Paws and Whiskers (21 page)

From her position on the windowsill

she gives the garden her consideration.

Later, both the camellias and the ferns

will undergo a full investigation.

First, she will be a small domestic sphinx

unmoving on the carpet, enigmatic,

thinking: there was a fire here last night

and now it’s gone. All life is problematic.

The second serious question of the day

is: where to sleep? Which bed or chair to grace?

The velvet spaces of the chesterfield?

Or should she seek a woolly resting place?

They sometimes leave (she thinks) jerseys on beds,

or there’s a shawl spread softly on a chair.

Also a cupboard full of fluffy towels

and gurgling darkness . . . maybe she’ll go there.

She steps into the garden after lunch:

a meal she’d hoped might magically be prawns

but wasn’t. She is philosophical.

It is the hour for stalking things on lawns.

Squirrels are jet-propelled and every bird

annoyingly decides to fly away.

She races up a tree trunk, just to show

she might catch something, on some other day.

And meanwhile, she’ll adopt a watchful pose

on a convenient step, warm in the sun,

until her head grows heavy, droops and falls.

The work of sleepy cats is never done.

The moths come out at night. Then she’s awake.

Their grey and blurring wings catch on her claws.

When they are still, she stretches bends and yawns

and with a sharp pink tongue, tidies her paws.

Adèle Geras

PETS I HAVE HAD

All children like pets, especially, of course, dogs and cats, and even better than those they like puppies and kittens. I only had one pet as a child, and that was a kitten who was sent away after I had had it for a fortnight. I was heart-broken. I called it Chippy, I don’t know why, and I used to rush home from school to play with it.

My mother was not very fond of animals. My father loved all wild animals and birds, but he was not interested in dogs or cats because he loved his garden so much. He couldn’t bear to think of animals rushing over his beautiful patches of violets, or breaking his delphiniums.

So my brothers and I never had any pets at all, and I used to spend much of my time playing with the kittens and puppies belonging to friends of mine. If you love animals you have got to be with them somehow, even if you haven’t any of your own.

I kept caterpillars though, but they were not allowed in the house. I had to keep them at the bottom of the garden in a shed. I couldn’t
love
my caterpillars, though I liked them, and never forgot to feed them, and I liked feeling their funny clingy feet walking over my hand. The only caterpillars I really liked immensely were the furry ‘woolly-bear’ ones – you know the kind I mean. You can stroke them. They are the hairy caterpillars of the tiger-moth and are lovely things.

I couldn’t
love
caterpillars because it seemed rather a waste of love when they were going to stop being caterpillars and turn into something else. That really did seem like magic to me. I used to try very hard to be there when the chrysalis split open and out came a moth or a butterfly with limp and draggled wings.

‘I will have all the cats and dogs and birds and fish I want when I am grown-up,’ I said to myself. ‘If I have to save for a year I’ll buy a dog of my own. And if I have children when I am grown-up and
married, they shall have all the pets they want.’

That’s one of the nice things about being a child – if you haven’t got something you badly want you can always plan to have it when you are grown-up. And if you are determined enough you
do
get it, though it usually means working very hard. But things are much more precious to you if you have to work for them, and seem much more worth-while then than if you just have them given to you.

Well, of course, when I was grown-up, I did get pets of my own; all kinds, from dogs and cats to goldfish and hedgehogs!

First I had a dog called Bobs. He was a handsome smooth-haired fox-terrier with a fine head. He was very clever indeed. If I said ‘Die for the King, Bobs!’ he would at once roll over and pretend to be dead. And there he would lie, perfectly still, till I said ‘Come alive!’ Then he would jump up and look for the biscuit he always got when he was a clever dog!

He could shut the door for me too. Not only that but he would listen for the ‘click’ of the door, to make sure it was properly shut. He could sit up and trust, of course, even when a biscuit was balanced on his nose. I had him for years, a faithful companion, merry and intelligent.

Then I had a wife for him, an amusing little smooth-haired
terrier called Sandy. Sandy was white with a sandy-coloured head, and she was a dear, affectionate little dog. The two of them lived in a little dog-house together. It had two doors, a partition between the two rooms, and a bench in each room, raised from the floor. Here Sandy had many beautiful puppies, so Gillian and Imogen, my two children, grew up always surrounded by dogs.

I had more fox-terriers after that, and the last was Topsy, a funny little dog with a black head, and just about the smallest brain I should think any dog ever had. You will see how queer she was when you hear the following story!

One day my children thought they would like to keep mice. So they bought some, and took them up to the nursery. They put the mice on a high book-case, out of Topsy’s way.

Topsy saw them running about in their cage, of course, and she sat down in front of the book-case and watched them for hours.

We thought it was silly of Topsy to sit and stare like that for hours and as the mice smelt rather strongly, I took the cage down to the verandah and put it there, where the mice were very happy. I put a clock on the book-case in the place where the mice had been.

Topsy sat for hours and stared at the clock! We
never could make out what she thought – whether she thought the mice had turned into the clock, or lived inside it, or what!

Anyway we really couldn’t bear to see Topsy staring steadfastly at the clock all day long, so we put it on the mantel-piece and then there was nothing on the book-case at all. But dear old Topsy still sat there, staring at nothing for hours and hours! She really was an absurd little dog.

Then one day she got into the garden next door and, for some extraordinary reason, killed nineteen hens and chicks – so we had to send poor Topsy away to someone who lived in a town, where there were no hens near. We were all very sad.

Then I had a dear little dog called Lassie, a black cocker spaniel. And now I have Laddie, also a spaniel, who appears in many of my books as Loony. We often think that Loony would be a better name for him than Laddie, because he really
is
such a lunatic sometimes!

He fetches all the mats and the cushions and some of the towels, and drapes them about the house – in the hall is one of his favourite places! He sometimes goes completely mad and tears up and down the stairs and round and round the rooms at top speed. Yes, Loony would certainly be a better name for him!

I couldn’t tell you how many cats and kittens I have had since I was grown up. I love Siamese cats, with their creamy coats, dark brown points and strange, brilliant blue eyes. I bred them for years, and many a time I have had as many as ten or twelve small Siamese kittens racing about, plaguing the life out of Bobs or Sandy. They are most amusing, and are really more like dogs than cats.

They look a bit like monkeys, they act rather like squirrels in the way they sit up and hold things, they have some of the nature of a dog – and yet they are cats! What a peculiar mixture! The one I have now, Bimbo, licks me like a dog, and follows me about like a dog too.

He will go after a little ball and bring it back in his mouth. I say ‘Drop it!’ and he drops it for me to throw. He will hunt for anything I have hidden till he finds it. He is really beautiful.

I have had other cats, of course – tabby ones – a magnificent ginger one called Rufus – a black one with white socks. But Bimbo is the cleverest of them all.

Enid Blyton

MY PETS

Sometimes I think the ages of our lives have been defined by the pets who came to live with us. So childhood was a goldfish I won at a country fair, called Swimsy. She/he swam around the bowl mesmerizingly and went barracuda-line at feeding time. So we fed him/her a lot.