More Cats In The Belfry

  It seemed that heredity had something to do with it. Saska, his predecessor, had been dastardly enough. And Saska had inherited his intelligence and Machiavellian ways from his father Saturn Sentinel, Pauline Furber's stud cat, of Killdown descent, who was known for passing his individualism on to his offspring. Saphra's pedigree had had to be sent on to me by post – his breeder had run out of pedigree forms when I bought him. I knew he was a grandson of Saturn Sentinel, and Saska's nephew on his father's side – but it wasn't until I got his complete pedigree by post a week later that I discovered he was also descended from Saturn Sentinel on his mother's side. What I'd got – I wouldn't have changed him for worlds, but I did blench slightly when I realised it – was a kitten with Saska's lineage on both sides. Was Saphra going to be twice as intelligent as Saska had been – and twice as dastardly?

  Twice as dastardly seemed to fit the bill. And being brought up by a parrot hadn't helped. There'd already been the business of Langford and the purple towels. And then he went absent without leave.

  I couldn't bring myself to put him on a lead. It would have been like trying to harness a grasshopper. Instead I trailed him like a shadow, which took up a lot of my time, though he didn't seem to appreciate the attention. WAAAH, he would complain when I stopped him going out under the gate. Why didn't I go and follow Tani? Because Tani was sitting contentedly on the lawn, that was why – watching a butterfly on a clover flower, and dreaming. WAAAH, he would protest, when I lifted him off the garden wall. The grass was better out in the lane. Why couldn't he have some of it? WOOOH he would howl when, for the umpteenth time, I hauled him down from the cat-house roof from which he had the obvious intention of jumping off on to the hillside behind the cottage and setting off to explore the forest. Couldn't a cat have any Freedom?

  The answer was no, so long as I was around. I remembered the awfulness of losing Seeley. The day came, though, when after sitting for ages in front of the clump of ferns by the front gate in case a shrew came out, he jumped up on to the gatepost and from there out into the lane. He'd done it before and had never run away. Just stayed in the lane looking interestedly around until I picked him up and brought him back into the garden, telling him a quarter of an acre was enough for any cat, to which he usually replied with a thwarted WOW and went off to torment Tani.

  This time, however, I was just about to pick him up when he crouched flat, looking further up the lane. I looked, too. There was a black and white cat standing, startled, in front of Annabel's stable. Even as I made a grab for Saphra he slipped through my hands, heading like an arrow for the stranger. There was nothing of the Pleased To Meet You attitude with which he greeted humans. It was more like Here I Come With My Cutlass. In a flash the other cat had gone up the wall of Annabel's stable on to the orchard bank and, with Saphra hot on his heels, tail bushed to its fullest extent, disappeared into a sea of nettles.

  I couldn't climb up on to the stable wall. The bank in front of it was too steep for a foothold. I had to run further up the lane to the orchard entrance, up a track between the apple trees, and along the overgrown path behind the table until I reached the nettlebed, which looked even more impenetrable at close quarters.

  There was no sign of the two cats. Not a single leaf or weed-stalk moved. There was no sound. Why wasn't Saphra howling? His predecessors at the cottage used to wail like air-raid sirens when they met up with another cat. I could always track them by their voices. When any of them got chased up a tree or cornered somewhere, they always used to howl for me to come and rescue them.

  Was Saph facing the intruder inside the nettles, where I couldn't see him, and battle might break out at any moment? Was the other cat, which I didn't recognise, hot-footing it for home – maybe miles away – and Saphra at that very moment following after him? Had he lost sight of the other cat and, his mind wandering as Siamese minds are apt to wander, was he ambling off, under cover of the nettles, on some other project altogether? Up to the farm field at the top, for instance, where I could hear machinery clanking – and Saph was interested in anything that moved. Supposing he got too near it?

  My neighbours thought I was potty, I knew, to worry so much. Cats always came back, they said. They knew their way home. But Seeley hadn't come back. And I'd heard of cats being killed by farm machinery. And Saph had never been across in the orchard or up the hill – supposing he didn't have a homing instinct?