Praise for Cats in the Belfry
'The most enchanting cat book ever'
Jilly Cooper
'If you read Cats in the Belfry the first time round, be prepared to be enchanted all over again. If you haven't, then expect to laugh out loud, shed a few tears and be totally captivated by Doreen's stories of her playful and often naughty Siamese cats'
Your Cat magazine
'A funny and poignant reflection of life with a Siamese, that is full of cheer'
The Good Book Guide
Praise for Cats in May
'If you loved Doreen Tovey's Cats in the Belfry you won't want to miss the sequel, Cats in May… This witty and stylish tale will have animal lovers giggling to the very last page'
Your Cat magazine
Praise for The New Boy
'Delightful stories of Tovey's irrepressible Siamese cats'
Publishing News
A COMFORT OF CATS
First published by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1980
This edition published in 2008 by Summersdale Publishers Ltd.
Copyright © Doreen Tovey 1980.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.
The right of Doreen Tovey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK
www.summersdale.com
ISBN: 978-0-85765-956-9
Sadly, Doreen Tovey died in 2008, aged nearly ninety. She had thousands of fans of all nationalities and was surrounded by good friends and of course her two cats, Rama and Tiah, who were with her almost to the end. Over fifty years since her first book was published, she has delighted generations of owners of Siamese cats.
Also by Doreen Tovey
Cats in the Belfry
Cats in May
The New Boy
Donkey Work
Double Trouble
Life with Grandma
Raining Cats and Donkeys
Making the Horse Laugh
Roses Round the Door
Waiting in the Wings
More Cats in the Belfry
Cats in Concord
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
One
There was a time when the sitting-room of our small West Country cottage would have done credit to a Christmas card with its white walls, dark-beamed ceiling, wine-coloured carpet, chairs covered in pale green rose-patterned linen and here and there a cherished piece of family china or glass – but that was before we had Siamese cats.
The Copeland cabbage-leaf bowl belonging to Charles's grandmother which stood in one of the wide-silled windows, for instance... that departed from the family inheritance when our first Siamese, Sugieh, had kittens and some friends whom we invited to see them brought their own Siamese, James, along as well.
Until then Sugieh and James had been the best of friends. She'd stayed with him as a kitten herself, while we were on holiday, and with the air of an indulgent elder brother he'd taught her to dig holes in the garden (she'd previously thought you went indoors to your earthbox for that); how to climb trees (within no time she was zooming up and down like a particularly ebullient piece of thistledown while he was hopelessly stuck); how to add a touch of Siamese variety to the everyday things of life... To quote one example the pair of them chose, entirely of their own accord, to sleep together in the cabinet of a record-player whose works had gone for repair. It was in the dining-room and according to James's owners the effect when people came to supper and two Siamese heads suddenly appeared through the hole where the turntable should have been – one big, dark and gravely contemplative, the other small, blue and spectacularly cross-eyed – was quite demoralising. More than one guest missed aim with his soup spoon as a result.
They thought Sugieh would be pleased to see James when they brought him over to our place, and when she met him in the garden she was. It was only when they came indoors and Solomon, biggest and most bat-brained of her kittens, spat at him saying to Watch Out Everybody, he'd come to Kidnap Them, that the balloon went up. By the time it came down again Sugieh, in her role of devoted mother, had bitten James: somebody had bitten James's mistress... in the explosive battle-of-the-planets action that followed we were never quite sure who, though we rather believed it to be Sugieh as well since James appeared to be far too busy trying to escape up the curtains... and the Copeland bowl was in pieces on the floor.
That was the first of our treasures to hit the dust. A Bristol glass jug and the porcelain figure of a Breton spinning-woman that stood on the bureau went next, during the course of the round-the-room steeplechases devised by Sugieh for the indoor exercise of her children. That she was behind the idea was obvious from the fact that whenever, hearing what sounded like the beginning of a cavalry charge, we came running to see what we could rescue, Sugieh would be standing on the corner of the Welsh dresser, head stuck out like a swimming instructor, inciting them in her raucous Siamese soprano to Go Faster, they'd never catch a mouse at That Speed, or to Jump the Table Lamp, never mind if they knocked it off, old Charles could Always Mend It.
He couldn't mend the jug. It was shattered beyond repair. He did mend the Breton spinning-woman, whose only damage was that her head had come off. The snag was, though, that she sat posed with her tall, top-heavy Breton headdress bent attentively over her spindle. The repair held all right in normal weather but when it rained or we got hill-mist, as we do so often in the West Country, the glue would soften (this was before the days of waterproof resins) and her head, being heavy, would fall off.
We got quite used to sticking it on again and really thought nothing of it. Came the day, however, when we acquired a household help. I was doing a full-time job at that time and having somebody to clean the place was wonderful. The floors shone, the brass gleamed, the tidiness was a joy to come home to. Unfortunately, after only a few weeks of lifting up our hearts, Mrs Pearson said she didn't like being on her own in the cottage. She was used to having somebody to talk to, she said, and when I asked whether she didn't find the cats company – Solomon in particular talked a lot – she said that was part of the trouble. She'd be working away listening to the silence, there'd suddenly be this awful yell – and when her heart stopped racing enough for her to turn round, he'd be sitting in the doorway looking at her.