More Cats In The Belfry

  By this time the kitten and Tani were the greatest of friends. She'd missed Saska; Saphra, by his very nature, was completely bomb-proof; and they'd accepted each other more quickly than I'd ever known cats do before. So I'd left them together in the room, with the stairs and hall to play in and the hall door shut to safeguard the sitting-roo­m ornaments – and when I opened it wide, said 'Here he is – the Menace', he entered, not as a kitten darting through with fun in mind, but as the Head of the Household, advancing, small spike tail raised like a personal standard, with complete insousiance to meet his guest.

  Tani was nowhere in sight, but I knew where she was. Upstairs, on the far side of the bed, sitting on her usual act of hiding under the valance in case the kidnappers had come to carry her off. He, however, marched down the middle of the room like royalty progressing along a red carpet, straight up to Louisa who, tearful with delight, fell on her knees to hug him. 'Oh, the little darling!' she said.

  A good many people fell on their knees and called him darling when they met him for the first time. They didn't know what he was like behind the scenes. On his first day at the cottage he'd climbed the bureau by hauling himself up its carved front by his claws, knocked a wooden statue of a prancing stallion off the top so that one of its legs came off, and knocked over a china model of a Breton spinning woman so that her head came off as well (though admittedly that had been stuck on, years before, after a charge by Sugieh's kittens. One gets used to these things with Siamese). On his second day he'd climbed the back of a tall carved chair reputed to be genuine Stuart and rather valuable, stood on the top of it to reach a picture which he also tried to climb, and fallen down in a heap with the picture. And on his third day he fell in the fishpond, which was a sign that he now Belonged. Ever since the time of Solomon, who'd chased a hare through it almost as soon as it was built, all our Siamese boys had fallen into the pond in their early days. Charles had constructed it in the middle of the yard, between the back door and the side gate, and while I'd prophesied that it would regularly catch the postman or the milkman, all it had caught so far was Siamese cats. Usually when they were chasing something, and they only did it once. After that they avoided it.

  But Saphra did it twice. The first time by accident, while out with Tani. I say by accident. Surely she couldn't have egged him on to do it deliberately? The fact remained that they'd come down the garden path together under my supervision after their morning outing and had gone across the yard and round behind the toolshed, where there was a stone outhouse for storing logs, which required regular examination to see who'd been visiting it during the night. Badgers did, I knew. I'd often found badger pawprints, like baby handprints, on the log-house floor.

  Anyway, knowing where they were I'd nipped into the kitchen to lower the heat under their rabbit saucepan and had gone straight out again to find Saphra in the yard looking like a drowned rat. I guessed where he'd been. I went across to check – and there, sure enough, was a large splash-mark by the side of the pool and the water still moving where he'd clambered out of it. I looked for Tani and found her sitting in the log-house, busy thinking. Nothing was Anything to do with her, said her expression.

  'Well, you won't do that again, will you?' I said, carrying him in the kitchen and wiping him down. But next day he did do it again, and this time I saw him – heading for log-house corner and taking a diagonal short-cut through the pool to reach it. He quite possibly went in initially by accident, but he paddled the strokes necessary to get to the other side like a water-spaniel. And while Tani may have encouraged him to do it, when I looked for her she was once more sitting innocently in the log-house thinking. Where on earth had he Been? she enquired when she saw him. Couldn't leave him for a Second, could she? So in case he had done it deliberately, on the premise that all pirate kittens swam, I hunted out the netting we used to put over the pool to keep passing herons from taking the fish and reinstated it. The Menace, finding that outlet closed to him, turned his mind to higher things.