Every Living Thing Read online

  Helen gave them some food and once they were concentrating on the food, I crept up on them and threw a fisherman’s landing net over them. After a struggle I was able to divine that the tortoiseshell was a female and the black and white a male.

  “Good,” said Helen. “I’ll call them Olly and Ginny.”

  “Why Olly?”

  “Don’t really know. He looks like an Olly. I like the name.”

  “Oh, and how about Ginny?”

  “Short for Ginger.”

  “She’s not really ginger, she’s tortoiseshell.”

  “Well, she’s a bit ginger.”

  I left it at that.

  Over the next few months they grew rapidly and my veterinary mind decided something else. I had to neuter them. And it was then that I was confronted for the first time with a problem that was to worry me for years—how to minister to the veterinary needs of animals I was unable even to touch.

  The first time, when they were half grown, it wasn’t so bad. Again I slunk up on them with my net when they were feeding and managed to bundle them into a cat cage from which they looked at me with terrified and, I imagined, accusing eyes.

  In the surgery, as Siegfried and I lifted them one by one from the cage and administered the intravenous anaesthetic, I was struck by the fact that though they were terror-stricken at being in an enclosed space for the first time in their lives and by being grasped and restrained by humans, they were singularly easy to handle. Many of our domesticated feline patients were fighting furies until we had lulled them to sleep, and cats, with claws as well as teeth for weapons, can inflict a fair amount of damage, but Olly and Ginny, though they struggled frantically, made no attempt to bite, never unsheathed their claws.

  Siegfried put it briefly. “These little things are scared stiff, but they’re absolutely docile. I wonder how many wild cats are like this.”

  I felt a little strange as I carried out the operations, looking down at the small sleeping forms. These were my cats, yet it was the first time I was able to touch them as I wished, to examine them closely and appreciate the beauty of their fur and colourings.

  When they had come out of the anaesthetic I took them home, and when I released the two of them from the cage they scampered up to their home in the log shed. As was usual following such minor operations, they showed no after-effects, but they clearly had unpleasant memories of me. During the next few weeks they came close to Helen as she fed them but fled immediately at the sight of me. All my attempts to catch Ginny to remove the single little stitch in her spay incision were fruitless. That stitch remained for ever and I realised that Herriot had been cast firmly as the villain of the piece, the character who would grab you and bundle you into a wire cage if you gave him half a chance.

  It soon became clear that things were going to stay that way, because as the months passed and Helen plied them with all manner of titbits and they grew into truly handsome, sleek cats, they would come arching along the wall top when she appeared at the back-door, but I had only to poke my head from the door to send them streaking away out of sight. I was the chap to be avoided at all times and it rankled with me because I have always been fond of cats and I had become particularly attached to these two. The day finally arrived when Helen was able to stroke them gently as they ate and my chagrin deepened at the sight.

  Usually they slept in the log shed but occasionally they disappeared to somewhere unknown and stayed away for a few days, and we used to wonder if they had abandoned us or if something had happened to them. When they reappeared, Helen would shout to me in great relief, “They’re back, Jim, they’re back!” They had become part of our lives.

  Summer lengthened into autumn and when the bitter Yorkshire winter set in we marvelled at their hardiness. We used to feel terrible, watching them from our warm kitchen as they sat out in the frost and snow, but no matter how harsh the weather, nothing would induce either of them to set foot inside the house. Warmth and comfort had no appeal for them.

  When the weather was fine we had a lot of fun just watching them. We could see right up into the log shed from our kitchen, and it was fascinating to observe their happy relationship. They were such friends. Totally inseparable, they spent hours licking each other and rolling about together in gentle play and they never pushed each other out of the way when they were given their food. At night we could see the two furry little forms curled close together in the straw.

  Then there was a time when we thought everything had changed for ever. The cats did one of their disappearances and as day followed day we became more anxious. Each morning, Helen started her day with the cry of “Olly, Ginny,” which always brought the two of them trotting down from their dwelling, but they did not appear, and when a week passed and then two we had almost run out of hope.

  When we came back from our half-day in Brawton, Helen ran to the kitchen and looked out. The cats knew our habits and they would always be sitting waiting for her but the empty wall stretched away and the log shed was deserted. “Do you think they’ve gone for good, Jim?” she said.

  I shrugged. “It’s beginning to look like it. You remember what old Herbert said about that family of cats. Maybe they’re nomads at heart—gone off to pastures new.”

  Helen’s face was doleful. “I can’t believe it. They seemed so happy here. Oh, I hope nothing terrible has happened to them.” Sadly she began to put her shopping away and she was silent all evening. My attempts to cheer her up were half-hearted because I was wrapped in a blanket of misery myself.

  Strangely, it was the very next morning when I heard Helen’s usual cry, but this time it wasn’t a happy one.

  She ran into the sitting room. “They’re back, Jim,” she said breathlessly, “but I think they’re dying!”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Oh, they look awful! They’re desperately ill—I’m sure they’re dying.”

  I hurried through to the kitchen with her and looked through the window. The cats were sitting there side by side on the wall a few feet away. A watery discharge ran from their eyes, which were almost closed, more fluid poured from their nostrils and saliva drooled from their mouths. Their bodies shook from a continuous sneezing and coughing.

  They were thin and scraggly, unrecognisable as the sleek creatures we knew so well, and their appearance was made more pitiful by their situation in the teeth of a piercing east wind that tore at their fur and made their attempts to open their eyes even more painful.

  Helen opened the back-door. “Olly, Ginny, what’s happened to you?” she cried.

  A remarkable thing happened then. At the sound of her voice, the cats hopped carefully from the wall and walked unhesitatingly through the door into the kitchen. It was the first time they had been under our roof.

  “Look at that!” Helen exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. They must be really ill. But what is it, Jim? Have they been poisoned?”

  I shook my head. “No, they’ve got cat ’flu.”

  “You can tell?”

  “Oh yes, this is classical.”

  “And will they die?”

  I rubbed my chin. “I don’t think so.” I wanted to sound reassuring, but I wondered. Feline virus rhinotracheitis had a fairly low mortality rate, but bad cases can die and these cats were very bad indeed. “Anyway, close the door, Helen, and I’ll see if they’ll let me examine them.”

  But at the sight of the closing door, both cats bolted back outside.

  “Open up again,” I cried and, after a moment’s hesitation, the cats walked back into the kitchen.

  I looked at them in astonishment. “Would you believe it? They haven’t come in here for shelter, they’ve come for help!”

  And there was no doubt about it. The two of them sat there, side by side, waiting for us to do something for them.

  “The question is,” I said, “will they allow their bête noire to get near them? We’d better leave the back-door open so they don’t feel threatened.”

  I