Free Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey

was that Ajax wasn't interested in other females. Cats had more sense, he said. Nobody else believed it either – until a certain strange sequence of events that set everybody wondering. Andromache, coming into season at a time when Ajax was away at the vet's for ear treatment, got out of the pantry window one night and went for a walk with a cat called Nelson who lived at the Carpenter's Arms. It was a fine May evening, with the air heady with the scent of hawthorn and a nightingale singing romantically in the copse. Ajax was miles away with penicillin powder in his ear, Nelson was near at hand and ardently amorous – and nine weeks later there were seven black and white kittens with unmistakably Nelsonian squeaks in the basket on the doctor's porch.
    Â Â Ajax didn't help with that lot. Andromache might rub whiskers with him as much as she liked and say of course they were his, silly, it must have been the penicillin – but he knew black and white when he saw it. He knew Nelson, too. He nearly murdered him one night on the roof of the Carpenter's Arms and the next time he went to stay with Mimi there was no nonsense about being faithful to his wife. Six strapping little Ajaxes Mimi had, and Father Adams rubbing his hands with delight; though Mrs Adams rather took the gilt off the gingerbread by continually saying it didn't seem right to her until he asked her what the devil she wanted him to do about it. Take the ruddy cats to a Marriage Guidance Council?
    Â Â It was, of course, complete coincidence. Mimi just happened to be a cat who didn't mate easily. All the same, as people said, it made you think. At the time when Father Adams was leaning on our gate moaning, however, this extraordinary turn of events was still in the future. We, too, were quite oblivious of the tragedy ahead of us. Our problem just then was to fit Sugieh and her tyrannical family into a normal pattern of living.
    Â Â It took an awful lot of doing. When we had visitors to stay, for instance, we could no longer put them in the spare room. Way back when Sugieh was using it as a nursery we had moved the earth-box up there for convenience – and there, like the Rock of Gibraltar, the kittens expected it to stay. After the embarrassing night when Solomon – who was always much too lazy to use the box before going to bed as Sugieh had taught him, and in consequence invariably had to get up in the early hours – practically tore the door down shouting that he had to get in quick while we in turn tried fruitlessly to persuade him that a box on the landing would do just as well, we gave up putting visitors in there. We slept in it ourselves, kittens, earth-box and all, while the visitors had our room.
    Â Â We had, too, to be very careful in our choice of guests. It had been one thing to leave Sugieh sitting on the table at mealtimes. We could always nip her off quickly and pretend we didn't know what had come over her – she never did that in the normal way. When, however, a cat and four kittens marched on to the table like a detachment of the Salvation Army as soon as it was laid and grouped themselves solidly round the cruet, it was no good trying to pass that off as an accident. Neither was it any good locking them out in the hall and pretending that was where they usually spent mealtimes. They kicked up such a racket, yelling and banging on the door, that it invariably led to the visitors saying not to shut the little dears out for their sakes and opening the door themselves. Whereupon the little dears would hurl themselves across the room and onto the table with such purpose there could be no doubt even in the dimmest mind as to where they normally sat at mealtimes.
    Â Â By the time we had weeded out people who objected to kittens peering interestedly into their plates while they ate, people who were squeamish about Solomon sicking up spiders into their laps – that was the worst of spiders, they had such