More Cats In The Belfry

  Connie, who is one of the country's experts on wild orchids, would from time to time be away overnight giving a lecture or visiting other botanists, and her friend Diana would take charge of Ming. Di, who ran her own car-transport business, had flexible hours and would come in to keep Ming company during the day. She would feed him and let him out into the garden, and bring him in and secure the cat-flap when she was leaving. An added twist to this routine was that he greeted Di with affection when she came to be company to him, butting her with his head, winding himself round her legs, lying against her neck and purring when she picked him up.

  When Connie returned from wherever she'd been however, and Di fetched her from the station and the two of them went into the house, Ming would hide under the bed, cringing away from Di and wailing up and down the scale about how much she frightened him and he hated her – a put-on act to make Connie think his life was intolerable while she was away which might have worked, so accomplished an actor was he, if Di hadn't persuaded Connie to stay hidden outside one day while she, Di, went into the house alone. With her own eyes Connie saw that cat, through the kitchen window, rubbing his face abandonedly against Di's, cupboard-loving with all his might – till Connie put in an appearance and he jumped from Di's arms, spitting blue murder at her, and fled.

  That is by the way. The real story concerns the occasion when Di, having been with Ming during the early evening, and brought him in from the garden and fastened the cat-flap, went in later to give him a meal and a cuddle before his bedtime, only to find Ming missing, an open cat-flap in the kitchen with the cupboard moved aside from it, and deep black night outside.

  Di's first thought was that she must have left the cat-flap unfastened and omitted to put the cupboard in front of it. Yet she was sure she'd taken both precautions. The question was where was Ming now? She went into the garden with a torch, shone it around, scarcely daring to breathe in case he'd somehow managed to get over the fence – and there he was. It was the frog season and he was sitting frog-watching in the border. She brought him in, fastened the cat-flap and barricaded it once more, and when Connie returned told her just what had happened.

  Next day, determined to find out how he'd done it, Connie seated herself in the spare room from which, with the doors open, she had a clear view across the hall and through the kitchen to the barricaded flap. After a while Ming emerged from her bedroom, where he'd been napping on the bed, made his way to the kitchen and seated himself in front of the cupboard, prising the door open after a few minutes' activity with a hooked left claw. That done, he inserted his right paw in the open front of the small cupboard, put it behind the cupboard door and pulled. Slightly to the left, so that the cupboard slid sideways away from the cat-flap, on which he then undid the fastener to let himself through.

  Any time Connie went out after that she reinforced the cupboard by setting the kitchen table against it, and jamming the kitchen chairs tightly against that. So far Ming hadn't solved the problem of moving that lot but he was probably working on it, said Connie, and it looked awful when she had people staying.

  When Saphra left home to prove he was a Killdown (or was it the adventure stories Sinbad had told him?) he didn't bother about cat-flaps. For safety's sake there wasn't one in the back door anyway, and he did it the way he'd always planned: by hiding in his lair behind the freezer when I was changing the litter trays and hoping I wouldn't shut the door properly. One day his luck was in: I didn't. I kicked it behind me and it hadn't clicked.

  By the time I discovered it he must have been gone some time. I scoured the garden, ran up and down the lane rattling the cat-biscuit tin and calling. There was no sign. All was silence. Tani, when I asked her where he was, said she hadn't seen him. White Slavers had probably got him, she said.

  I was standing at the gate, wondering which way, to turn next, when I saw a procession coming up the lane. A crowd of walkers – ­dozens of them, all wearing psychedelically-­coloured rucksacks, following behind a leader who was carrying a cat in his arms. I'd seen them through the window earlier, going in the opposite direction. They hadn't had a cat with them then. I knew immediately who it was.