Home life
Cat brought in
Alice Thomas Ellis
This is for the attention of Matthew, who is currently travelling round Ireland (or maybe he's gone somewhere else by now) talking to people about cats. I want him to know that Puss is perfectly well and living again in London. He is compiling a book about people and their cats and wished to include Puss and me. So we went off to the country so that she could be photographed in pleasantly rural surround- ings. She was as good as gold for the camera and sat on my knee watching the birdie; she posed on the stairs like any movie goddess; she presented her best profile and stared straight at the lens, although admittedly she refused to be portrayed in the front doorway — we don't know why. Then when the time came to go home the stupid mog disappeared up the mountainside. Furious yells of 'Puss, you blasted cat, where are you, you disastrous- ly dumb animal' produced no result. You know what cats are.
In the end we had to come home without her, having asked Celia in the shop if her son Adam would nip up daily and feed her until somebody found time to race back down the motorway and pick her up. I knew she'd be all right really, but that didn't prevent me from lying awake think- ing about ferrets and weasels and monster owls and mad dogs and gamekeepers who claim that cats eat little pheasants. They do, of course, because pheasants are not merely remarkably thick, they are barely capable of lifting themselves off the ground. On the other hand cats also catch baby rabbits, which should make gamekeepers cheerful. After a few days the third son bowled off and collared her — so that's all right. I know Matthew was worrying about it because he sent a card to say so. I owe an awful lot of letters and I can't find my envelopes.
I was reminded again of Wales the other day. I was whingeing about having to go from west to north London on the train because I suspected it would be full of rapists and muggers travelling round in pursuit of their horrid trade. I wasn't really nervous, you understand. I just felt like whining a bit, so that's what I whined about. The friend who was escorting me to the station had clearly had enough of it, so, calling my bluff, he seized upon another solitary lady and asked her how far she was going. She obviously thought that her expected rapist or mugger had materialised and took a step back, eyes narrowed. Hastily I reassured her that all was well and my friend was merely manifesting a disin- terested if faintly insincere concern for our safety, whereupon she spoke in the accents of my native heath. `You're Welsh,' I observed brilliantly.
When she agreed that this was so, I asked her where she came from and she said 'Bangor' so I said I'd been to school there and she said so had she, and then we had one of those 'do you remember' conversations about Miss Smart and Miss Featherstone and Miss Lawford and Miss Reeves, so the escorting friend went off and left us to it. This type of chat is undeniably of less interest to the outsider than it is to the participants. I made another friend in the quarter of an hour we were on the train. She had four good sons and a little daughter who was driving her mad. Coincidences, coincidences. I met no more muggers than Puss had met ferrets and I am going off to light a candle to the legion of guardian angels.
Previous page
