Every Living Thing Read online

  Saddest sight of all was Alfred, still sitting bravely upright in his place. He was unbelievably gaunt, his fur had lost its bloom and he stared straight ahead, dead-eyed, as though nothing interested him any more. He was like a feline scarecrow.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. That evening I went round to see Geoff Hatfield.

  “I saw your cat today,” I said, “and he’s going rapidly downhill. Are there any new symptoms?”

  The big man nodded dully. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I was going to ring you. He’s been vomiting a bit.”

  I dug my nails into my palms. “There it is again. Everything points to something abnormal inside him and yet I can’t find a thing.” I bent down and stroked Alfred. “I hate to see him like this. Look at his fur. It used to be so glossy.”

  “That’s right,” replied Geoff. “He’s neglecting himself. He never washes himself now. It’s as though he can’t be bothered. And before, he was always at it. Lick, lick, lick for hours on end.”

  I stared at him. His words had sparked something in my mind. “Lick, lick, lick.” I paused in thought. “Yes…when I think about it, no cat I ever knew washed himself as much as Alfred….” The spark suddenly became a flame and I jerked upright in my chair.

  “Mr. Hatfield,” I said, “I want to do an exploratory laparotomy!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he’s got a hair-ball inside him and I want to operate to see if I’m right.”

  “Open him up, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  He put a hand over his eyes and his chin sank onto his chest. He stayed like that for a long time, then he looked at me with haunted eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never thought of anything like that.”

  “We’ve got to do something or this cat is going to die.”

  He bent and stroked Alfred’s head again and again, then without looking up he spoke in a husky voice. “All right, when?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Next day, in the operating room, as Siegfried and I bent over the sleeping cat, my mind was racing. We had been doing much more small-animal surgery lately, but I had always known what to expect. This time I felt as though I was venturing into the unknown.

  I incised through skin, abdominal muscles and peritoneum and when I reached forward towards the diaphragm I could feel a doughy mass inside the stomach. I cut through the stomach wall and my heart leaped. There it was, a large, matted hair-ball. The cause of all the trouble. Something that wouldn’t show up on an X-ray plate.

  Siegfried grinned. “Well, now we know!”

  “Yes,” I said as the great waves of relief swept over me. “Now we know.”

  And there was more. After I had evacuated and stitched the stomach, I found other, smaller hair-balls, bulging the intestine along its length. These had all to be removed and the bowel wall stitched in several places. I didn’t like this. It meant a bigger trauma and shock to my patient, but finally all was done and only a neat row of skin sutures was visible.

  When I returned Alfred to his home his master could hardly bear to look at him. At length he took a timid glance at the cat, still sleeping under the anaesthetic. “Will he live?” he whispered.

  “He has a good chance,” I replied. “He has had some major surgery and it might take him some time to get over it, but he’s young and strong. He should be all right.”

  I could see Geoff wasn’t convinced, and that was how it was over the next few days. I kept visiting the little room behind the shop to give the cat penicillin injections, and it was obvious that he had made up his mind that Alfred was going to die.

  Mrs. Hatfield was more optimistic, but she was worried about her husband.

  “Eee, he’s given up hope,” she said. “And it’s all because Alfred just lies in his bed all day. I’ve tried to tell ’im that it’ll be a bit o’ time before the cat starts runnin’ around, but he won’t listen.”

  She looked at me with anxious eyes. “And, you know, it’s gettin’ him down, Mr. Herriot. He’s a different man. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever be the same again.”

  I went over and peeped past the curtain into the shop. Geoff was there, doing his job like an automaton. Haggard, unsmiling, silently handing out the sweets. When he did speak it was in a listless monotone and I realised with a sense of shock that his voice had lost all its old timbre. Mrs. Hatfield was right. He was a different man. And, I thought, if he stayed different what would happen to his clientele? So far they had remained faithful, but I had a feeling they would soon start to drift away.

  It was a week before the picture began to change for the better. I entered the sitting room, but Alfred wasn’t there.

  Mrs. Hatfield jumped up from her chair. “He’s a lot better, Mr. Herriot,” she said eagerly. “Eating well and seemed to want to go into t’shop. He’s in there with Geoff now.”

  Again I took a surreptitious look past the curtain. Alfred was back in his place, skinny but sitting upright. But his master didn’t look any better.

  I turned back into the room. “Well, I won’t need to come any more, Mrs. Hatfield. Your cat is well on the way to recovery. He should soon be as good as new.” I was quite confident about this, but I wasn’t so sure about Geoff.

  Soon afterwards, the rush of spring lambing and post-lambing troubles overwhelmed me as it did every year, and I had little time to think about my other cases. It must have been three weeks before I visited the sweet shop to buy some chocolates for Helen. The place was packed and as I pushed my way inside all my fears were rushing back and I looked anxiously at man and cat.

  Alfred, massive and dignified again, sat like a king at the far end of the counter. Geoff was leaning on the counter, with both hands, gazing closely into a lady’s face. “As I understand you, Mrs. Hird, you are looking for something in the nature of a softer sweetmeat.” The rich voice reverberated round the little shop. “Could you perhaps mean a Turkish delight?”

  “Nay, Mr. Hatfield, it wasn’t that…”

  His head fell on his chest and he studied the polished boards of the counter with fierce concentration. Then he looked up and pushed his face nearer to the lady’s. “A pastille, possibly…?”

  “Nay…nay.”

  “A truffle? A soft caramel? A peppermint cream?”

  “No, nowt like that.”

  He straightened up. This was a tough one. He folded his arms across his chest and as he stared into space and took the long inhalation I remembered so well, I could see that he was a big man again, his shoulders spreading wide, his face ruddy and well-fleshed.

  Nothing having evolved from his cogitations, his jaw jutted and he turned his face upwards, seeking further inspiration from the ceiling. Alfred, I noticed, looked upwards, too.

  There was a tense silence as Geoff held his pose, then a smile crept slowly over his noble features. He raised a finger. “Madam,” he said, “I do fancy I have it. Whitish, you said…sometimes pink…rather squashy…May I suggest to you…marshmallow?”

  Mrs. Hird thumped the counter. “Aye, that’s it, Mr. Hatfield. I just couldn’t think of t’name.”

  “Ha-ha, I thought so,” boomed the proprietor, his organ tones rolling to the roof. He laughed, the ladies laughed, and I was positive that Alfred laughed, too.

  All was well again. Everybody in the shop was happy— Geoff, Alfred, the ladies and, not least, James Herriot.

  Chapter 4

  “YOU CALL YOURSELF A vet, but you’re nowt but a robber!”

  Mrs. Sidlow, her fierce little dark eyes crackling with fury, spat out the words and as I looked at her, taking in the lank black hair framing the haggard face with its pointed chin, I thought, not for the first time, how very much she resembled a witch. It was easy to imagine her throwing a leg over a broomstick and zooming off for a quick flip across the moon.

  “All t’country’s talkin’ about you and your big bills,” she continued. “I don’t know how you get away with it, it’s daylight robbery—