Solomon’s ears shot up like train signals at that and so did ours. Solomon, we said – firmly, in case the 99
Cats In May_Insides.indd 99
Cats In May_Insides.indd 99
15/03/2006 16:50:00
15/03/2006 16:50:00
Cats in May
gremlins were listening – was neutered. Before he could look round, Solomon assured him soulfully
– though there was a distinctly speculative look in his eye, too. We were stunned when the doctor explained to us that while neuters didn’t usually go in for such pastimes there was nothing – once they were roused to jealousy over another cat and particularly, it seemed, if they were Siamese – to stop them. We were even more stunned when we realised what an escape we’d had. As Charles remarked more than once on the way home, once Solomon got the idea he wouldn’t have stopped at spraying. He’d have gone round acting like a stirrup pump. All the perfumes of Arabia, said Charles, fanning himself faintly at the very thought, wouldn’t have helped us in that case. One whiff and we’d have been out of bounds for weeks.
So, less reluctantly than we would otherwise have parted with him but sadly nevertheless, we took Samson back to his family. The last we saw of him he wasn’t worrying about us at all but was simply a fat black paw happily baiting his sisters round a bookcase. And gradually life returned to normal.
Only gradually. It was several days before Sheba finally stopped spitting at Solomon – and Solomon, in turn, stopped going round as if he expected to see Dracula round every corner. But eventually peace did return, and with it the morning when, as soon as the door of the spare room was opened, they marched happily in to us side by side.
Sheba pausing to wash Solomon’s ears before she cuddled down on Charles’s shoulder and Solomon, by way of his own private celebration, diving head-first under the 100
Cats In May_Insides.indd 100
Cats In May_Insides.indd 100
15/03/2006 16:50:00
15/03/2006 16:50:00
The Defeat of Samson bedclothes, rolling on his back, and going to sleep with his feet on the pillow.
Now, for the first time in weeks, we had a chance to look round and see what was happening in the village.
Things hadn’t been exactly standing still there, either.
Something had upset Father Adams – what it was we didn’t know yet, but it was a sure sign when every time he passed the cottage he had his hat so far down over his eyes he could hardly see. The people down the lane had a new car.
(Cream with a nice hard top reported Solomon, watching it with interest from the window and agitating the curtains so hard they probably thought it was us. Just the thing for autographing. He must go down and walk over it as soon as possible.) And Sidney, with Christmas looming ahead, had temporarily given up odd-jobbing and was working for a local builder. With results which, from what we could hear, were likely to set the housing programme back for years.
Sidney laughingly told us some of them when he came to mend a tap one Sunday morning. In one house, it seemed
– working with a double team because it was wanted in a hurry – they’d whipped the walls up so fast it wasn’t till lunch-time, when somebody went to fill the kettle, that they realised they hadn’t left any gaps for the doors. There was no need to ask who’d filled them in; it was, of course, Sidney.
In another one they had for days been going in and out by means of a space left for a large plate glass observation window. Apart from filling kettles Sidney’s gang apparently never used doorways in the normal way, but leapt lightheartedly through windows or over four-foot walls to show their agility. Thus it was that not ten minutes after the 101
Cats In May_Insides.indd 101
Cats In May_Insides.indd 101
15/03/2006 16:50:00
15/03/2006 16:50:00
Cats in May
window had been put in place one bright autumn morning another member of the team, late for work on account of his motorbike breaking down, had come tearing up the path, taken off at the spot from which Sidney & Co. usually launched themselves across the sill, and before anybody could stop him had gone clean through it.
He hadn’t hurt himself – head like a coconut he had, Sidney assured us; all he got was ringing in his ears and a dent in his driving helmet – and they’d laughed themselves sick over it for days. Until, in fact, their next hilarious little faux pas, when they put a staircase in backwards.
This was in a contemporary house – the first ever to go up in our village – and this time, said Sidney, knocking our stopcock for six with the coal hammer, it was the boss’s fault. We were glad to hear that. We were beginning to have visions of Sidney and his pals spending Christmas in the workhouse if they went on at this rate, and it was a relief to hear of a little balance coming into their affairs.
On this occasion, it seemed, the boss couldn’t understand the plans. Brought up on solid, foursquare bungalows and good old semi-detacheds, his first open-plan layout had floored him completely. Not wishing to confess it he had puzzled it out as best he could – with the result that the staircase had gone in the wrong way round and in one place passed so close under a beam they had to go on hands and knees to navigate it.
The funny thing about that, said Sidney – dealing our tap a clonk which certainly stopped it leaking, though whether it would ever run again was another matter – was that everybody did go under it on hands and knees. The boss, the workmen – even the people the house was being built 102
Cats In May_Insides.indd 102
Cats In May_Insides.indd 102
15/03/2006 16:50:01
15/03/2006 16:50:01
The Defeat of Samson for. Somehow, Sidney said, it just grew on them as part of the construction; nobody stopped to think they’d still be doing it when the house was finished. Nobody, that is, until the architect came down from London, and what he said when he saw them playing Oranges and Lemons up his staircase – Sidney said he turned bright purple, and it didn’t come out of the dictionary.
Never believe it would we? asked Sidney, downing his hammer and looking hopefully at the teapot. We would, alas. Only too well. Back in the days when we had Blondin and had just moved into the cottage we, too, had innocently engaged a local builder to level the kitchen. After several days during which I washed up with one foot on a plank and one knee on the sink to avoid falling into six inches of cement and the builder told us unceasingly how clever he was – never used a spirit level, he assured us; never used a plumb line either; just went by his eye and never made a mistake in his life – the boards were removed to reveal that at long last, and unfortunately on our kitchen floor, myopia had caught up with him. It was still two inches out of true.
When we pointed it out to the builder, first of all he swore it wasn’t and then – when we proved it by putting one of Blondin’s nuts at the top and letting it roll down the slope – he said he’d done it purposely. So that when I threw a bucket of water over it it would run straight out of the back door he said, with sudden inspiration. Nothing
– not even our protests that if we did the first thing it would do would be to run straight into the cupboards – would move him. And there, a monument to the invincibility of local builders, our floor slopes gently to this day. With cooker, three cabinets (and now of course the refrigerator) 103