More Cats In The Belfry

  'They bowlers was handy for a lot of things,' he said. 'There were another fellow – old George Thorn – who used to do the same sort of job over at Tiptree. Then one day, when he was supposed to be workin' in the yard, the farmer noticed 'n disappearin' over the wall. Farmer wondered what he were up to, so he crept up and looked over to see. George had his bowler on the ground and was crouchin' in front of a gleanie's' – guinea-fowl's – 'nest he must have spotted there, and he was ladling out the eggs. "One for Master," he counted (he left he in the nest). "One for I." (He put he in his bowler.) "One for Master..." he went on till there was only one left. And as he was lookin' at that 'un and hesitatin', Farmer put his hand over the wall and took it hisself. "Reckon Master had better have he," he said.'

  I laughed appreciatively again and Mr Woodrow, well into his stride by now, asked if I remembered the old Rector's wife – 'she what had one of they peakyneeses'. I said I did. She and her husband were in charge of the parish when Charles and I first came to the valley. 'Bit of an old flanneller,' observed Mr Woodrow. 'Always soapin' people up.' She was only trying to be friendly, I protested. I'd always had a soft spot for the old girl. She'd been very kind to me.

  'Thass as maybe,' he said. 'Anyway, there was these two men what cleared an old overgrown garden round a ruined cottage in the village and planted it with vegetables – sort of an allotment, like, to help out their own. 'N one day one of 'em was liftin' taters there when along comes Rector's wife with her dog, and she looks over the wall and says "You and the Lord have made a good job of that, Albert." "Dunno about that," says Albert. "Lord had this lot to hisself for a hell of a time, and he din't get much done on his own."'

  With which, and a wicked grin, Mr Woodrow touched the brim of his battered old trilby, called his dog and plodded on past the gate. Not down the lane in the direction of the Reasons' cottage, which was his usual route, but up the hill in the wake of Mrs Binney. Interesting, but I hadn't the time that autumn to follow up the convolutions of village affairs. The inside of the cottage badly needed redecorating and, as I'd been warned never to let Bill the ambulance man do anything indoors, I was busy doing the job myself.

  I started with the sitting-room. It being the only living room, I couldn't empty it and give up several days to the work. I had to do it a wall at a time, taking down the pictures, and the books from the bookshelves, moving the furniture so I could get behind it, and at the end of the day, when the paint was dry, putting it all back in place again. It was wet outside, too, and turning cold – not the sort of weather for Tani and Saphra to be out in their house – so I had a big log fire going in the fireplace to dry the walls as I worked, with the Snoozabed in front of it for the cats to sit on.

  Only they didn't. I had dust sheets over the furniture and the stacked-up piles of books, and the cats spent most of their time underneath them. Leaping about, wiggling their paws through gaps trying to get me to play with them – they thought it was a game put on for their amusement. As fast as I threw a sheet over a chair there would be a rush and a dive and two cats would be squirming about underneath it. Tani knocked over brushes, Saphra got paint on himself – emulsion paint, fortunately, which I could get off with water. Oil-based paints have to be removed with spirit, and turps or white spirit are lethal to cats. I had often worried about what to do if a cat did get gloss or undercoat on itself, and a reader writing to me about the misdeeds of her Siamese supplied the answer. Wipe the paint off with gin or vodka, she said. That would do the trick. She kept a bottle of gin in the paint cupboard specially for use on her cat, Tao, who was always getting paint on himself. Sometimes she thought he did it purposely in order to be rubbed with his favourite tipple – ­and if visitors looked askance at times and sniffed the air... it was part of the price one paid, she said, to live with a Siamese cat.

  Saph had never tasted gin, but he did like whisky and sherry: he turned after his uncle Saska in that. It was bad enough when I had guests and he used to sit in front of them willing them to give him licks off their fingers, but giving him a taste for gin or vodka and letting him associate it with getting paint on himself – ­that would have been asking for trouble. He'd have been stuck to every newly painted door in the place. So, rainy weather or not, on glossing days he and Tani were banished to their garden house with the heater on.