something comforting but nothing stemmed the flow of racking sobs.
Feeling helpless and inadequate I could only sit close to her and
stroke the back of her head. Maybe I could have said something if I
hadn't felt just about as bad myself.
You get over these things in time. After all, we told ourselves, it
wasn't as though Oscar had died or got lost again--he had gone to a
good family who would look after him. In fact he had really gone
home. And of course, we still had our much-loved Sam, although he
didn't help in the early stages by sniffing disconsolately where
Oscar's bed used to lie, then collapsing on the rug with a long,
lugubrious sigh. There was one other thing, too. I had a little
notion forming in my mind, an idea which I would spring on Helen
when the time was right. It was about a month after that shattering
night and we were coming out of the cinema at Brawton at the end of
our half day. I looked at my watch. "Only eight o"clock," I said.
"How about going to see Oscar?" Helen looked at me in surprise. "You
mean--drive on to Wederly?" "Yes, it's only about five miles." A
smile crept slowly across her face. "That would be lovely. But do
you think they would mind?" "The Gibbonses? No, I'm sure they
wouldn't. Let's go." Wederly was a big village and the ploughman's
cottage was at the far end a few yards beyond the Methodist chapel.
I pushed open the garden gate and we walked down the path. A busy-
looking little woman answered my knock. She was drying her hands on
a striped towel. "Mrs. Gibbons?" I said. "Aye, that's me." "I'm
James Herriot--and this is my wife." Her eyes widened
uncomprehendingly. Clearly the name meant nothing to her. "We had
your cat for a while," I added. Suddenly she grinned and waved her
towel at us. "Oh, aye, ah remember now. Sep told me about you. Come
in, come in!" The big kitchen-living room was a tableau of life with
six children and thirty shillings a week. Battered furniture, rows
of much-mended washing on a pulley, black cooking range and a
general air of chaos. Sep got up from his place by the fire, put
down his newspaper, took off a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and
shook hands. He waved Helen to a sagging armchair. "Well, it's right
nice to see you. Ah've often spoke of ye to t'missus." His wife hung
up her towel. "Yes, and I'm glad to meet ye both. I'll get some tea
in a minnit." She laughed and dragged a bucket of muddy water into a
corner. "I've been washing football jerseys. Them lads just handed
them to me tonight--as if I haven't enough to do." As she ran the
water into the kettle I peeped surreptitiously around me and I
noticed Helen doing the same. But we searched in vain. There was no
sign of a cat. Surely he couldn't have run away again? With a
growing feeling of dismay I realised that my little scheme could
backfire devastatingly. It wasn't until the tea had been made and
poured that I dared to raise the subject. "How--was I asked
diffidently, "how is--er--Tiger?" "Oh, he's grand," the little
woman replied briskly. She glanced up at the clock on the
mantelpiece. "He should be back any time now, then you'll be able to
see "im." As she spoke, Sep raised a finger. "Ah think ah can hear
"im now." He walked over and opened the door and our Oscar strode in
with all his old grace and majesty. He took one look at Helen and
leaped on to her lap. With a cry of delight she put down her cup and
stroked the beautiful fur as the cat arched himself against her hand
and the familiar purr echoed round the room. "He knows me," she
murmured. "He knows me." Sep nodded and smiled. "He does that. You
were good to "im. He'll never forget ye, and we won't either, will
we, Mother?" "No, we won't, Mrs. Herriot," his wife said as she
applied butter to a slice of gingerbread. "That was a kind thing ye
did for us and I "ope you'll come and see us all whenever you're
near." "Well, thank you," I said. "We'd love to--we're often in
Brawton." I went over and tickled Oscar's chin, then I turned again
to Mrs. Gibbons. "By the way, it's after nine o"clock. Where has he
been till now?" She poised her butter knife and looked into space.
"Let's see, now," she said. "It's Thursday, isn't it? Ah yes, it's
"is night for the yoga class."
Boris and Mrs. Bond's Cat Establishment
"I work for cats." That was how Mrs. Bond introduced herself on my
first visit, gripping my hand firmly and thrusting out her jaw
defiantly as though challenging me to make something of it. She was
a big woman with a strong, high-cheekboned face and a commanding
presence and I wouldn't have argued with her anyway, so I nodded
gravely as though I fully understood and agreed, and allowed her to
lead me into the house. I saw at once what she meant. The big
kitchen-living room had been completely given over to cats. There
were cats on the sofas and chairs and spilling in cascades on to the
floor, cats sitting in rows along the window sills and right in the
middle of it all, little Mr. Bond, pallid, wispy-moustached, in his
shirt sleeves reading a newspaper. It was a scene which was going to
become very familiar. A lot of the cats were obviously uncastrated
toms because the atmosphere was vibrant with their distinctive
smell--a fierce pungency which overwhelmed even the sickly wisps
from the big saucepans of nameless cat food bubbling on the stove.
And Mr. Bond was always there, always in his shirt sleeves and
reading his paper, a lonely little island in a sea of cats. I had
heard of the Bonds, of course. They were Londoners who for some
obscure reason had picked on North Yorkshire for their retirement.
People said they had a "bit o" brass" and they had bought an old
house on the outskirts of Darrowby where they kept themselves to
themselves--and the cats. I had heard that Mrs. Bond was in the
habit of taking in strays and feeding them and giving them a home if
they wanted it and this had predisposed me in her favour, because in
my experience the unfortunate feline species seemed to be fair game
for every kind of cruelty and neglect. They shot cats, threw things
at them, starved them and set their dogs on them for fun. It was
good to see somebody taking their side. My patient on this first
visit was no more than a big kitten, a terrified little blob of
black and white crouching in a corner. "He's one of the outside cats,
" Mrs. Bond boomed. "Outside cats?" "Yes. All these you see here are
the inside cats. The others are the really wild ones who simply
refuse to enter the house. I feed them, of course, but the only time
they come indoors is when they are ill." "I see." "I've had
frightful trouble catching this one. I'm worried about his eyes--
there seemed to be a skin growing over them, and I do hope you can
do something for him. His name, by the way, is George." "George? Ah
yes, quite." I advanced cautiously on the little half-grown animal
and was greeted by a waving set of claws and a series of open-
mouthed spittings. He was trapped in his corner or he would have
been off with the speed of light. Examining him was going to be a
problem. I turned to Mrs. Bond. "Could you let me have a sheet of
some kind? An old ironing sheet would do. I'm going to have to wrap
him up." "Wrap him up?" Mrs. Bond looked very doubtful but she
disappeared into another room and returned with a tattered sheet of
cotton which looked just right. I cleared the table of an amazing
variety of cat feeding dishes, cat books, cat medicines and spread
out the sheet, then I approached my patient again. You can't be in a
hurry in a situation like this and it took me perhaps five minutes
of wheedling and "puss-pussing" while I brought my hand nearer and
nearer. When I got as far as being able to stroke his cheek I made a
quick grab at the scruff of his neck and finally bore George,
protesting bitterly and lashing out in all directions, over to the
table. There, still holding tightly to his scruff, I laid him on the
sheet and started the wrapping operation. This is something which
has to be done quite often with obstreperous felines and, although I
say it, I am rather good at it. The idea is to make a neat, tight
roll, leaving the relevant piece of cat exposed; it may be an
injured paw, perhaps the tail, and in this case of course the head.
I think it was the beginning of Mrs. Bond's unquestioning faith in
me when she saw me quickly enveloping that cat till all you could
see of him was a small black and white head protruding from an
immovable cocoon of cloth. He and I were now facing each other, more
or less eyeball to eyeball, and George couldn't do a thing about it.
As I say, I rather pride myself on this little expertise and even
today my veterinary colleagues have been known to remark: "Old
Herriot may be limited in many respects but by God he can wrap a cat.
" As it turned out, there wasn't a skin growing over Alfred's eyes.
There never is. "He's got a paralysis of the third eyelid, Mrs. Bond.
Animals have this membrane which flicks across the eye to protect it.
In this case it hasn't gone back, probably because the cat is in low
weakened him. I'll give him an injection of vitamins and leave you
some powder to put in his food if you could keep him in for a few
days. I think he'll be all right in a week or two." The injection
presented no problems with Alfred furious but helpless inside his
sheet and I had come to the end of my first visit to Mrs. Bond's.
It was the first of many. The lady and I established an immediate
rapport which was strengthened by the fact that I was always
prepared to spend time over her assorted charges; crawling on my
stomach under piles of logs in the outhouses to reach the outside
cats, coaxing them down from trees, stalking them endlessly through
the shrubbery. But from my point of view it was rewarding in many
ways. For instance there was the diversity of names she had for her
cats. True to her London upbringing she had named many of the toms
after the great Arsenal team of those days. There was Eddie Hapgood,
Cliff Bastin, Ted Drake, Wilf Copping, but she did slip up in one
case because Alex James had kittens three times a year with
unfailing regularity. Then there was her way of calling them home.
The first time I saw her at this was on a still summer evening. The
two cats she wanted me to see were out in the garden somewhere and I
walked with her to the back door where she halted, clasped her hands
across her bosom, closed her eyes and gave tongue in a mellifluous
contralto. "Bates, Bates, Bates, Ba-hates." She actually sang out
the words in a reverent monotone except for a delightful little lilt
on the "Ba-hates." Then once more she inflated her ample rib cage
like an operatic prima donna and out it came again, delivered with
the utmost feeling. "Bates, Bates, Bates, Ba-hates." Anyway it
worked, because Bates the cat came trotting from behind a clump of
laurel. There remained the other patient and I watched Mrs. Bond
with interest. She took up the same stance, breathed in, closed her
eyes, composed her features into a sweet half-smile and started
again. "Seven-times-three, Seven-times-three, Seven-times-three-hee.
" It was set to the same melody as Bates with the same dulcet rise
and fall at the end. She didn't get the quick response this time,
though, and had to go through the performance again and again, and
as the notes lingered on the still evening air the effect was
startlingly like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. At length
she was successful and a fat tortoiseshell slunk apologetically into
the house. "By the way, Mrs. Bond," I asked, making my voice casual.
"I didn't quite catch the name of that last cat." "Oh, Seven-times-
three?" She smiled reminiscently. "Yes, she is a dear. She's had
three kittens seven times running, you see, so I thought it rather a
good name for her, don't you?" "Yes, yes, I do indeed. Splendid name,
splendid." Another thing which warmed me towards Mrs. Bond was her
concern for my safety. I appreciated this because it is a rare trait
among animal owners. I can think of the trainer, after one of his
racehorses had kicked me clean out of a loose box, examining the
animal anxiously to see if it had damaged its foot; the little old
lady dwarfed by the bristling, teeth-bared Alsatian saying: "You'll
be gentle with him, won't you, and I hope you won't hurt him-- he's
very nervous"; the farmer, after an exhausting calving which I feel
certain has knocked about two years off my life expectancy, grunting
morosely: "I doubt you've tired that cow out, young man." Mrs. Bond
was different. She used to meet me at the door with an enormous pair
of gauntlets to protect my hands against scratches and it was an
inexpressible relief to find that somebody cared. It became part of
the pattern of my life; walking up the garden path among the
innumerable slinking, wild-eyed little creatures which were the
outside cats, the ceremonial acceptance of the gloves at the door,
then the entry into the charged atmosphere of the kitchen with
little Mr. Bond and his newspaper just visible among the milling
furry bodies of the inside cats. I was never able to ascertain Mr.
Bond's attitude to cats--come to think of it he hardly ever said
anything--but I had the impression he could take them or leave them.
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 bete 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,
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