Entrancing it was, to people who either didn’t know Siamese or – like us – were still suffering from the Spanish sun. Kittens dangling from the door handles. Kittens diving off the stove. One sitting thinking by a saucepan and another blissfully asleep in a little doorway cut in the cupboard under the sink.
That, explained Mrs Francis, hauling him out while two more who had been queuing outside dashed precipitately in, was the way into their earth box and he wasn’t asleep 84
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at all, he was doing it purposely. That, she said, as there was a resounding crash from upstairs followed by the sound of a wardrobe apparently being trundled across the room and pushed through a window, was another lot playing with a rabbit foot. Locked in her office, as they were a slightly older family, to prevent them from murdering this set.
If there was a sort of despairing note in her voice just then we never noticed it. We were too busy dreaming a happy dream of one of those dear little kittens installed in our own cottage. Not for our own sakes, of course, but for Solomon and Sheba.
Give them a kitten, we said enthusiastically as we drove home in the car that night, and it might reform them on the spot. Give them something to think about – to protect and cherish and play with – and it might be the making of them. Maybe, said Charles – choking slightly as Solomon, finding a fresh hole in the basket, thrust his paw through it, hooked Charles expertly in the hood of his duffel coat and pulled – it would even cure Solomon of this.
It was unfortunate that in the course of conversation the Francises had mentioned that all their kittens were booked. If they hadn’t, when by the following weekend we had decided quite definitely to adopt another kitten, we should have gone to them for one. They knew a lot about Siamese psychology, and they also knew Solomon and Sheba. They could have told us it wouldn’t work.
That an orang-utan was about the only animal we could put with those two, for instance, and expect it to survive.
Or, as Charles said on Sunday night in a mood of deep despair, suggested that we had our heads read.
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As it was, hardly able to wait to have a dear little kitten around the place again, we got one from another breeder.
From a very nice lady who said his name was Samson and wouldn’t that be sweet with Solomon and Sheba, and who asked, as we packed him into Sheba’s basket (which was the only intact one we had) if we would mind taking him to bed with us for the first night or two. In case, she said, blinking back a tear at the thought of parting with him, to begin with he felt lonely.
She wouldn’t have worried about that if she’d seen the reception our two gave him when we took him in. Asleep they were. Curled affectionately together in a chair before the fire. With, as we entered, two heads
– one big, beautiful and black, one small, intelligent and blue – coming up in a loving, cheek-to-cheek pose that a photographer would have given his pension for. She wouldn’t have worried if she’d seen the way the next moment, with an incredulous sniffing of the air, they were on their stomachs, ears flat, whiskers bushed, fighting ridges raised on their backs – creeping across the carpet like a pair of special agents.
She wouldn’t have worried either – not about where he slept, anyway – if she’d witnessed the spectacular scene when they reached the basket. When they crouched down one at each end like a pair of snipers and hissed long, warning hisses through the air holes – while Samson, the moment the lid was raised, gave one despairing hiss back and leapt straight into the air.
As Charles said, standing on a chair and trying desperately to unhook him from the curtain rail while our two informed him from below that if he dared set foot on their carpet, in 86
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their house – in their valley, roared Solomon, his tail lashing from side to side like a whip – they’d eat him. As Charles said, she’d have had a fit.
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NINE
The Great Siamese Revolution
Samson at first sight reminded us very much of Solomon.
He had the same big ears, the same big feet, and the same aggravating swagger when he walked. He had the same old bounce, too. Our initial glimpse of him, when the breeder opened the door to us that wet September night, had been a small white streak hurtling across the hall, passing us like a petrol advertisement a clear foot off the ground, and disappearing with a roar into the darkness.
That, said the breeder, while five other kittens peered suspiciously at us from behind her ankles, was Samson showing off. He’d be back as soon as she closed the door, she said. He didn’t like the dark. And sure enough – Solomon all over, said Charles emphatically when he heard it, and we weren’t having that one – as soon as the door was shut 88
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Samson, after that scare, had to use his box. Not with reticence, like a normal kitten, but importantly, to show what a narrow escape he’d had. Samson after that again
– obviously he was already used to visitors – had to climb the ironing board. It was behind a heavy curtain in an old strange house and when he reached the top and without warning a curtain-clad object swayed out into the room
– and, as he changed position, swayed silently back again
– there was no need for his owner to tell us not to laugh. We turned quite pale on the spot.
Samson was so like Solomon that we wouldn’t have had him at all except for one thing. We wanted a tom – and he was the only tom of the lot. We wanted a tom so that when he grew up he would, we hoped, be able to stand up to Solomon on an equal footing. Most important of all, we wanted a tom so that Solomon wouldn’t get ideas. Adopt another she-kitten – give old Podgebelly the idea he had a harem – and, as Charles said, even if he couldn’t do much about it, he’d never stop showing off. On his back with one each side washing him – that would have been Solomon. Head on one and feet on another when he slept. Knocking ’em down like ninepins when he felt like it – the way he knocked Sheba down now, only more so on account of the effect.
So we had Samson – and it was just as well we did. If a she-kitten had had to endure the treatment Samson suffered in the days that followed, I doubt if she’d have survived at all.
Sometimes I wonder how I survived myself. The first night, remembering our promise, we took Samson to bed 89
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with us, and while he spent all night on guard on the tallboy
– hiccuping at intervals because they’d frightened him at suppertime into swallowing a piece of rabbit whole – the other two howled like timber wolves under the spare-room door. The second night, to even things up a bit, we shut Samson in the sitting room with a hot-water bottle and took them to bed with us – but that didn’t work either.