More Cats In The Belfry

  I did indeed, but I couldn't hang the parcels on the walls to protect them from him. Those I had to pile on the table, and remember I only have the one large living-room. Remember, too, how interested he was in the boxes in the bedroom cupboards. The parcels, to him, were boxes, and he dealt with them in the same way. Pushed them off the table with his paw, looked over to see if they'd come open when they fell, got down and tackled them with teeth and claws if they hadn't... Tani sitting on the table saying Nothing was Anything to do with her, but intensely interested just the same. One of the parcels contained, not a present, but a new telephone I'd ordered through the post. It arrived marked FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE. I heard the bump of that one going down from the other side of the closed kitchen door, and rushed in to pick it up. To tell the truth, I'd been in a hurry when I dumped it on the table or I'd never have left it there. It was all right. It was heavily padded and intact, but it took me a time to open it. Saphra was disgusted. He was even more disgusted when he found it was a telephone. Ought to have been something to eat, he said.

  Some of the parcels were, which was one reason why he was so interested in them. Addressed personally to him and Tani from people who'd come here during the year, they contained cat biscuits and packets of Cat Treats and Cat Love. Presents of catnip mice, too: he could have opened a shop with those. And one of them contained a catnip adder, coiled in a Camembert box – a present from a woman in Exeter who had heard the story of the adder on the radio and had managed to find a lifelike length of diamond-patterned cotton for the adder's skin.

  I keep it now in the bureau. It is too unusual – and startling – to leave lying around. But when Saph first had it he was entranced. He would swagger round the garden with it – me in attendance of course – pretending he was carrying his Trophy. And there, one morning, Miss Wellington came down the lane and saw him. From outside the gate, at a distance, she let out a scream that rocked the valley. 'An adder!' she screeched. 'Quick! He's got an adder!' And, forgetting in her concern that adders aren't around in December, she came rushing to the rescue, slid on one of the loose stones she was always worrying about, and fell flat on her face. I picked her up, helped her into the cottage, and administered brandy – watched by Saphra who'd followed us in and was sitting by her sniffing the air hopefully; a little brandy wouldn't go amiss with him after that scream, said his expression. Fortunately Miss Wellington was quite unscathed. She'd been wearing a woollen headscarf and a heavy coat. 'You and those cats put years on me, though,' she protested, giving Saph the lick off her finger he expected.

  They put years on me, too. Take what happened on Christmas Day – this time entirely due to Tani. I'd been invited to lunch with Dora and Nita and their friends, as I had been every Christmas since Charles's death. I was also going to call en route on Jonathan and Delia, the neighbours who'd been such a help to me when he died and who now lived some three miles away. If I left at eleven, I decided, I'd have time for a chat with them before pressing on to Dora and Nita and the turkey. So I took the cats out for a good long session in the garden to make up for leaving them, telling them we'd have a cosy evening together.

  Saphra, as usual, was the one I shadowed, keeping him in sight at every step. I'd put them in their garden house at ten, I thought – the heater was already on. That would give them another hour outside while I changed, and filled their hot water bottles and litter trays. Tani was nowhere in sight, but I didn't worry about her. It only needed a call when I wanted her.

  And then at ten o'clock, when I called Tanny-wanny-wanny, no Tanny-wanny appeared. I went round the garden, looking in all her hunting spots. Rushed into the cottage and searched that – having first pushed Saphra through the door of the cat-run and shut it. I didn't want him vanishing as well. There was no sign of her indoors, however. Not even on her sanctuary chair. I ran out again, stood on the path by the cat-run and blew a mighty blast on Charles's scout whistle, guaranteed to bring her back from any secret lurking-place at the double in the normal way. No slender, ghost-white cat appeared this time. Only a worried black-faced one, coming through the pop-hole to meet me with a look of pathetic loneliness on his face.

  Almost immediately the front gate clicked and Miss Wellington materialised – obviously on her way up to Poppy's cottage, gift-wrapped parcel in hand. Had I heard that whistle? she demanded. As detachedly as possible I said I had. Coward that I was I'd long determined I'd never admit to blowing it to bring the cats home. People would be positive I was scatty.