Free Raining Cats and Donkeys by Doreen Tovey

jumped on that, those stopped too.
    Â Â Unfortunately the mole then went berserk and submerged under the paving-stones that Charles was laying in the yard, its progress marked by long thin lines of earth rising, like the smoke from an excursion train, between the cracks. Rather on my conscience that was, imagining him coming up for air to be repeatedly met by paving-stones, and it was a great relief when his trail turned once more towards the lower lawn... no jumping on it this time; we didn't want him under those paving-stones again... across it, and finally OUT. Under the wall and across into the woods, where presumably he lives to this day telling of his adventures in the earthquake country.
    Â Â The winter – the worst winter we'd had for years – was passing now, but two relics of it remained with us as inexorably as the Laws of the Medes and Persians. Annabel's addiction to a hot drink at bedtime and the cats' decision to sleep downstairs. Annabel's discovery of hot drinks had come about not as a result of our pampering her, but of our trying to ensure that she got a drink at all. On principle she wouldn't drink when we first took her bucket out. Didn't want it. Didn't like water anyway, she would snort when we offered it to her. By the time she did feel like it the bucket was invariably frozen, so we started pouring a kettleful of hot water in before we carried it up in the hope of it staying liquid longer. Annabel, intrigued by the steam, immediately investigated it. The warmth to her nose must have been wonderful... even more so to her stomach, when it got down on all that hay...
    Â Â She drank it as if it were nectar, with long sucking noises and a smack of her lips at the end. We, knowing how we liked our own hot drinks, took to giving it to her regularly, and as a result, long after the frost had gone and the lighter nights were coming we were still chugging up in the evenings with a steaming bucket which, if we saw anybody coming, we hid surreptitiously in the greenhouse. We had no wish to reveal to people that if we now tried to make her go to bed without a hot drink, our donkey bawled the place down.
    Â Â We were in a similar position with the cats. Ever since they were born they had, unless we had visitors, slept next door to us in the spare room. There, if they fought in the night or fell out of bed or decided that they didn't feel well, we could hear them at once and go to the rescue. There was also the advantage of their being unable to damage the furniture in there, the only upholstered item being the armchair in which they slept, whose covering and Hessian under-part they had demolished long ago, as kittens.
    Â Â It was so cold that winter, however, that even with two hot-water bottles they had us up at two in the morning protesting that their ears were falling off, please to let them into bed with us. We got no sleep if we did. Solomon, being my cat, insisted on cuddling cheek to cheek with me. If Sheba showed signs of wanting to get in on my side he got closer still and lay possessively on my face. If she did come in he bit her on the leg, whereupon Sheba spat like a squib and went and sat forlornly at the bottom. She wouldn't sleep on Charles's side. Charles, she said, fidgeted. She either sat despondently on my feet and got cold, or came back and we had a repeat performance with Solomon. Solomon, if he finally did relent and let her in, in any case snored and twitched his paws like a tic-tac man the moment he fell asleep. So in the end we fixed them up in the sitting-room.
    Â Â Bottles and blankets in the big armchair in front of the fire. The fire made up so the room wouldn't get cold during the night. Food, water-bowl and earth-boxes conveniently lined up so that they had the equivalent of a luxury self-contained flat. Thereafter we went to bed leaving two little cats sitting happily on the hearthrug in the firelight in a manner that reminded us of a Christmas card. A