More Cats In The Belfry

  Now Bertie had put his foot in it again. It seemed his owners' daughter had been married the previous autumn. She was a professional dancer with a troupe in Italy, and had married an Italian musician. Prior to the ceremony, which took place in England, Bertie's mistress had gone over to meet the new in-laws, and they'd taken her on a tour of the country during which she'd been particularly impressed by the Leaning Tower of Pisa and had bought an Italian couture suit to wear at the wedding. Back in England, she got down to the preparations. Made the bridesmaids' dresses. The daughter was wearing her mother's wedding dress: that only had to be altered to fit. Did some house redecoration because people were coming to stay. Made the wedding cake. As a compliment to the bridegroom's family and the tour of Italian architecture, not to mention the effect Siamese cats have on one's sanity, she'd made it as a replica of the Tower of Pisa. What with its odd angle and the pillars it couldn't be transported as it was: it had to be assembled by the chef at the hotel where the reception was being held. He'd said it was quite a challenge, she wrote. I could believe it.

  Anyway, the night before the wedding, everything was ready. The in-laws had arrived from Italy. The guests who were staying with her and her husband were already there. Her new suit was on its hanger, suspended from the wardrobe door. Bertie wasn't at all pleased about the visitors – he was marching about with his ears flat – but she was allowed to have people staying sometimes, she told him. She decided she'd have an early night and relax. Went to the bathroom to clean her teeth. She was only away minutes, she wrote, but when she came back, Bertie, to put his protest on record, had sprayed all down the skirt of her suit.

  She'd marched round the house calling him an awful name – which couldn't be true, she admitted, because she had his pedigree showing who his parents were. Her daughter had sponged the skirt and dried it with a hair dryer – it hardly showed at all. And of course it wasn't as pungent as it might have been because Bertie was neutered. But she'd stayed awake half the night worrying about it, stood as far back from people at the reception as she could, and goodness knew what they'd thought. She sent me a photograph which showed her doing it. It looked most odd, as if it was the people she was talking to who were ponging. And the cake was leaning madly sideways on the table in the background. She should have had Bertie at the reception, I told her. Wearing a notice saying It Is All My Fault.

  From my friend Pat there was the news that her seal-point boy, Luki, was driving her round the bend as usual. His recent crimes included coming home with a large raw beefburger stolen from goodness knew where and being found sitting on top of a kitchen cupboard astride a turkey which was up there because it was too big to go in the refrigerator, trying to get it out of its wrapping. She, said Pat, had washed her hair by way of relaxing her nerves and had afterwards found herself spraying it with liquid starch. Did I ever do things like that? she asked. I told her about the teapot.

  From a parson's wife I heard the story of how, in their previous country living, the rectory was near a duck pond. One day her queen went out and returned in due course with an entire brood of ducklings waddling under her stomach – she with her legs spread so as not to tread on them, looking most self-­conscious. They must have mislaid their mother and tacked on to her as a substitute. She couldn't think where she'd Got Them, she said – it wasn't Her Fault... Her expression, said the parson's wife, was priceless. Nobody could believe it. Any Siamese owner could, I said.

  Another letter was from an American woman who lived in Philadelphia and for years had kept me up to date with the doings of her cat, Daisy. Some months earlier she had written telling me that Daisy had died and she wasn't replacing her. There could never be another Daisy, and besides, she was too old now to take on another. What would become of it if anything happened to her?