More Cats In The Belfry

  Once again Pauline had no kittens available herself, but there was a breeder at Yeovil whose queen had been mated to Pauline's Bardy, Saska's half-brother. The kittens were ready for sale and Pauline and I went down to see them.

  When we were ushered into the sitting-room in Yeovil, there, as one comes to expect in the homes of Siamese breeders, were kittens hurtling in all directions. Up curtains, over chairs, falling like plopping plums through the tops of table lampshades and charging in a yelling, furry posse around the floor. An elegant blue-point queen was strolling about in the midst of the mêlée, ostensibly bawling for order but if I knew anything about it probably egging them on. There was also a large child's playpen lined with chicken wire against one wall with a chicken wire lid and, in a cage on a board across one end of the lid, an African Grey parrot which was sitting against the bars with its head cocked sideways down at the kittens saying 'Go on, then! Go on! Go on!'

  He'd helped bring up the kittens, said the breeder, and seeing my glazed expression – I'd heard a lot of odd Siamese stories in my time and met a lot of odd Siamese owners, but this, I thought, took the biscuit – she explained. She had a part-time job and, when she was away from home, she put the kittens and their mother in the playpen so they couldn't get into trouble. It was never for very long and the parrot was good company for them. He talked to them and they nattered back. 'Especially that one,' she said, pointing at a solid-looking young seal-point who was zooming round the room at a rate of knots, batting the rear end of one of his blue-point sisters as if she were a hoop. He, she said, spent a lot of time, even when he wasn't in the playpen, sitting on top of it, close to the cage, conferring with Sinbad.

  'Sinbad?' I queried.

  'The parrot,' she said. I nodded as if that explained everything.

  It possibly did. There was one brief interlude when the kitten stopped batting his sister, belted across to me, and sat studying me with eyes of the most vivid blue I have ever seen, even in a Siamese. Then, loudly encouraged by Sinbad to 'Go on, then! Go on!' (it was his favourite remark, the breeder told me), the kitten climbed my leg, sat on my lap and peered into my face, and I knew that he was mine.

  I brought him home with me and introduced him to Tani who spat at him as a matter of principle, walked past as if he was of no consequence at all and completely ignored him after that. He ignored her, too. He didn't hide from her, as she had done with Saska. Kittens brought up by a parrot called Sinbad obviously knew no fear, and he strutted round the cottage as if he were a pirate kitten wearing an invisible bandana and cutlass. He sealed the resemblance a morning or two later when he met up with one of the village postmen.

  He was a hefty young man with a big black beard, a gold hoop in one ear and riotous black curls on which he never wore his postman's hat. Altogether his appearance was quite intimidating and he didn't have much to say to people – just handed them their letters or put them through the box. On this particular morning his red van arrived while I was in the top garden with the kitten, and, as I ran down the path past the cottage to collect the mail, the kitten – I'd decided to call him Saphra as he was the son of Sapphire, but he'd already acquired the much more fitting name of the Menace – dashed ahead of me and round the corner into the yard with a swoosh. My first thought was to hope that the postman wouldn't frighten him. My second was that meeting up with Blackbeard might teach him not to rush to greet people he didn't know. I rounded the corner at a gallop myself to a sight I could hardly credit, the postman was on his knees, my letters dumped anyhow on the paving stones, and the Menace was standing on his hind legs with his front paws on the postman's chest. The two of them looked at each other admiringly. 'Like to come home with me? asked the postman. He wouldn't mind. Could he ride in the Van? enquired Saph.

  It certainly didn't make him more careful about meeting people. The following Sunday Louisa came to see him. Dee, my cousin who usually brings her out, was away on holiday, so I drove into Bristol to fetch her. When we got to the cottage we came in by the back , so that we could use the kitchen as a Davy escape hatch, closing each door behind us in as we went through to the sitting-room.