A Comfort of Cats Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew better than that, and sure enough the day came when the breeders brought the young kid over. Not to leave her – that was still more than a week away, but for a visit, with her mother, by way of introduction. The Bannetts rang us excitedly. They'd bring her down to the Valley so we could see her, they said, and in due course the procession appeared. Tim and the man, both with patriarchal beards and in clothes that looked suitably rural. Liz and the man's wife in the long skirts and cloaks that young people these days affect. A couple of children frolicked on ahead. Tim was encouraging a minute black and white kid to walk beside him. There was no sign of the mother goat. Presumably this was an experimental solo outing.
    Â Â They went past the cottage looking like a rural scene by Constable and I called to Charles to come and watch. Obviously they were going for a stroll up the Valley and would call on us on the way back. I was just commenting what a picture they made when there was a sudden commotion in the ranks. Back up the hill shot the little kid with Tim running like mad behind her.
    Â Â It seemed that Tim, our idealist, had refused to put her on a lead saying he wanted her to follow him from affection. She'd trotted along with the nice man for a while but then the thought of Mum, back on the Bannetts' lawn, had been too strong. She was bounding back up now in spectacularly curving leaps, the height of which beat even Saska's. Tim did a spectacular leap himself in an attempt to grab her, but slipped and fell flat on his face. Up he got. On the pair of them went. The rest of the party waited at the bottom. Eventually he came back carrying her, having caught up with her at the cottage.
    Â Â We went out to look at her. She was an entrancing little thing. Long-legged, pale-eyed, about the size of a Siamese cat, with hooves like polished thimbles and a coat like astrakhan. 'Whass be going to do with she?' asked Father Adams, appearing as if through a trapdoor on .the scene. ' Keep her?' he echoed, as if he hadn't heard aright. 'Whass be goin' to feed her on, then?'
    Â Â It was a question that Tim must have asked himself often during the weeks which followed. They called her Polly. Within a week she'd eaten all the foliage in the Bannetts' garden – there wasn't much spare space there anyway what with the bees, the goat house and a couple of chicken runs – and, notwithstanding concentrates, hay and regular milk-feeds they gave her, something had to be done about providing her with greenery.
    Â Â Tim seemed to be everywhere with that one small goat. Hovering on the hill with her on a lead while she avidly cropped down the verges. Frantically cutting waste grass with a scythe and toting it back for Liz to feed her during the day. 'Some people don't half look for work,' said Father Adams. 'If theest ask I, t'ould be cheaper to buy a pinta.'
    Â Â They still were buying it, of course. Plus the concentrates. Plus hay. Plus special powdered milk which had to be made up, warmed to the right temperature and bottle-fed to her at regular intervals. Tim was as fussy about this as a first-time mother over baby feeds. Liz had a timetable as to what to do during the day. So had we when, on the rare occasions when they took time off – usually to go to a farm sale to buy implements that were years out of date, or old-fashioned crocks for Liz's cooking – we fed and shut the chickens in for them and were given the honour of looking after Polly.
    Â Â The chickens were easy save for having to go into the runs crouched down like King Kong. Tim had adapted the old earth closet (boarded over at the top to half its height) as a roosting hut for one lot and a large wooden cider barrel for the other. The runs were in front of these and, owing to Tim having acquired a bargain lot of chicken-wire which was only three feet wide, that was the height of the runs and the difficulty was