Praise for Cats in the Belfry
A chaotic, hilarious and heart-wrenching love affair with
this most characterful of feline breeds
The People s Friend
If you read Cats in the Belfry the first time round, be prepared
to be enchanted all over again. If you haven t, then expect to
laugh out loud, shed a few tears and be totally captivated by
Doreen s stories of her playful and often naughty Siamese
cats
Your Cat magazine
An invasion of mice prompted Tovey and her husband
to acquire a cat or rather for Sugieh to acquire them. A
beautiful Siamese, Sugieh turned out to be a tempestuous,
iron-willed prima donna who soon had her running circles
around her. And that s before she had kittens! A funny and
poignant reflection of life with a Siamese, that is full of
cheer
The Good Book Guide
Cats in the Belfry will ring bells with anyone who s ever been
charmed or driven to distraction by a feline
The Weekly News
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A warm, witty and moving cat classic. A must for all cat
lovers
Living for Retirement
Absolutely enchanting... I thoroughly recommend it... One
of the few books which caused me to laugh out loud, and it
sums up the Siamese character beautifully
www.summerdown.co.uk
The most enchanting cat book ever
Jilly Cooper
Every so often, there comes along a book or if you re
lucky, books which gladden the heart, cheer the soul and
actually immerse the reader in the narrative. Such books
are written by Doreen Tovey
Cat World
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CATS
IN MAY
DOREEN TOVEY
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CATS IN MAY
Elek Books edition published 1959
Bantam Books edition published 1993
This edition published in 2006 by Summersdale Publishers
Ltd.
Copyright © Doreen Tovey 1959
All rights reserved.
The right of Doreen Tovey to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK
www.summersdale.com
Printed and bound in Great Britain.
ISBN 1 84024 497 6
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Also by Doreen Tovey:
Cats in the Belfry
Donkey Work
Life with Grandma
Raining Cats and Donkeys
The New Boy
Double Trouble
Making the Horse Laugh
The Coming of Saska
A Comfort of Cats
Roses Round the Door
Waiting in the Wings
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Contents
1 Seen Him on Television?............................................11
2 Up Drains and at em.................................................19
3 The Reason Why........................................................30
4 Blondin.......................................................................40
5 The Story of a Squirrel...............................................50
6 Sidney Has Problems..................................................59
7 And So to Spain..........................................................68
8 Fire Down Below ......................................................78
9 The Great Siamese Revolution ................................88
10 The Defeat of Samson................................................97
11 Solomon s Friend Timothy......................................108
12 Highly Entertaining..................................................117
13 With Solder and Crowbar........................................127
14 Right up the Pole......................................................136
15 Cats in May...............................................................144
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ONE
Seen Him on Television?
t was stupid to write about those cats, of course. All it
Idid like getting their names in the Sunday papers was
make them worse than ever.
In the old days when people stopped to talk to us over
the cottage gate the cats usually disappeared immediately.
Particularly if they thought anybody wanted to talk about
them.
Got a mouse to catch, Sheba would say, marching
determinedly up the garden when people pleaded for a
closer view of the dear little Blue Siamese. Going for a
Walk, roared Solomon, beating it rapidly into the woods
when somebody remarked what a big man he was and did
he bite? Wasn t coming back Ever, he would add when
people committed the unforgivable insult and asked as
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Cats in May
they often did, because he was so big and dark and Sheba
so small and silvery whether he was her mother. Often
after the visitors had gone I would go after him into the
woods and there he d be, sitting forlornly under a pine tree
as only a Siamese can wondering, he said sadly as I heaved
him over my shoulder and carried him back to the cottage,
whether to go and live with the foxes or join the Foreign
Legion.
Fame changed all that. Any time anybody stopped to talk
to us now, even if it was only the coal man asking whether
he should come through the front gate or the back, within
seconds they would materialise from nowhere. Sheba
streaking down the path in a cloud of dust, skidding to a
breathless halt on the wall to ask coyly whether they had
read about her, Solomon swaying round the corner on
long, languid legs to assure anybody who was interested
that he had written it all himself.
How that cat could do it I don t know. Every single
sentence of that book had been written unless I locked
him out of the house, when he sat on the garden wall gazing
at passers-by with sad blue eyes and telling them that he
was unwanted, or shut him in the garage where he sat and
screamed blue murder to the accompaniment of Solomon
leaping round the place like an overgrown grasshopper,
saying the typewriter was bad for his nerves.
I felt like a criminal every time I used it. Sometimes,
indeed, seeing him stretched out on the rug with the firelight
playing on his sleek cream stomach and his great black head
pillowed blissfully on Sheba s small blue one, I would sneak
upstairs and tap out a few lines in the spare room rather
than disturb him. It was no use. Solomon, deaf as a post
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Seen Him on Television?
when he was in the woods and I, trying to get him in, was
rushing up and down the lane yodelling Tollywollywolly
like something out of Autumn Crocus (it was the only call
he would answer and the fact that it made people look at
me rather oddly and back rapidly up the lane again was no
doubt his idea of a huge Siamese joke) Solomon, when it
came to typewriters, had ears like a hawk.
One of our neighbours, long used to our cats peering
nosily through her windows to see what she was doing
and even, on occasion, marching in procession through
her cottage from front to back, had an awful shock one day
when she looked up from a spot of one-finger typing on
her husband s portable to see Solomon on her windowsill
leaping up and down like mad. She rang me at once in a
panic. He d gone nuts at last, she said. (There was no
need to ask who, of course. The whole village had been
anticipating it ever since he was born.) Would I come and
fetch him, or should she call the Vet?
She could hardly believe it when I told her it was just his
reaction to a typewriter. In that case, she said, why didn t
he go away? Why stand on her windowsill jumping round
like a circus flea? Why indeed, except that it was typical
of him. Creep silently to the spare room or the kitchen;
even, as I did on occasions, slink out, typewriter in hand, to
the potting shed and after a couple of minutes Solomon
would appear, gazing at me in sad reproach and, every time
I touched a key, leaping several feet in the air.
Even after I d shut down the typewriter in disgust he still
went on doing it. Move a foot up he went like a rocket.
Lift the coal-tongs somebody, he said, turning a full circle
in mid-air and landing defensively on the bureau, was After
13
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Cats in May
Him. One day after a typing session the Rector spoke to
him unexpectedly from behind, as he was drinking from
a flower vase on the hall table, and poor old Sol was so
scared he nearly hit the ceiling. It cost us a new noiseless
typewriter to overcome that foible, and if anybody accuses
us of being silly about animals I can assure them that it
wasn t bought on Solomon s account, but because by that
time Charles s and my nerves were so bad we were going
round like grasshoppers too.
By the time the book came out Solomon had forgotten
the typewriter, but we hadn t. When we were asked to take
them to a Siamese party in London we turned green and
refused on the spot. Solomon s nerves were bad, we said,
and so were ours. If we took him on a train we d be lucky to
get to London in one piece. Bring Sheba, they said. But we
couldn t do that either. Solomon, left on his own even for
half an hour as we knew from the time Sheba s boyfriend
bit her on the tail and we had to rush her to the Vet for
treatment sat in the hall window so that the whole village
could see how we were neglecting him, and howled the
place down.
So we went to the party on our own and that was how the
trouble started, because there we met some cats who did
know how to behave themselves. A dear old Siamese queen
called Suki who, judging from her crumpled ear and battle
scars, had been hell-on-wheels in her day but sat there
looking placidly out of her frail wickerwork cage as if she
were Victoria herself. Bartholomew and Margharita, two
sleek young Seal Points from Chelsea who drank sherry
and looked so much like Solomon that in the midst of all
the gaiety my heart sank like a stone thinking of what he
14
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Seen Him on Television?
was probably doing at that very moment either ripping
up the stair carpet or broadcasting basso profundo to the
whole village that we d gone away and left him. And, most
impressive of all, Tig, who d come straight from being
televised at Lime Grove.
Tig was very like Solomon too, except that though his
mistress looked rather harassed and had her hat over one
eye in the normal way of Siamese owners he himself was
as calm as a cucumber. When she produced his earth pan
saying she hoped nobody minded but he d been too busy
up till now and it wasn t good for him to go all that time
with a full bladder he looked at her with disdain. Didn t have
a bladder, he said, strolling off to greet the pressmen and
photographers as to the manner born. And sure enough,
though every time we saw his owner she was looking more
and more worried and still trailing him anxiously with his
little pan, such was his self-control that the whole evening
Tig, as became a public figure, firmly declined to use it.
I was green with envy as we rolled home on the train
that night. All those cats behaving like society s top ten,
even down to Tig s superb refusal of the earth box& Tig
himself, suave, controlled, self-assured, actually appearing
on television& What, I asked Charles wistfully, did he think
would happen if our two were ever asked to go on TV?
Probably be quite all right, murmured Charles, relaxing
blissfully in his seat and prepared at that moment to view
anything even Siamese cats through a champagne-
coloured haze. Probably we (which meant me) made too
much fuss about taking them places. Our cats, he said,
patting his headrest affectionately in lieu of Sheba s small
blue rump before he fell asleep, would absolutely knock
15
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Cats in May
em on TV. Which explains why the next day, when the
BBC rang up to say they had heard about the party and
the book and what about Solomon and Sheba going on a
programme that night, we, without a second thought, said
yes.
It was a mistake, of course. I realised it the moment I
put down the receiver and saw Solomon watching me
with dark, Oriental suspicion from the doorway. It was a
habit of his when I was on the phone and though it no
doubt sprang from curiosity as to what on earth I was doing
talking to myself, and probably a firm conviction that I
was mad and if he hung around long enough I might do
something interesting, the sight of him sitting there like
some character from a Limehouse thriller sent a nervous
shiver up my back.
It was a well-founded shiver, too. The moment Charles
brought the cat baskets in through one door ready for
the journey, Solomon, hastily abandoning his role of Fu
Manchu, put his ears down and marched determinedly
out through the other. By the time we had cornered him
flat under the bed yelling he wasn t going any place, it was
winter and we knew he never went anywhere in the winter
and hauled Sheba down from the top of the wardrobe
where she had gone not because she was scared but because
she wanted Charles to chase her too, it was obvious what
our television appearance was going to be like. Complete
and utter bedlam.
It was too. Mercifully by the time we arrived at the studio
what with my nerves, Solomon gnawing frantically
away at his basket like an outsize termite, and Charles, the
effect of the champagne having worn off, informing me
16
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Seen Him on Television?
dramatically as we drove through the night that if those
damned cats made a fool of him in public he d be ruined,
that was all, absolutely ruined I was practically in a coma.
What I do remember of that night, however, will haunt me
till I die.
It rises before me now like a horrible dream. The
procession through the foyer with Charles carrying
Sheba, me carrying Solomon, and from the look on his
face that was something the BBC hadn t thought of an
assistant producer gingerly carrying Solomon s earth box.
The briefing in the studio, with the producer practisedly
arranging what I should say and where I should sit while
I grew hotter and hotter thinking of what might happen
when the baskets were opened. The awful moment came
when they were opened and, in a matter of seconds, that
quiet, dignified studio was transformed into a merry-go-
round with Charles and the producer belting in furious
circles after Solomon, who was going it like a racehorse and
still shouting we knew he never went anywhere in winter.
The nightmare intervals when they caught him, thrust him
feverishly into my arms and, in voices hoarse with anxiety,
implored me for Pete s sake to hold him this time. And the
paralysing climax when, with Solomon s claws stuck in my
back like grappling hooks, Sheba smirking complacently at
the camera from my lap and the producer praying aloud
in the control room, we went on the air to be greeted, of
all the damfool opening remarks, by an interviewer saying
he understood I had the cats in the studio with me that
evening.
What happened after that, beyond Solomon leaping from
my back with one deafening yell and heading for a ventilator,
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Cats in May
I never knew. I gather I said something about him being
able to open the refrigerator, because next day two old
ladies turned up to watch him do it. Sheba obviously gave
her usual smug account of herself because we had a letter
from a woman offering to adopt her. Dear wee thing, she
called her, not knowing that the one and only time we d
got Solomon to settle on my lap for half a second the little
perisher had nipped him surreptitiously in the rear and set
him off again like a rocket.
I dimly remember, too, Charles driving us home again,
pounding his forehead with his clenched fist and asking
brokenly why it had to be him, him, that these things
happened to.
I didn t really recover consciousness till the next day,
however. Next day when the Rector came to see how I
was and ask after Solomon, for whom, he said, it must have
been a terrible, terrible ordeal. At that moment, Solomon
hove into view. Not cringing, cowed or shaking with fright
as one might have expected, but lounging loftily along with
what was soon to be known as his Rex Harrison walk. He
greeted the Rector with a loud bass bellow as he came up.
Had he, he enquired airily pausing in the doorway so that
we might get the full effect, while behind his glasses the
Rector s eyes grew round as a pair of poached eggs seen
him on Television?
18
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