The Cat in the Coalhouse (Part 2)

In the last instalment, The Cat in the Coalhouse (Part 1) I recounted how a neighbouring cat suddenly appeared one Sunday afternoon, proudly leading her new kindle of kittens to take up residence in his family’s coalhouse.  Despite our entreaties, Mum decreed that “those kittens were not to come into this house”.  Now read on…

Over the next few days, the antics of our new feline family took over from the television as the main source of entertainment for our household.  Frequently, during the course of the day, and particularly in the evening, the Mother Cat (MC) would appear through the hole in the coalhouse door and set off across the neighbourhood gardens, reappearing some time later with something she had scavenged from a dustbin somewhere or with an unfortunate mouse or small bird.  She clearly had her work cut out, feeding her growing brood.

As for the kittens, they would tend to appear in the late afternoon/early evening.   MC would keep a sharp look-out as they dashed wildly around a small area that covered the top of our two gardens and across our joined back yards (ours and Mrs. B’s).  Play fighting and what seemed like an endless game of ‘tick’ seemed to be their main pursuit but they also enjoyed stalking (unsuccessfully) the occasional insect and each other.  However at the first sign of anyone approaching, the whole family shot straight back into the coalhouse, with MC bringing up the rear.

In my mind’s eye, I felt sure that there were four kittens in all (and said so in the last instalment) but digging out some photographs for this post (and checking with my sister) I found that there were, in fact, only three.  In my defence, it seemed a lot more at the time!

As each day passed by, the weather continued to deteriorate.  It was certainly getting colder but we assumed they were keeping reasonably warm in the coalhouse (we didn’t dare open this in case we scared them away totally).  For the first few days the crisp autumn sunshine gave a spring-like quality to the daytime but there was no denying the sharp edge of winter on the keen breeze.  Then came a series of sudden squalls in which driving rain or, worse still, hail would lash across the yard.  Late Saturday morning a particularly vicious squall suddenly appeared out of nowhere and caught MC and her brood unawares as they played in the yard.  Standing at the window, I made a unilateral decision – they couldn’t be allowed to stay out there in this weather.

I raced out into the yard and, in the confusion of hail and high winds, I managed to catch the two long-haired kittens before they could leap back into the coalhouse.  MC and her smooth haired kitten eluded me and shot straight into their sanctuary.  I dashed back into the house with two cold and wet balls of fluff tucked under my arms.  Mum had just come down stairs.

“I couldn’t leave them out there in this” I said, nodding toward the hail now beating a tattoo on our living room window.

“Well, I suppose you had better put them in front of the fire” Mum said resignedly, but it seemed to me that she was secretly relieved that a difficult decision had been taken out of her hands.

Cats are pretty pragmatic and these two clearly quickly weighed up the pros and cons of life in the coalhouse versus a roaring fire and soft carpet and decided that it was no contest.  After a little mewing and pacing about, they settled down in front of the fire to wash and bask.  Meanwhile, MC and the smooth haired escapee stayed put in their coalhouse.

A few more days passed by and our life with the now semi-detached cat family continued.  We found a box and some old blankets for our two refugees to sleep on and made some toys out of ribbons and cotton reels.  Mum was concerned about how we could cope with setting up a litter tray (the family budget not being able to stretch to any further expense whatsoever) but, after a little research, she discovered that common or garden (mostly garden in our case) soil would be fine, provided that it had been sterilised by baking.  From then onwards our kitchen was frequently filled with the rather unusual smell of freshly-baked earth, roasting in a biscuit tin.

MC and her sole remaining kitten carried on pretty much as before.  Playing together when the sun shone (which was becoming more infrequent) and hunkering down in the coalhouse at all other times.  Inevitably the weather worsened further and when snow started to fall and the temperature plummeted, Anne and I finally set up a pincer movement in which one of us guarded the coalhouse door whilst the other chased the kitten, cornered it and managed to haul him, hissing and kicking, into the house. 

With all her kittens now inside, MC decided that she might as well take a look at what was on offer and gingerly made her way in, with our encouragement.  Soon the whole family had taken pride of place in front of the fire and no-one would have ever known that they had not been used to this lifestyle from the start.

Of course, Mum’s dire warnings about the amount of hard work involved in kitten rearing were absolutely correct.  For the next few weeks it was by no means unusual to find kittens climbing up the curtains or chasing furiously up and down the furniture, aided by their razor sharp crampon-like claws.  MC seemed to be completely at ease with divesting her responsibilities onto Mum and took to curling up on any available lap at every opportunity, as did the kittens, in an orderly row, once they had exhausted themselves in one of their “mad half-hours” as Mum called them.

The kittens were christened as Fluff (long haired, all white kitten with a splash of black on both ears and a penchant for laps and creature comforts), Scamp (short haired, all white with a splash of black on his right ear, a rugged individualist) and Fred (long haired, white and tricolour and a born comedian).  Fred had to be rechristened Freda when it became clear that she was a little girl cat (which shows how far she would go to get a laugh).

It was a struggle financially and logistically to manage our new-found brood but we managed.  Well, Mum did, to be fair, although how she coped with keeping our house clean and tidy when she had kittens traipsing soil through the kitchen and wreaking havoc on the furniture, I’ll never know. What with the cat, kittens, our Cocker Spaniel, Jane a budgie (Dinkie, they were all called that, don’t ask me why!) and some goldfish, we had a pretty full house.

The kittens grew rapidly and it was obvious that our small house would never be able to house all of these cats for ever.  Once again we were very fortunate.  Our friendly local vet heard of our plight and recommended a number of people to come and see us.  One by one, our kittens found very good homes indeed and we heard how they were doing in the cards and letters that followed.

Mum decided that MC really needed a quiet house in which to bask in front of the fire and tried to rehome her with a little old lady who had lost her cat and lived just a few streets away, but this was doomed to failure as MC had clearly decided which home she fancied and she reappeared at our door a couple of days after her ‘rehoming’.  She took up residence, as if this had all been an unfortunate aberration, and remained with us for the rest of her life.

Strangely enough, the coalhouse didn’t seem to appeal anymore!


You can find this story, along with a host of others, in the new bumper collection of stories Crutches For Ducks 

The Cat in the Coalhouse - Part 1

I think that, for everyone who has ever acquired a pet, there must be at least ten others who have found themselves acquired by a pet.  There have been quite a number of cats in my life over the years and not once have I ever gone out to purchase or choose a cat, they have always chosen me.  All animals are capable of tugging at the heartstrings, as a visit to any animal sanctuary will quickly confirm, but cats have it down to a fine art.

I can picture a particular example of this phenomenon as clearly as if it happened yesterday, and yet it goes back to the late 1970s.

It was a crisp, cool, Sunday afternoon in autumn.  I was halfway down the garden of our terraced house, keeping an eye on our rabbit as she lolloped around the rough patch of grass that we laughingly called a lawn.  We didn’t have a run for the rabbit, she was pretty well behaved and tended to stay on the lawn provided that we kept a careful eye on her.  This was largely because there was nothing remotely interesting to eat in our garden.  However, if your attention drifted for a second, she would instantly be on the next door garden, chomping cheerfully on Mrs. B.’s young vegetables and plants.

On this occasion, my attention did drift because of the unexpected arrival of the cat from the gardens that backed on to ours.  She was a lovely natured cat, mostly white with tri-coloured patches and it had been some weeks since we had last seen her.  She had appeared from time to time in the past and always seemed happy to have a bit of fuss and and occasionally to potter in and lie in front of our fire.  We had never fed her or actively encouraged her as we assumed that she was somebody in the next street’s pet.  As usual, she came and rubbed around my legs, purring loudly and I reached down and stroked her head.  It was nice to see her again after all this time, I had begun to wonder if she had fallen victim to the heavy traffic in the streets around our neighbourhood, a common fate of many of the local felines.  Our mutual admiration society continued for a few minutes and then she walked away a few yards, stopped and looked back at me.

There has been some debate in the media recently about whether animals can think.  I doubt that there would be much debate amongst pet owners on this subject, I’m pretty sure that they would agree that their animals not only think but can run rings around their owners whenever they feel like it.  Anyone who had any doubts about the thought processes of animals really needed to be with me in the garden on that autumn afternoon.  Without a doubt, this cat was thinking carefully about something.

After a minute or two, she headed off back to the gardens at the rear of our house and I went to retrieve our rabbit from a line of our neighbour’s hopeful winter greens.  As the light was fading and chasing a black rabbit in the twilight tends to be an overrated pastime, I caught her (with no little difficulty) and returned her kicking and grumbling (the rabbit, not me) to her newly-cleaned hutch.  I was just latching the hutch door when my eye was attracted by some movement at the bottom of the garden.  To my surprise, the cat was back, but she wasn’t alone.  Trailing behind her, in a perfect line as she trotted proudly up the garden path, were three tiny kittens.  I stood there in a state of absolute astonishment as this unexpected feline family swept past me and headed toward our back yard.  Each kitten was a miniature replica of its mother, mostly white (completely white in one case) but with some tricolour or grey patches.  Two were long-haired, little balls of fluff and one was sleek and short-haired, just like his mum.

I suppose that our house was a pretty standard design for a terraced house built in the late 19^th Century.  The ground floor consisted of a front room (rarely used except for high days and holidays), an under-the-stairs cupboard, a living room (in which much of our life was spent) with a window that looked out onto our half of the yard and the gardens beyond, a long thin kitchen (again with a window looking out onto the yard) with a pantry at the end.  Sharing that end of the kitchen, with an access from the yard only, was the coalhouse or ‘coal hole’ as it was colloquially known.

Our coalhouse was no longer filled with ‘nutty slack’ but tended to be a repository for all of those things that ‘might come in useful one day’.   There were various gardening implements, items for use on the beach (bucket, spade, ball etc.), an occasional small bag of coal and various other items in the dark recesses that were probably there before we arrived and would, no doubt, still be there long after we had gone.  The wooden coalhouse door had seen better days and chunks of it were missing at the bottom where wear and tear and rot had taken their toll.

The cat, and her new family, made a bee-line for the coalhouse.  I watched as she slipped swiftly through the hole in the door, closely followed by each of her charges in turn.  I suppose that the whole episode had only taken a few minutes at most, but to me, as I stood there rooted to the spot, it seemed to have all happened in slow motion.  Now that the drama had unfolded, I simply had to tell someone about it (and I guessed that the rabbit wouldn’t be all that interested).  I rushed into our house in a state of high excitement.  Mum and my sister, Anne were engrossed in the Sunday afternoon film.  Dad was slumped in the chair with his eyes shut, ‘thinking’ as he put it (which always seemed to involve a good deal of snoring).  All were oblivious to the scene that I had just witnessed.  I rattled out my story and we congregated (those of us that were awake anyway) at the living room window.  There was no sign of cat or kittens.

Anne (who was only about eight at the time) was desperate to see the kittens but Mum insisted that we should leave them alone in their new-found home.  More importantly, she issued an edict that ‘those kittens were not to come into this house”.  I don’t think I have ever known anyone as soft about animals as my mum and it was unusual for her to take such a hard line but I’m sure she realised the havoc that kittens can cause (and that she would have to deal with).  In addition, we were going through one of our periodic ‘times of economic difficulty’ and, with a dog, rabbit and budgie to feed, she felt that the household budget was already stretched to breaking point.

With winter just around the corner, Anne and I stared glumly at our back yard and wondered just how long it would be before mum’s resolve would crack.


To find out if it did, see The Cat in the Coalhouse (Part 2)

You can find this story, along with a host of others, in the new bumper collection of stories Crutches For Ducks