Free More Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey Page B

snakes.
    Â Â Saphra! I thought in alarm. Any moment he might come whizzing round the corner and pounce on it, scenting a plaything. And supposing it was an adder. Their markings and colourings do vary. There are black adders up on the higher hills.
    Â Â I leapt high over the snake, still curled, apparently asleep, and ran down the path. All was well. Saph was still on the lawn with Tani, his small cream and brown figure sitting importantly upright alongside her elegant, slender ice-white one. I grabbed him, hurried him to their run, rushed back for Tani, thrust her in with him and fastened the door. I went back to check on the snake's markings, but it had disappeared. It hadn't been asleep. It had seized its opportunity to slip away into the stone-pile. It couldn't have been an adder, I told myself. But I'd keep a weather eye open all the same.
    Â Â It was July before I saw the next one, and despite my watchfulness it turned up in the cat-run itself. Jeanine McMullen, author of A Small Country Living and presenter of a country programme of the same name on the radio, had come to do an interview with me and we got on like a house on fire. Jeanine herself runs a small farm on the side of a remote Welsh mountain and is fond of cats, and we had much in common. We exchanged hints on looking after cottages, and Jeanine recorded stories about the animals Charles and I had had, and our life in the valley. We were standing in the garden at the end of the interview when, microphone in hand, she looked across at the cat-run and said, 'Do you think the cats would talk so I can record their voices?'
    Â Â Sure, I said. A reader from South Africa and her husband had brought some biltong as a present for them the previous week. Biltong, which is sun-dried deer meat, once formed the travelling rations of the South African pioneers; today it is sold there in small bags, like potato crisps, and eaten as a snack. The cats were mad about it. I'd only have to wave the bag in front of their run, I assured her and they'd be yelling their heads off.
    Â Â So I fetched it and crackled the bag at them, but they took no notice: simply sat there some way back from the wire netting front of the run, facing each other and concentrating on the ground between them. 'They've got something live in there,' I said. 'Probably a slow-worm. I'll go in and rescue it.'
    Â Â So, I unlatched the door and went in, but it wasn't the grey, metal-smooth skin of a sloworm that met my eyes. It was a brownish back with diamond markings, lying in a crack between the paving stones.
    Â Â 'An adder!' I yelled, leaping into action. Tani was sitting back from it, keeping a wary distance, but Saphra was crouched within inches, one paw raised to hit it if it moved. I grabbed him, rushed to the cat-house at the other end of the run, threw him through the door and latched it. I ran back and grabbed Tani, intending to do the same with her. Jeanine was in the run herself by this time, intent on helping me. She'd field Saphra, make sure he didn't rush out when I put Tani in, she said. Only it didn't work like that. As I put Tani through the door, Saphra erupted through the cat-flap at the bottom of it like a circus rider coming through a hoop. Back to watch the adder he streaked, and I streaked after him, leaving Jeanine to stop Tani from getting out. I ran down to the cottage with him, put him in the kitchen and dashed back with a box which I up-ended over the adder, still down in the crack between the stones, while we got Tani down to the safety of the cottage too. It took some time because Tani, hiding behind one of the deck-chairs stacked in the cat-house, had to be hauled out, screeching up and down the scale like a banshee.
    Â Â Frightened by the adder? That was what I imagined, grabbing her by the scruff and rushing her down the path still wailing like a set of demented bagpipes. Jeanine and I then went back to deal with the adder, but when we picked