More Cats In The Belfry

  'Tilly!' we yelled, starting to run ourselves. As we reached the pond Tilly fell off into the water, scrambled ashore, and the goose popped up as if on water wings. Unfortunately not for long. Tilly jumped on her again, they went down like a submarine and its conning tower, and while we were still trying to get a grip on Tilly Janet came racing up from the stables, jumped into the pond, grabbed Tilly by her collar and threw her ashore. Up came the goose again, and beat it hastily for the opposite shore, where Gerald and the others were honking in circles.

  Wading out of the pond, Janet dealt Tilly a well-deserved slap. Dee, cuddling the miscreant in her arms, turned her back to shield her. 'Don't hurt her. She's just had a hysterectomy,' she wailed.

  'She should know better,' snapped Janet angrily. And we couldn't flaw that one. So she jolly well should.

  All the way up the lane Dee agonised as to what she should do. Go back and apologise to Janet? I'd do that, I said. Better for Dee to take the dogs home out of the way before anything else happened. Offer to pay damages? I'd pass the message on, I said. Though I really didn't think there'd be any.

  Dee safely away with the dogs – and was I glad to see the back of them – I went down the lane to see Janet. There was no sign of the geese. Only, over in a corner of the field by a ruined shed, something big and round and white lay half-concealed in a clump of nettles. Surely the goose hadn't died of shock? How on earth was I going to tell Janet? Coward-like, I didn't. Just apologised and asked how they were. I'd check on the way back, and if there was a defunct goose there I'd decide how to break the news to the Reasons later.

  Janet received me just as worriedly. The geese were all right, she assured me (she didn't know about that big white bottom up the lane). She was sorry, though, that she'd slapped Tilly. She'd done it in the heat of the moment. Tilly had deserved it, I said. I must ring Dee, though, and tell her to bath Tilly in a Dettol solution, Janet insisted. With a half-healed incision... one never knew what germs there were in duck-ponds. I promised that I would, came relievedly up the lane – especially when I'd looked more closely at the round white thing in the nettles and found it wasn't a dead goose only an old white enamelled bowl thrown there by some long-gone valley resident in the days before refuse collections – and went up to get the cats in for their supper.

  He wished he could have played with those dogs, said Saphra, who'd been sitting watching the whole thing in the cat-run. They knew how to have fun.

  Hadn't realised they were white slaver dogs, had he? observed Tani, emerging from the cat-house with the alacrity which was her wont when visitors had gone. It was a good thing she had Brains enough for Both of them.

ELEVEN

She was clever. In a neat, precise little feminine way. I could imagine her knitting or organising kittens. But Saphra had moments of real inspiration and constructive reasoning, as when I threw his favourite toy mouse for him and he would pat it under the bureau then lie flat on his stomach peering underneath while I fished it out with an opened-out builder's ruler. That was the most interesting part of it for him – watching the ruler hook out the errant toy. He got round to carrying the mouse in his mouth to the bureau, pawing it deliberately underneath, then bawling for me to come and do the ruler business. This happened so often that I started to leave the ruler ready under the bureau and Saph had another constructive thought. That was what I'd used to get the mouse out. He'd never been able to work the water-pistol but he could wiggle the ruler, and wiggle it he did, one paw on the end of it, as he'd seen me use my hand, then rushing round to the front to see whether the mouse had appeared. Sometimes it had, and Saph was overjoyed, tossing it in the air in triumph before pushing it back to do the wiggling bit again. More often than not it hadn't, because he was wiggling the ruler blindly – but he'd reasoned out the connection and worked at it like an engineer manipulating a lever.