By that time Solomon and Sheba, having failed to persuade us to put Samson in the dustbin, were ostentatiously not speaking to us. And, so that we shouldn’t overlook the fact, instead of curling up at the bottom as she usually did Sheba insisted on lying and sighing heavily on my shoulder while Solomon, determined not to be done out of his usual perch, huddled morosely on top of her.
Solomon was heavy, and the upshot of that was that every time he moved or I eased my arm Sheba stopped sighing and spat. Every time that happened Solomon got down and sulked under the bed. Every time he did he jumped down with such a sad, dejected thud that he shook the floorboards and woke Samson, who immediately started to wail downstairs. What with spits, thumps, wails and every now and again Solomon’s sad, self-pitying sniffles as he crept dejectedly back to bed, life certainly reached a low ebb that night. Only towards dawn, with Sheba still sighing and Solomon still sitting miserably on her head, did I doze off – and the moment I did the alarm clock went off, Sheba spat once more, and I, racked to breaking point and scattering cats in all directions, leapt clean out of bed.
It would have been bad enough if it was only at night we suffered – but by day it was even worse. The silence affected us as much as anything. For four years now we had lived 90
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The Great Siamese Revolution to a continuous accompaniment of cat noise. Cats bawling to go out. Cats informing us that they had come in. Cats yelling because they were locked in cupboards – or, if it was Solomon’s voice, anguished and coming from an unnatural level, because he’d once more attempted his ambition to go out through the transom window and, having made the jump upwards, was as usual too darned scared to jump down.
Even when we had settled down for the evening and things were normally quiet, with Charles and me reading and Solomon dreaming of blackbirds on the hearthrug, Sheba was usually nattering away. Giving us a running commentary on what she could see out of the window, sitting in the coal scuttle threatening to use it if we didn’t let her out – or, when all else failed, sitting bolt upright in front of Charles, serenading him in a small, hopeful monotone, and every time he acknowledged her, giving a loud and loving squawk.
What with that, the sounds of happy conflict when they fought each other for the hot-water bottle at bedtime and the noise, common to all Siamese, of a demolition squad at work any time they were left alone upstairs, the silence after Samson came was quite uncanny. Particularly since the impression was not, oddly enough, of a house suddenly without cats, but of a house absolutely swarming with them.
I’d no sooner see Solomon sniffing sadly round the kitchen for crumbs (he’d always eaten them anyway, but it made a jolly good act to pretend he had to, now we had Samson, or Starve) than I’d pass him on the stairs. I’d no sooner leave him there, gazing wistfully after me with a 91
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look that indicated he didn’t suppose he’d be with us much longer but he hoped I’d remember him when he’d gone, than I’d find him under the bed. And no sooner would I get up from there after a vain attempt to coax him out (the look that greeted me then was the one where he had reached the end of the road and was just going to sit there and Die) than he’d be back in the kitchen again, with Charles shouting up had Solomon had any breakfast because he’d just stolen all the ham.
Sheba was just the same. She went round the place so fast – scowling simultaneously at Samson from behind the clock and the top of the curtain rail, peering from behind chairs and glaring – or so it seemed – from all six shelves of the bookcase at once – that sometimes there appeared to be dozens of her.
As for Samson – he apparently had roller skates. One minute he was climbing the hall curtains, the next he was the bump travelling mysteriously round inside a just-made bed. One minute he was industriously eating his cereal on the kitchen rug so that he could grow up a big strong cat and hit Solomon, and the next – my heart nearly stopped beating when I discovered it – when I opened the refrigerator he was in there. For the Same Purpose, he informed me, looking happily up from a leg of chicken and adding that at this rate he’d soon be a match for old Fatty. At this rate, I corrected him, hauling him speedily out – it was obvious that another of my little tasks in future would be to search the refrigerator for Samson before closing the door – we’d soon be having him with cherries on top for dessert.
Unfortunately Samson was like this only when we were alone. In the early morning, for instance – when Solomon 92
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The Great Siamese Revolution and Sheba – who presumably imagined we kept him in the garden overnight – rushed out through the front door the moment they were up to see if he had gone. Samson then was as we first met him. Zooming round the floor like a bumblebee (all Siamese have their peculiarities and this was one of his). Travelling up the insides of the curtains
– which was obviously another, though as we didn’t keep the ironing board behind them the effect was never the same. Clambering hungrily on to the breakfast table from one chair and, as soon as he was pushed down, vanishing for a few seconds and appearing undaunted on the next.
When, realising that we were beaten, we covered the milk and the butter, huddled protectively over our plates and let him do his worst, Samson even talked.
This, he would say – piping away in his shrill seagull voice as he nipped under my elbow to get at the bacon or dodged expertly through Charles’s guard to lick his egg – was fun.
If he could only stop having those nightmares about a big cat who walked funny and a blue one with crossed eyes he’d be as happy as could be. Then he would have a thought.
They were nightmares weren’t they? he would ask, sitting suddenly down on the table to stare at us with round blue eyes. We didn’t have cats like that here really, did we – or if we had, we’d send them away now he’d come?
There was never any need to answer. By that time Solomon and Sheba, having cased the garden like a couple of bloodhounds and found no trace of him, had had a thought themselves. By that time they were on the windowsill. Glaring in at him with narrowed eyes and fiendish expressions that practically sizzled when they saw him eating their liver and licking their plates. Samson, when 93
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he asked his question had only to follow my gaze to the window to see whether they were nightmares or not. One look at them and, with a short, sharp prayer to his guardian angel, Samson was gone.
It should have been obvious to us then that it would never work, but still we struggled on. Sometimes, for a change, the silence of the jungle war that was being carried on all round us was broken by shrill, tremolo screams which meant they’d got Samson in a corner and could we please rescue him quick, they were going to hypnotise him. Sometimes by loud, indignant wails which meant that Solomon had been so busy out-flanking Samson he’d got himself in the corner by mistake and now Samson was looking at him. When we heard spitting it meant Sheba was around. Not necessarily spitting at Samson. It could quite easily mean Solomon was under the table and Sheba was spitting at him.