Praise for Cats in the Belfry
‘A chaotic, hilarious and heart-wrenching love affair with this most characterful of feline breeds’ The People’s Friend
‘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
‘An invasion of mice prompted Tovey and her husband to acquire a cat – or rather for Sugieh to acquire them. A beautiful Siamese, Sugieh turned out to be a tempestuous, iron-willed prima donna who soon had her running circles around her. And that’s before she had kittens! A funny and poignant reflection of life with a Siamese, that is full of cheer’
The Good Book Guide
‘ Cats in the Belfry will ring bells with anyone who’s ever been charmed – or driven to distraction – by a feline’
The Weekly News
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‘A warm, witty and moving cat classic. A must for all cat lovers’
Living for Retirement
‘Absolutely enchanting... I thoroughly recommend it... One of the few books which caused me to laugh out loud, and it sums up the Siamese character beautifully’
www.summerdown.co.uk
‘The most enchanting cat book ever’
Jilly Cooper
‘Every so often, there comes along a book – or if you’re lucky, books – which gladden the heart, cheer the soul and actually immerse the reader in the narrative. Such books are written by Doreen Tovey’
Cat World
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CATS
IN MAY
DOREEN TOVEY
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CATS IN MAY
Elek Books edition published 1959
Bantam Books edition published 1993
This edition published in 2006 by Summersdale Publishers Ltd.
Copyright © Doreen Tovey 1959
All rights reserved.
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
Printed and bound in Great Britain.
ISBN 1 84024 497 6
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Also by Doreen Tovey: Cats in the Belfry
Donkey Work
Life with Grandma
Raining Cats and Donkeys
The New Boy
Double Trouble
Making the Horse Laugh
The Coming of Saska
A Comfort of Cats
Roses Round the Door
Waiting in the Wings
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Contents
1
Seen Him on Television?............................................11
2
Up Drains and at ’em.................................................19
3 The Reason Why........................................................30
4 Blondin.......................................................................40
5
The Story of a Squirrel...............................................50
6
Sidney Has Problems..................................................59
7
And So to Spain..........................................................68
8
Fire Down Below ......................................................78
9
The Great Siamese Revolution ................................88
10 The Defeat of Samson................................................97
11 Solomon’s Friend Timothy......................................108
12 Highly
Entertaining..................................................117
13 With Solder and Crowbar........................................127
14 Right up the Pole......................................................136
15 Cats in May...............................................................144
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ONE
Seen Him on Television?
It was stupid to write about those cats, of course. All it did – like getting their names in the Sunday papers – was make them worse than ever.
In the old days when people stopped to talk to us over the cottage gate the cats usually disappeared immediately.
Particularly if they thought anybody wanted to talk about them.
Got a mouse to catch, Sheba would say, marching determinedly up the garden when people pleaded for a closer view of the dear little Blue Siamese. Going for a Walk, roared Solomon, beating it rapidly into the woods when somebody remarked what a big man he was and did he bite? Wasn’t coming back Ever, he would add when people committed the unforgivable insult and asked – as 11
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Cats in May
they often did, because he was so big and dark and Sheba so small and silvery – whether he was her mother. Often after the visitors had gone I would go after him into the woods and there he’d be, sitting forlornly under a pine tree as only a Siamese can – wondering, he said sadly as I heaved him over my shoulder and carried him back to the cottage, whether to go and live with the foxes or join the Foreign Legion.
Fame changed all that. Any time anybody stopped to talk to us now, even if it was only the coal man asking whether he should come through the front gate or the back, within seconds they would materialise from nowhere. Sheba streaking down the path in a cloud of dust, skidding to a breathless halt on the wall to ask coyly whether they had read about her, Solomon swaying round the corner on long, languid legs to assure anybody who was interested that he had written it all himself.
How that cat could do it I don’t know. Every single sentence of that book had been written – unless I locked him out of the house, when he sat on the garden wall gazing at passers-by with sad blue eyes and telling them that he was unwanted, or shut him in the garage where he sat and screamed blue murder – to the accompaniment of Solomon leaping round the place like an overgrown grasshopper, saying the typewriter was bad for his nerves.