I felt happier when I saw her practising climbing.
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Double Trouble exuberantly in her wake. He fell off as soon as he got a few feet up, but obviously nothing would ever catch her.
Charles, though, with whom she’d taken Sheba’s place, firmly refused to believe it.
Now she’d discovered the forest she vanished into it every morning – and Charles, as soon as he found she was missing, always started to worry. ‘You’d better call her,’ he’d say. ‘She’ll only come to you.’ And there I’d stand, hooting ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ and feeling an absolute fool...
For one thing this always produced Seeley. Whether it was that he, too, was looking for Shebalu and wanted to be on hand when she arrived, or whether he thought I was calling him, since for so long he’d come running with her when I called – ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ now became his signal call as well and he answered it more readily than ‘Seeley’.
It was the impression it gave to onlookers, however.
– ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ – I hadn’t realised it at first
– sounded exactly like a hunting horn. And when I stood in the lane and did that, and first a big seal-point came bounding up and noisily greeted me (but, to the observers’ surprise, I still called on)... and then a shaggy donkey came galloping across the hillside and Woo-hoo-hooed at me over the fence... and eventually, if they waited long enough, a lone-legged kitten with fantastically crossed eyes came tearing down the hillside out of the pine trees… ‘Well,’
I heard the comment on one occasion. ‘I aint seen nuthin’ like that.’
It was a good thing Em Biggs wasn’t around when they said it. He’d have told them a thing or two.
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It was worth the embarrassment, though, when Shebalu did turn up; and meantime something most interesting happened. Seeley became a tracker cat.
I used to wonder about that with Solomon and Sheba
– whether, when Solomon went missing, Sheba could have found him for us if she’d been so inclined. Did she know when he was merely behind the conservatory, or had gone off on one of his lengthy treks? If she did, she did nothing about it. We always had to find him for ourselves.
Seeley though... one day he came pelting down through Annabel’s field when I was calling for Shebalu.
paused against my legs to look anxiously up the Forest track, went into the yard and got on the coalhouse roof
– then stood on the edge of it and pointed. There was no mistaking what he was doing. Head thrust forward, eyes narrowed he surveyed the hillside like a retriever.
Looking glistening... ‘Just as if!’ I said. ‘He couldn’t hear a kitten in the forest!’
He did though. When he’d found the right direction he watched for a moment and then was down and speeding silently up the hillside. Into the wood he went – and sure enough, within seconds, he came out accompanied by his girlfriend.
He did it so many times that it obviously wasn’t coincidence. After a while I took him with me deliberately to find her. I’d put him down at the edge of the wood. He’d look and listen, and then go trotting off. Once I thought he’d made a mistake – he went into the undergrowth on my left while she appeared, a few moments later, coming straight towards me from a track ahead. Behind her, though, like a sheepdog, came Seeley.
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Double Trouble He’d gone in and circled round behind her. Now he was flushing her out.
And why shouldn’t a cat be good at tracking? Or, if it comes to that, a donkey? Annabel often told us when one or other of them was in her field. Head down, ears pointed like antennae in their direction, watching them from under her fringe with a benevolent pout on her lips.
At least, we hoped it was benevolent. One night the cats were around when I went to put Annabel into her stable.
It was raining so, not knowing what else to do, they followed us up through the garden. Into the stable they marched, where Annabel was eating maize from her bowl. She paused for a moment, looked at them and snorted. Completely ignoring her they started looking round for mice... which, they decided, after a quick survey of the walls, were definitely, without doubt, in her hay.
The hay was right by her back legs. Annabel always liked it there. So she could turn round when she’d finished her first course and continue her supper without stopping.
They sniffed, prowled, looked like a couple of Maigrets intently searching for clues... obviously only to annoy her; there probably wasn’t a mouse within miles.
Annabel, growing irritated, stamped backwards into the hay. Seeley, mrr-mrring in protest, took off to safety on the wall. But where, I panicked, was Shebalu? She’d completely disappeared!
Just in time, as Annabel turned towards it, I saw a movement in the hay. Shebalu was hiding inside it.
Completely invisible, so she thought, and tremendously pleased with herself. Annabel snorted again as I lifted her 134
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out. Pity I’d done that, she said, wobbling her underlip even harder. Some young cats needed teaching a lesson.
She’d just been going to eat her...
Again, though – would she have hurt her, or were the three of them playing? Next morning, it still being raining, they went up to see her again. Charles saw them go in deliberately, squeezing under the bottom of her door. Charles also heard Annabel snort and stamp – and was running hard to the rescue when the cats appeared again. Grumpy in the mornings, wasn’t she? they said as they strolled unconcernedly off.
Within minutes they were being chased by Nero and that didn’t seem to worry them either. Down the hill from the village they streaked – we hadn’t even seen them go up there. Seeley came flying over the front gatepost. Shebalu, ears flat and obviously enjoying it, rushed on into the forest and up the nearest tree... so fast we just stood there with our mouths open watching, while Nero, defeated, trotted home.
Shebalu was so fast we began to think she liked being chased and went out of her way to invite it. A day or so later she appeared with a ginger torn in pursuit and she certainly wasn’t worried about him. I was weeding a flower-bed when I heard the scuffling of feet and she came careering on to the lawn. Not fast this time – what with horses would be called a controlled canter; head up, bounding joyously as she came. And behind her was the reddest ginger cat I’ve ever seen, though there was nothing controlled about him. More like the wolf after Red Riding Hood he looked, until he saw me and changed his course. Off he shot, like a jet-propelled streak, over the wall and up the lane.
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Double Trouble Shebalu stood there disconsolately. They’d been going to play, she said. And where was guard cat Seeley, whom we’d last seen with her in the vegetable garden? As I went round to the kitchen he appeared from behind the cottage and joined me quietly inside. Discretion was obviously the better part of valour. Was it time for supper? he asked.