Cats In The Belfry

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Can She Catch Mice?

Our first Siamese was called Sugieh and we bought her because we had mice. The only excuse I can offer for such Philistine conduct is that they were not ordinary mice. They were the hangers-on of a pet squirrel we had, called Blondin, and over the years they had developed personalities as distinct from ordinary mice as Blondin was different from ordinary squirrels. As different, in fact, as Siamese are from ordinary cats.

  During Blondin's lifetime the mice hadn't worried us overmuch. They were always there. Upstairs, downstairs and trekking to and from the wired-in run in the garden where, as the result of an unfortunate faux pas when he chewed a hole through the bottom of the sitting-room door one day while we were out, to get an apple, Blondin lived during the daytime.

  But they were there on business, industriously tracking down the nuts and slices of bread which he was for ever stuffing under carpets and down the sides of chairs against a rainy day. And though it was a little disconcerting the first time I passed one on the landing, pattering along with a nut in its mouth like a dog carrying a bone, in the end I got quite used to them.

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