All Things Bright and Beautiful (28 page)

The gauntlets were a big help and at times they were a veritable godsend. As in the case of Boris. Boris was an enormous blue-black member of the outside cats and my bête noire in more senses than one. I always cherished a private conviction that he had escaped from a zoo; I had never seen a domestic cat with such sleek, writhing muscles, such dedicated ferocity. I’m sure there was a bit of puma in Boris somewhere.

It had been a sad day for the cat colony when he turned up. I have always found it difficult to dislike any animal; most of the ones which try to do us a mischief are activated by fear, but Boris was different; he was a malevolent bully and after his arrival the frequency of my visits increased because of his habit of regularly beating up his colleagues. I was forever stitching up tattered ears, dressing gnawed limbs.

We had one trial of strength fairly early. Mrs. Bond wanted me to give him a worm dose and I had the little tablet all ready held in forceps. How I ever got hold of him I don’t quite know, but I hustled him on to the table and did my wrapping act at lightning speed, swathing him in roll upon roll of stout material. Just for a few seconds I thought I had him as he stared up at me, his great brilliant eyes full of hate. But as I pushed my loaded forceps into his mouth he clamped his teeth viciously down on them and I could feel claws of amazing power tearing inside the sheet. It was all over in moments. A long leg shot out and ripped its way down my wrist, I let go my tight hold of the neck and in a flash Boris sank his teeth through the gauntlet into the ball of my thumb and was away. I was left standing there stupidly, holding the fragmented worm tablet in a bleeding hand and looking at the bunch of ribbons which had once been my wrapping sheet. From then on Boris loathed the very sight of me and the feeling was mutual.

But this was one of the few clouds in a serene sky. I continued to enjoy my visits there and life proceeded on a tranquil course except, perhaps, for some legpulling from my colleagues. They could never understand my willingness to spend so much time over a lot of cats. And of course this fitted in with the general attitude because Siegfried didn’t believe in people keeping pets of any kind. He just couldn’t understand their mentality and propounded his views to anybody who cared to listen. He himself, of course, kept five dogs and two cats. The dogs, all of them, travelled everywhere with him in the car and he fed dogs and cats every day with his own hands—wouldn’t allow anybody else to do the job. In the evening all seven animals would pile themselves round his feet as he sat in his chair by the fire. To this day he is still as vehemently anti-pet as ever, though another generation of waving dogs’ tails almost obscures him as he drives around and he also has several cats, a few tanks of tropical fish and a couple of snakes.

Tristan saw me in action at Mrs. Bond’s on only one occasion. I was collecting some long forceps from the instrument cupboard when he came into the room.

“Anything interesting, Jim?” he asked.

“No, not really. I’m just off to see one of the Bond cats. It’s got a bone stuck between its teeth.”

The young man eyed me ruminatively for a moment. “Think I’ll come with you. I haven’t seen much small animal stuff lately.”

As we went down the garden at the cat establishment I felt a twinge of embarrassment. One of the things which had built up my happy relationship with Mrs. Bond was my tender concern for her charges. Even with the wildest and the fiercest I exhibited only gentleness, patience and solicitude; it wasn’t really an act, it came quite naturally to me. However, I couldn’t help wondering what Tristan would think of my cat bedside manner.

Mrs. Bond in the doorway had summed up the situation in a flash and had two pairs of gauntlets waiting. Tristan looked a little surprised as he received his pair but thanked the lady with typical charm. He looked still more surprised when he entered the kitchen, sniffed the rich atmosphere and surveyed the masses of furry creatures occupying almost every available inch of space.

“Mr. Herriot, I’m afraid it’s Boris who has the bone in his teeth,” Mrs. Bond said.

“Boris!” My stomach lurched. “How on earth are we going to catch him?”

“Oh I’ve been rather clever,” she replied. “I’ve managed to entice him with some of his favourite food into a cat basket.”

Tristan put his hand on a big wicker cage on the table. “In here, is he?” he asked casually. He slipped back the catch and opened the lid. For something like a third of a second the coiled creature within and Tristan regarded each other tensely, then a sleek black body exploded silently from the basket past the young man’s left ear on to the top of a tall cupboard.

“Christ!” said Tristan. “What the hell was that?”

“That,” I said, “was Boris, and now we’ve got to get hold of him again.” I climbed on to a chair, reached slowly on to the cupboard top and started Puss-puss-puss’ing in my most beguiling tone.

After about a minute Tristan appeared to think he had a better idea; he made a sudden leap and grabbed Boris’s tail. But only briefly, because the big cat freed himself in an instant and set off on a whirlwind circuit of the room; along the tops of cupboards and dressers, across the curtains, careening round and round like a wall of death rider.

Tristan stationed himself at a strategic point and as Boris shot past he swiped at him with one of the gauntlets.

“Missed the bloody thing!” he shouted in chagrin. “But here he comes again…take that, you black sod! Damn it, I can’t nail him!”

The docile little inside cats, startled by the scattering of plates and tins and pans and by Tristan’s cries and arm wavings, began to run around in their turn, knocking over whatever Boris had missed. The noise and confusion even got through to Mr. Bond because just for a moment he raised his head and looked around him in mild surprise at the hurtling bodies before returning to his newspaper.

Tristan, flushed with the excitement of the chase had really begun to enjoy himself. I cringed inwardly as he shouted over to me happily.

“Send him on, Jim, I’ll get the bugger next time round!”

We never did catch Boris. We just had to leave the piece of bone to work its own way out, so it wasn’t a successful veterinary visit. But Tristan as we got back into the car smiled contentedly.

“That was great, Jim. I didn’t realise you had such fun with your pussies.”

Mrs. Bond on the other hand, when I next saw her, was rather tight-lipped over the whole thing.

“Mr. Herriot,” she said, “I hope you aren’t going to bring that young man with you again.”

I
WAS BACK AT
Granville Bennett’s again. Back in the tiled operating theatre with the great lamp pouring its harsh light over my colleague’s bowed head, over the animal nurses, the rows of instruments, the little animal stretched on the table.

Until late this afternoon I had no idea that another visit to Hartington was in store for me; not until the doorbell rang as I was finishing a cup of tea and I went along the passage and opened the door and saw Colonel Bosworth on the step. He was holding a wicker cat basket.

“Can I trouble you for a moment, Mr. Herriot?” he said.

His voice sounded different and I looked up at him questioningly. Most people had to look up at Colonel Bosworth with his lean six feet three inches and his tough soldier’s face which matched the D.S.O. and M.C. which he had brought out of the war. I saw quite a lot of him, not only when he came to the surgery but out in the country where he spent most of his time hacking along the quiet roads around Darrowby on a big hunter with two Cairn terriers trotting behind. I liked him. He was a formidable man but he was unfailingly courteous and there was a gentleness in him which showed in his attitude to his animals.

“No trouble,” I replied. “Please come inside.”

In the waiting room he held out the basket. His eyes were strained and there was shock and hurt in his face.

“It’s little Maudie,” he said.

“Maudie…your black cat?” When I had been to his house the little creature had usually been in evidence, rubbing down the colonel’s ankles, jumping on his knee, competing assiduously with the terriers for his attention.

“What’s the matter, is she ill?”

“No…no…” He swallowed and spoke carefully. “She’s had an accident, I’m afraid.”

“What kind of accident?”

“A car struck her. She never goes out into the road in front of the house but for some reason she did this afternoon.”

“I see.” I took the basket from him. “Did the wheel go over her?”

“No, I don’t think it can have done that because she ran back into the house afterwards.”

“Oh well,” I said. “That sounds hopeful. It probably isn’t anything very much.”

The colonel paused for a moment “Mr. Herriot, I wish you were right but it’s…rather frightful. It’s her face you see. Must have been a glancing blow but I…really don’t see how she can live.”

“Oh…as bad as that…I’m sorry. Anyway come through with me and I’ll have a look.”

He shook his head. “No, I’ll stay here if you don’t mind. And there’s just one thing.” He laid his hand briefly on the basket. “If you think, as I do, that it’s hopeless, please put her to sleep immediately. She must not suffer any more.”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment then hurried along the passage to the operating room. I put the basket on the table, slid the wooden rod from its loops and opened the lid. I could see the sleek little black form crouched in the depths and as I stretched my hand out gingerly towards it the head rose slowly and turned towards me with a long, open-mouthed wail of agony.

And it wasn’t just an open mouth. The whole lower jaw was dangling uselessly, the mandible shattered and splintered, and as another chilling cry issued from the basket I had a horrific glimpse of jagged ends of bone gleaming from the froth of blood and saliva.

I closed the basket quickly and leaned on the lid.

“Christ!” I gasped. “Oh Christ!”

I closed my eyes but couldn’t dispel the memory of the grotesque face, the terrible sound of pain and worst of all the eyes filled with the terrified bewilderment which makes animal suffering so unbearable.

With trembling haste I reached behind me to the trolley for the bottle of Nembutal. This was the one thing vets could do, at any rate; cut short this agony with merciful speed. I pulled 5 c.c.’s into the syringe; more than enough—she’d drift into sleep and never wake up again. Opening the basket I reached down and underneath the cat and slipped the needle through the abdominal skin; an intraperitoneal injection would have to do. But as I depressed the plunger it was as though a calmer and less involved person was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Just a minute, Herriot, take it easy. Why don’t you think about this for a bit?”

I stopped after injecting 1 c.c. That would be enough to anaesthetise Maudie. In a few minutes she would feel nothing. Then I closed the lid and began to walk about the room. I had repaired a lot of cat’s broken jaws in my time; they seemed to be prone to this trouble and I had gained much satisfaction from wiring up symphyseal fractures and watching their uneventful healing. But this was different.

After five minutes I opened the basket and lifted the little cat, sound asleep and as limp as a rag doll, on to the table.

I swabbed out the mouth and explored with careful fingers, trying to piece the grisly jigsaw together. The symphysis had separated right enough and that could be fastened together with wire, but how about those mandibular rami, smashed clean through on both sides—in fact there were two fractures on the left. And some of the teeth had been knocked out and others slackened; there was nothing to get hold of. Could they be held together by metal plates screwed into the bone? Maybe…and was there a man with the skill and equipment to do such a job…? I thought I just might know one.

I went over the sleeping animal carefully; there wasn’t a thing amiss except that pathetically drooping jaw. Meditatively I stroked the smooth, shining fur. She was only a young cat with years of life in front of her and as I stood there the decision came to me with a surge of relief and I trotted back along the passage to ask the colonel if I could take Maudie through to Granville Bennett.

It had started to snow heavily when I set out and I was glad it was downhill all the way to Hartington; many of the roads higher up the Dale would soon be impassable on a night like this.

In the Veterinary Hospital I watched the big man drilling, screwing, stitching. It wasn’t the sort of job which could be hurried but it was remarkable how quickly those stubby fingers could work. Even so, we had been in the theatre for nearly an hour and Granville’s complete absorption showed in the long silences broken only by the tinkling of instruments, occasional barking commands and now and then a sudden flare of exasperation. And it wasn’t only the nurses who suffered; I had scrubbed up and had been pressed into service and when I failed to hold the jaw exactly as my colleague desired he exploded in my face.

“Not that bloody way, Jim!…What the hell are you playing at?…No, no, no, no, NO!…Oh God Almighty!”

But at last all was finished and Granville threw off his cap and turned away from the table with that air of finality which made me envy him the first time. He was sweating. In his office he washed his hands, towelled his brow and pulled on an elegant grey jacket from the pocket of which he produced a pipe. It was a different pipe from the last time; I learned in time that all Granville’s pipes were not only beautiful but big and this one had a bowl like a fair sized coffee cup. He rubbed it gently along the side of his nose, gave it a polish with the yellow cloth he always seemed to carry and held it lovingly against the light.

“Straight grain, Jim. Superb, isn’t it?”

He contentedly scooped tobacco from his vast pouch, ignited it and puffed a cloud of delectable smoke at me before taking me by the arm. “Come on, laddie. I’ll show you round while they’re clearing up in there.”

We did a tour of the hospital, taking in the waiting and consulting rooms, X-ray room, dispensary and of course the office with its impressive card index system with case histories of all patients, but the bit I enjoyed most was walking along the row of heated cubicles where an assortment of animals were recovering from their operations.