How, in face of Timothy’s record, we came to ask him to tea with us I haven’t a clue. He’d not only broken our window. To date, while under the guardianship of Father Adams, he’d eaten the bus-tickets on a trip to town and caused trouble with the inspector, broken the window of the Rose and Crown (also with his catapult; he said his Granfer was inside and he wanted to speak to him, which we thought showed initiative but apparently the landlord 109
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didn’t), and painted the Ferrys’ gateposts a bright, Post-Office red.
The trouble there was that Fred Ferry had only recently done them pea-green. He came up the lane raving about Timothy ruining his brand-new paint with that rotten muck; Father Adams – who happened to be rather fond of red and the paint Timothy had used was in fact some left over from his own front door – took offence and offered to punch him on the nose; Fred Ferry, in typical village fashion, had now taken out a summons against him – and if he got away with it under a fiver, said Father Adams, clapping his hat despondently over his eyes at the very thought, he’d be another ruddy Dutchman.
Maybe we’d been reading the church magazine and had our haloes on just then, but ask Timothy to tea we did.
Turning the other cheek and hoping, perhaps – ignoring the job we’d so far made of Solomon and Sheba – to reform him.
I regret to say that didn’t work either. He drank his tea – when he didn’t spill it on the carpet – with noises reminiscent of a blocked drain. The cats were absolutely fascinated. He ate his bread and butter with both hands, gazing stolidly at us over the top of it as if it were some sort of earthwork. In spite of our attempts at conversation he said absolutely nothing. When he had finished, in reply to our query as to what he’d like to do now, he marched over to the window, picked up ashtray, gave it a couple of taps to get its surroundings, and smashed it carefully on the sill.
After that he went home – during which process Charles, hastening to open the door for him, accidentally stepped on another ashtray which we’d put on the floor for safety.
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Solomon’s Friend Timothy Only at the door did Timothy speak. ‘The man broke he,’
he announced with satisfaction.
The next move amazes me to this day. The following morning Timothy came down, swung silently on our gate for a while and then, when he found I was taking no notice of him after his behaviour at tea, took a pot shot at Solomon who was digging in the garden. He missed him. Not that that influenced me. Livid with anger, completely forgetting the church magazine, I flew out intending to give him the tanning of his life. But when I reached the gate Timothy was still standing there gazing at Solomon in complete astonishment.
‘He spoke to I,’ he said, quite forgetting to run in his amazement. He had indeed. As the stone whizzed past his ear, just when he was a sitting duck, Solomon had given a loud, indignant bellow. What intrigued Timothy wasn’t so much his speaking – he’d been living with Mimi for a fortnight now and was used to Siamese rumination by this time. It was that he had such a deep bass voice. Why, Timothy wanted to know, was his voice different from Mimi’s? Because he was a boy of course, I said. How did I know he was a boy, asked Timothy, his interest growing with every second. I had to think jolly fast about that one.
Because of his voice, I said.
If anyone had said that a cat could solve the problem of Timothy I would never have believed them. Certainly not Solomon, who for four years now had been a full-time problem himself. But he did. Timothy – who had no animals at all in his home in town and didn’t, it seemed, think much of girl cats like Mimi – was absolutely entranced at the thought of Solomon being a boy. Solomon in turn, having 111
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graciously forgiven Timothy for the stone, thought he was pretty good too. From then on we had a mutual admiration society around the place that nothing could shake.
In some ways it was very useful. Ever since he was a kitten one of our biggest nightmares, when we had to go to town, had been to get Solomon in beforehand. Sheba’s treks to the strawberry patch had turned out to be a passing phase and, in true Siamese fashion, had indeed stopped completely as soon as the strawberry season was over and the old man didn’t get mad with her any more.
Solomon, however – at any given time and particularly if we had a train to catch – could be practically depended on to be missing. Asleep in a field if it was warm; sheltering in somebody’s coalhouse if it was wet (or, which was equally possible, sitting in the rain watching somebody’s ducks); and if it was just ordinary, anywhere from visiting the Rector to beating it rapidly up the valley.
When I called him he came eventually. With Solomon, however, eventually could be anything from five minutes for a final sniff at a daisy to two hours during which I tore madly round the lanes in town clothes and gumboots wondering if my job was still open. It was wonderful, after the advent of Timothy, to be able either to open the door and spot them at once or else – if it was early and Timothy wasn’t around yet – to call him out, get him to do his two-fingered whistle, and watch while Solomon, with his latest Trigger-friend-of-Man expression on his face, appeared at the speed of Alice’s Cheshire.
It cost us a considerable amount in chocolate. Timothy, reformed or not, wasn’t the boy to do things for love alone. At times, with the church magazine far behind us, 112
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Solomon’s Friend Timothy we even had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t so much a case of Solomon vanishing and Timothy finding him but of Solomon staying where he was told while Timothy collected the reward.
There was also a slight disadvantage in that Timothy now insisted on coming with us on walks. We and the cats were bad enough. We, the cats and a small boy in a cowboy hat who every now and then gave an ear-splitting whistle –
whereupon one large Seal Point bounced excitedly to heel and one small Blue Point immediately sat down and said she wasn’t coming any further – were slightly outré even for our village.
We couldn’t have everything, however. And at least Timothy had put away his catapult and was taking an interest in nature. He took such an interest in it that eventually Charles, after a particularly embarrassing conversation about cows right outside the Rector’s gate, refused to come with us any more. I was better suited to deal with such questions than he was, he said. So he and Sheba, cowards that they were, stayed at home working on the kitchen. Which was why, the day we saw the rabbit, Timothy, Solomon and I were on our own.
It was frightfully exciting for us naturalists. I hadn’t seen a rabbit since myxomatosis. Solomon had never seen one at all and immediately went up a tree in case it was a wolf. Timothy, who had heard about them but had never seen one in his life either, wanted to know all about it. An excellent little lecture I gave on rabbits and their habits. At the end of which Timothy announced that he wanted to spend a penny.
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the woods and not where he usually felt like it, which was bang in the middle of the village, I discreetly turned my back. There was a slight pause. ‘Going now,’ said Timothy, quite unnecessarily. ‘Down a rabbit hole,’ he announced a moment later. And then – to Solomon, loudly, and obviously pondering my story after all – ‘Rabbits’ll think it’s raining, won’t they?’ he said solemnly.