup of coffee an hour later and saw them marching one behind the other towards the sitting-room door without so much as a glance at me, I couldn't believe it. Where had they been? I demanded, falling on knees to scoop them up and hug them. Just looking around, according to Saska, who was the lead as usual, trying to give the impression of having hardly been away five minutes. Keeping an eye on him, according to Tani, who was marching hard on his heels. Gosh, I wouldn't believe where he'd taken her.

  I jolly well would. I decided that taking them away in the caravan was out, and made up my mind to watch them even more closely from then on. And what with doing that, and answering letters, and observing events in the valley, the summer passed.

  I was getting more letters than usual. Waiting in the Wings had recently been published, and so many people were writing to tell me that it mirrored the way they had felt after losing someone dear to them, or a beloved animal. The book had helped them, they said, and many of them went on to recount their own stories of strange occurrences that had led them to believe that the people or animals they had lost had survived physical death and were waiting for them somewhere on the sidelines.

  The incident that impressed me most happened when I was talking to a woman at a meeting in London – a down-to-earth no­-nonsense type who was in the legal profession and bred Siamese cats as a hobby. She, too, told me how much she'd liked Wings and I told her I'd thought that she, of all people, would think I was batty. 'But it did all happen,' I assured her. 'And my husband really did see Solomon's ghost.'

  She believed it, she assured me, looking straight at me. She was certain that people, and animals, went on. She was sure that when any of her cats died, or had to be put down their spirits stayed with her for several days before they left her. She could sense them. There was only one who hadn't, she said, a Siamese male whose original owner had died. When, many years later, the cat had to be put down because of an incurable complaint, he'd only stayed with her for about an hour.

  'But why?' I asked. 'Where do you think he went?'

  'After all I'd done for him,' she said mock-indignantly. 'Off to find his original owner, of course.'

  It wasn't like that when, a year after I lost Shebalu, Saska died too. I had no sense of his staying near me afterwards. All I knew was one of the greatest friends I'd ever had, the last of the animals I'd shared with Charles, had gone, and Tani and I were alone.

FIVE

Saska was only eight when he died of an obscure stomach tumour. My then vet, unable to track down what was wrong with him, had referred him to the Bristol University School of Veterinary Science at Langford, not far from home. They have a special feline research station there which diagnosed a bacterial infection of the colon, but that turned out to be a red herring. By the time the real cause of his illness revealed itself nothing could be done, and he had to be put down.

  It hit me as I had thought nothing ever could again after Charles's death. In the end, feeling absolutely flattened, I went to my doctor and she, knowing me, slapped shut her prescription pad and said 'What you need is another Siamese kitten. As soon as possible.' So I came straight home and rang Pauline Furber.