More Cats In The Belfry

  Half-Siamese resulting from unplanned matings with domestic cats, typified by their elegant lines, plush coats and foghorn voices, are often black and invariably more catastrophe-prone than ordinary cats. The modern pedigreed Orientals which are the result of deliberate crossings between Siamese and other selected cats also have this reputation, but I find it hard to believe, after my own experience and all the hair-raising tales I've heard, that there is anything to beat a full Siamese for causing trouble. Consider the story I was told by the woman who took her Siamese kitten – the first she'd ever had, and she was captivated by the way it accompanied her everywhere like a dog – to a house a couple of streets away to buy potatoes from an old man who sold vegetables to supplement his pension. Frightened by the traffic, which it hadn't experienced before, as soon as the man opened the door the kitten ran up his leg. 'His bad leg, of course,' said my informant resignedly.

  She peeled the protesting Alfred off the old man's back and took him home, and the next time she went round for potatoes – without Alfred for obvious reasons – she was duly shown the wounds on the door-step. Up went the old man's trouser leg. 'See where 'e got I? Cor, I felt that. Hummin' all night it were,' he informed her. Not that she could see anything. She was too busy praying that nobody spotted the display and reported them for indecent exposure.

  'The number of people who say what a beautiful cat he is and then spoil it by saying they knew he must be mine...' she finished.

  I am continually hearing stories like this, though there are people who insist I make it all up and that no cats could ever behave as I say Siamese do. They are non-Siamese owners, of course, and I can only suggest they try it for themselves – like the woman who rang me one day about her chocolate-point Siamese, the first she'd ever owned, wondering if I could help her.

  I shuddered the moment I heard his name. In my experience, to call a Siamese Ming, as being the epitome of Oriental fragility and perfection, is courting disaster. All the Mings I've ever come across have been outstandingly diabolical as if their one mission in life is to disprove the connotation, and this Ming was no exception.

  His owner, Connie, explained that she had recently retired from teaching science at a girls' boarding school and had moved into a new flat. The garden of her previous flat had opened on to a large field in which it had been safe for Ming to roam while she was away, and there he'd set up his personal dictatorship. He'd fought all the other neighbourhood cats – in particular one called Ginger Bates, whom he'd loathed with deep Oriental loathing. He'd stolen things from the neighbours and brought them home to her as gifts and she'd had to find out whom they belonged to and return them. He'd walked the world like a feline Dick Turpin and now that his owner had brought him to a flat more convenient for her – near the first one but round the corner on the main road, with the garden wired in for his safety and Ginger Bates and his beloved field on the other side of an eight-foot fence – he'd embarked on despotic revolution.

  He'd always been a despot, his owner informed me. He'd originally belonged to her vet who had two other Siamese whom Ming, as a youngster, had bullied till their lives weren't worth living – and, as she was catless at the time, the vet and his wife, who were friends of hers, had asked her to take him on.

  He'd settled well with Connie. He liked electric fires, and prawns and steak, and being treated as an only cat of special importance. But he disapproved strongly of the new flat when they moved, and particularly of the wired-in garden. They'd been in residence for three weeks, during which time he'd patrolled the bottom of the fence every day, clawing at the wooden supports, yelling because he couldn't get over or under it, and her new neighbours had started to complain. What could she do, short of finding another flat and moving away? she asked. She couldn't part with Ming. He was her friend.

  Get a water-pistol, I advised her, explaining how it had worked with Saphra. I could sense horror coming down the phone wire at the suggestion. What about a flower spray? she asked at last. I understood her predicament. She lived very near the school where she had taught, and still took part in its extra­curricular activities. An ex-senior mistress going round with a water-pistol – or spotted in the local toy shop trying to buy one – would hardly set a good example to the pupils.

  Try the flower spray then, I agreed. But she must persevere, not give up on it. The vet had told her to persevere, too, she admitted dismally. It hadn't worked with him, though, when he'd owned Ming in the beginning.