More Cats In The Belfry

  After a few nights they expanded the routine to include going downstairs again on some errand of their own before they came back and really settled... a procedure instituted by Saphra, who, after I'd got into bed myself would claw at the closed bedroom door and yell till I opened it, whereupon, followed by the handmaiden, he would disappear down the stairs. After half and hour or so of silence – no fights, no crashes, no yells for help, though I waited anxiously to hear them – up they would come and get into bed, Saph first, Tani behind him, and all would be peace, give or take a wriggle or two, until the following morning.

  Curious as to what they were up to, I crept down one night to check. Saph, sitting in the two-foot-deep embrasure of one of the windows overlooking the lawn, looked suitably sheepish at my appearance. Just checking on things, he said. Tani, perched high in the long horizontal window that looked out on the hillside at the back of the cottage, turned her head towards me when I went in, then switched it back to the window again. There were more interesting things outside, it seemed.

  There certainly were. Badgers, foxes; I'd found their tracks in the garden, back in the winter when it snowed. Deer, too. There were roe deer in the forest, which came out on to the hillside to graze. I'd pulled back the bathroom curtains one morning and there was a doe right outside the window. She'd stared at me for a moment, then turned and leapt into the pine trees that rose like a backcloth behind the cottage. It was like a stage setting for Hansel and Gretel.

  Satisfied, after I'd checked on them, that they weren't up to mischief – only watching wildlife, as was natural for them – from then on I left the bedroom and sitting-room doors open at night so they could go down at will and the sitting-room curtains pulled back so they could look out without hindrance, and they delighted in their freedom of choice. When they did come back upstairs, instead of jumping on the bed immediately, Tani would sit in the bedroom window for a while, staring out at the valley from there, while Saphra did a tour of the room itself, opening cupboards to see what they contained.

  That was when the trouble started. The bedroom is small – too small to take a bedroom suite, which we'd replaced by built-in fitments. A low, built-in cupboard in one of the fireplace alcoves, topped by a triple mirror, took the place of a dressing-table. Another long, low cupboard along the wall at right angles to the built-in wardrobe substituted for a tallboy. The only drawback was that, as the cupboards were shallow, there was no room in them for sliding drawers: they had to have shelves and doors.

  Drawers would have been difficult for a cat to manage, but opening doors was kitten's play to Saphra. Like Saska before him, he had paws which worked like jemmies – one claw-hook and a tug and the ball-catch clicked back immediately, exposing the contents of the cupboard for examination.

  Oh, what treasure was there for a pirate cat! Woollen sweaters to be taken out and chewed – always round the cuffs and welt, so they looked as if mice had been at them. Eventually, in desperation, I transferred the bulkier sweaters to zipped, heavy plastic storage bags and kept them in a cupboard above the wardrobe. The few thinner sweaters that remained intact I put in the bedside cabinet, which did have small drawers, but alas these particular ones proved to be non-Saphra-proof.

  I had a thin purple polo-necked sweater, one of my favourites, that I wore one day to a Siamese Cat Club meeting in London. Sitting at the top table with the chairman, delegated to be the next speaker, I took off my jacket because the room was hot, raised my wrist to look at my watch and nearly dropped when I saw, there before my eyes, a large semicircle missing from my sweater cuff. Too late to put my jacket on again – it was time for me to speak. I raised my arm in the air. 'The Menace has struck again,' I began. It brought the house down. All the members there had Menaces of their own and we had a grand time swapping tales about them.

  How Saph had done it I didn't know, unless the cuff had been protruding from the drawer. How he got hold of my jewellery, kept on a shelf in the dressing-table cupboard, was on the contrary patently obvious. I could hear him hooking it out during the night. The items were mostly in individual boxes and he enjoyed opening boxes, raking them out with his paw so that they fell on the floor and the covers came off.