The Nine Lives of Montezuma (7 page)

But there was another reason besides hunting for wandering abroad. The local she-cats had become few and far between, and a tom cat must chase the she-cats if he is any kind of tom. Already Montezuma had sired perhaps a hundred kittens during his lifetime. Innumerable tabby farm cats, Persian cats, Siamese cats and once a sleek, aristocratic Abyssinian, all had fallen for his rough charm and the parish was heavily populated with his progeny, many of whom possessed the tell-tale white patch on their throats. His success rate with the ladies merely spurred Montezuma to greater efforts and he began to wander further and further afield in his search for new mates. It was during one of these expeditions that Montezuma over-reached himself and came to grief.

As the years passed, Matthew was taking more and more of the running of the farm onto his
own shoulders. It was corn harvest and he had been busy combining the barley and bringing in the bales of straw. With his father and mother he had spent all his waking hours out in the corn fields taking full advantage of a succession of blazing warm days. Every day's harvest was an emergency in case the weather broke before the next day, and they worked late every evening bringing in the sacks and straw before the night came down. There was no time in all this to notice the cat; and so for two or three days no-one realised that Montezuma was missing. By that time Montezuma was a long way away and in deep trouble.

Montezuma had never before ventured beyond the wide main road that cut through the hills several miles from the farm. He lay now in the long grass high above the road and watched the traffic flash by. His ears were back
and his heart beat fast: this was not for him. He had been here often enough on previous expeditions and surveyed the unexplored territory on the far side of the road, but always his better judgement had ruled him. This time however Montezuma had been following the scent of a she-cat, and the trail led him like a magnet down the steep slopes towards the edge of the road. This time he had to cross, he had to go on.

The road was a dual carriageway separated by a long strip of grass and shrubby trees. Montezuma took his time, judging all the while the speed of the cars as they approached. For several minutes he watched, his head turning this way and that like an irregular metronome until he was sure that the nearest car was far enough for the attempt to be made. His mind now made up, he sprang out into the road and skipped across, the tarmac hot under his paws.
He reached the island with only seconds to spare, springing up from the road into the sanctuary of the dusty grass. It was as he landed that he cut himself. As his back legs came down under him he felt a sharp stabbing pain in one of his rear paws. On three legs he hobbled into the shadow of a thorn bush and lay down to assess the damage. Cautious licking revealed a long gash right across the central pad of his paw. He cleaned it thoroughly and then lay back in the shade to wait for the bleeding to stop.

By late afternoon he was ready to move on, but the expedition into the unknown lands on the other side of the road had had to be abandoned. His one thought now was to get home to the safety of his farmhouse. He limped back through the grass to the edge of the road carrying his injured paw well off the ground and began the long wait for a sufficient pause
in the flow of the traffic. The pauses came and went, but the cat was unable to move. Each time he decided to wait for the next opportunity, and then the next and the next. His confidence was disappearing. With only three legs at his disposal his ability to calculate the risk had been upset. Once he did start out to make the crossing but he found he could not gather up enough speed to make it in time. Half way across, his nerve failed him and he turned and scampered back to the island. There he lay down again, dejected, and nursed his throbbing foot. On either side of him the cars and lorries thundered by in an interminable, unbroken procession; and as the evening came on the traffic seemed to intensify. Montezuma lay besieged on his island, hunger, fear and the loss of blood combining to make him tremble from head to foot. He was now totally confused and disorientated. He needed help, so he called
out for it; but his yowling was obliterated by the roar of the engines and the continuous swish of the tyres on the soft tarmac.

Sergeant-Major Sydney Shannon hated roads and avoided them whenever he could, but this one lay across his path and had to be crossed. ‘Old Syd' as he was known whenever he went in this part of the country, was a country tramp. He had long since given up on the world of people and rarely spoke to anyone unless he had to. His life was spent in the woods and fields deep in the countryside where men had not yet overrun the land completely. Here there was still the quiet to listen to and the space to wander. But even here the roads had come slicing through his fields. He regarded them as an intrusion, an invasion of his privacy, and the people who used them as marauding lemmings. He viewed them with a
degree of detached pity and considerable contempt.

Holding up his hand like a policeman he strode out towards the island in the middle of the road, his kitbag over his shoulder. For hundreds of yards back the cars squealed to a halt and set up an indignant honking of horns that Old Syd ignored completely. As he approached the island at his regular unhurried pace, he spied a cat in the grass not more than a few yards from him. Oblivious to the abuse of the drivers behind him, Old Syd unloaded the kit bag from his shoulder and held out his hand towards the cat.

Montezuma's first instinct was to run, for it was a strange looking being that confronted him. Old Syd was a tall man with a craggy, pitted face and a shock of completely white hair that fell down over his forehead. He wore what he always wore, summer or winter, his
old heavy khaki trousers over a pair of high black boots, and a drill khaki shirt done up at the neck. His greatcoat was in his pack along with his billycan and his razor.

‘Don't be afeared, son,' he said. ‘ 'Tis only Old Syd and he'll not hurt you. Don't you be afeard.'

The voice was warm and gentle, and Montezuma felt he had found a friend. He made no resistance as the old man knelt down beside him and made to stroke his head. The cat stood up, walked towards him and pushed his head into the welcoming hand. ‘A bad paw, have you, son? We'll soon have that right, soon as we get out of this place. No use waiting for them, son. They never stop. They don't stop for people, so they'd hardly stop for a cat. They'd run you down first and then say sorry after. They're all in such a hurry.' He picked the cat up in his hands and opened the end of his kit bag. ‘You stay there now, and just watch.' With
one arm around his kit bag Old Syd stepped out in front of the traffic and threw up his hand in an imperious gesture. He stood, legs apart, in the middle of the road facing the cars until everything had come to a halt. ‘That's the way to do it, son,' he said. ‘That's the only way.' And he turned and walked slowly across the road. Once on the other side he gave the angry motorists a mocking, courtly bow and then climbed the fence into the field beyond. ‘It must be this way you live,' he said. ‘The other way's all people, and no cat in his right mind wants to be with people.'

For a few days after he realised that Montezuma was missing, Matthew did not worry unduly. He had known Montezuma now for nearly ten years and had become convinced of his ability to survive anything; but after a week or so even his conviction began to weaken. He would call for him at all corners of
the farm where he was working, and he would ask anyone he met whether they had seen a battered looking ginger tom with a white throat. At home he tried hard to disbelieve his father's pessimism.

‘There's any number of ways for a cat to die, any number,' said his father. ‘And he's not immortal you know.'

‘He'll come back one day, you'll see,' said Matthew, but even as he spoke he knew he was deceiving himself.

‘Cars, lorries, traps, drowning, poisoning – there's a lot of danger out there for a wandering tom. Even a fox you know, he'll take an old cat if there's nothing else.' His father shook his head. ‘I shouldn't hope too much, if I were you. 'Tis never worth it. Accept the worst, that's what I say.'

‘He's not that old, Dad,' said Matthew. ‘And I'll not believe Monty's dead till I see his body
for myself.'

The days came and went, and stretched into weeks and still Montezuma did not come home. Now even Matthew had to face the probability that Montezuma was dead. No one talked of him any more in the house; even Matthew's father refrained from further speculation. Speculation now led always to the same conclusion, and that they kept private so that each should not reveal his worst misgivings to the other.

After three weeks Matthew's mother moved the cat-box from the corner by the stove and took it out to burn it in the orchard. Matthew noticed it was gone that evening, but he passed no comment. None was needed.

Some miles away in the water meadows that ran alongside the river, the old man and the cat had set up home in a deserted fishing hut.
Montezuma's paw had healed cleanly and he spent his convalescence sunning himself on the banks while Old Syd fished for trout in the river. They lived on a diet of trout and milk. The milk was taken surreptitiously from a dreamy Jersey cow that grazed on a hill of buttercups nearby. She stood quite still, only occasionally turning a mildly enquiring eye to see what was going on underneath her. Old Syd talked to her all the while as he filled up his water flask with warm milk. The trout were just as easy for the old man. He made his own flies from the cat's ginger fur and found discarded hooks hanging from the alders along the banks. It was never that long before the line jerked in his hand and he pulled in yet another sparkling trout. No cat would ever leave a diet of fresh trout and warm milk, and Montezuma was no exception.

Every night when he came back from his
hunting in the meadows he would find Old Syd awake in the fishing hut, humming in a deep, gruff growl that contained a roll of drums on each note. They were old marching songs and he would hum them over and over again, his arm around the cat. Old Syd was not used to talking to anyone but himself, but now he had found the perfect audience. The cat would lie by him at night and he would tell him what he had told no other living soul. He would tell of the terrible war he had fought, of the men who had died, of the men he had killed, of the bombing and shooting and the fear. He would tell of his return home to his family, to the street that had crumbled into rubble, to the graves of his wife and children. He told of the hospital where they thought that he was mad, and the world outside where men still killed each other and where the bombs still fell. The cat lay and purred beside him as he talked,
shooting his claws in and out of the greatcoat that acted as a double blanket. ‘I'd have been happy as a cat,' said the old man one evening as he looked down at his companion. ‘ 'T'would be good not to know, not to know anything.'

A few days later the water bailiff came with a policeman and with the farmer that owned the Jersey cow and the buttercup hill. Old Syd was fishing when he saw them coming. He threw his line in the river and drank down the last drop of the milk. ‘Trouble,' he whispered to the cat. ‘Seems we've outstayed our welcome. You run along now, son, else they'll pull you in as well, and I shouldn't want that.' But that cat sat where he was beside him.

‘You again, Syd,' said the water bailiff as he came closer. ‘You've been warned often enough.'

‘Good afternoon to you as well,' said Old Syd.

‘Mr. Hildstock here,' the policeman said, taking off his cap and wiping his brow. ‘He says
you been at his Miranda.'

‘Miranda?' Old Syd asked. ‘Who's Miranda?'

‘My cow, that's who,' said Mr. Hildstock who had a red face and a jutting chin. ‘I seen you out there every evening milking her off.'

‘Only a bit, farmer, only a bit. Only just enough for me and the cat.' The old man kicked out to one side at Montezuma. ‘Go on, son, get out of here, else they'll take you.' But the cat ignored him and lay down just out of reach.

‘Not on, Syd,' said the policeman. ‘Tis poaching and theft and we can't have it.'

‘Don't s'pose you can, son.' said Old Syd. ‘But leave the cat be, he's done nothing. Just leave him be.'

‘He might belong to someone,' said the policeman.

‘He doesn't belong to anyone, son; like me. We're the same sort; that's why we get on so well.' He bent down and picked up a stone which
he threw at the cat. He spoke sharply now for the first time and Montezuma pricked up his ears. ‘Get out of here, you dumb animal. Can't you see they'll have you too. Get out of here!'

Montezuma ran as the second stone flew past him. He dodged past the farmer who was making a grab for him and made off along the river bank towards the woods.

‘Run!' shouted Old Syd. ‘Run like blazes!' and he cheered as the cat disappeared into the trees. ‘You'll not get him now, you'll not get him,' he said, ‘but I'm ready for you. Just let me get my things.'

That same evening the first heavy spot of rain fell after the long harvest drought. The sky fell lower over the farm and turned a translucent lead. The flies vanished suddenly, and dogs everywhere disappeared under tables at the first dull distant rumble of thunder. In the farmhouse the electricity went off as the
lightening struck and candles were brought out. Everyone went to bed early that night, there was little else to do; but they were awakened around midnight by a frantic knocking on the door. Matthew was first down. It was Mr. Varley from the end of the lane.

‘Sorry to disturb you so late,' he said, ‘but I thought I should tell you soon as I could.'

‘What is it?' said Matthew, tying up his dressing gown. ‘Is something wrong?'

‘It's your cat, Matthew,' he said. ‘You know you asked me to keep an eye out for him. Well I did, and as I was coming home from the meeting up in the village, I think I found him.'