Tigger (15 page)

With the hard work done and the dogs under my control, Mum said we could invite friends to share in our rural idyll. Tammy and I took action immediately and invited a fat rat from the rat house to visit. He was a bit reluctant to accept our invitation at first, but once we had coaxed him in through our cat door, he settled down well and lived happily behind the dishwasher, where it was warm with easy access to the kitchen bin under the sink and all its delights. Mum marvelled at how the chicken bones she threw away were suddenly picked so scrupulously clean whenever she came to empty the bin. Actually, I thought our friend was getting a little greedy; it never occurred to him to share those leftovers with me and Tammy, given that the bin was out of our reach. I thought he had perhaps outstayed his welcome and encouraged him to think about moving on, but he wasn't keen. It was winter and much cosier behind the dishwasher than out in the cold.

So the rat stayed, and by and by we quite forgot about him. There was plenty of other excitement going on: the children had also decided to invite their friends for a party. I remembered all the noise of Caroline's 14
^th
birthday and was not immediately won over by the notion, but when they came up with the idea of a paddock bonfire, it turned out to be so much fun, even I had to admit there was more to parties than I had realized, and we ended up having one every winter.

Guests arrived from far and wide with sleeping bags and tents, which were put up under my supervision on Emily's riding arena, then Dad stacked up a big bonfire in one of the paddocks and Mum got the sausages out of the fridge. That was my cue to assist with the preliminary tasting, to ensure the sausages were good enough for our friends to eat. They usually were at that stage. Unfortunately, they tended to get spoilt later on, when the guests skewered them on to sticks and grilled them over the fire, where they either burnt them black or lost them altogether. What was left of them, they ate with bread, on which I'm not so keen, and tomato sauce, which I don't like at all. Fortunately, some leftovers could usually be found around the fire site in the days after the bonfire parties. The dogs were not allowed out into the paddocks on their own and Tammy was too scared to venture that far, so the tasty morsels were all mine.

After the bonfire, there was much singing, talking and laughing before everyone got cold and retreated to the warmth of the tents, where the laughing and talking continued long into the night. It was my job then to patrol the tent village to make sure all was well, and generally it was, although as the children and their guests grew older, they seemed to be more prone to sickness in the night, and one or two of them even had to be carried into their tents to sleep. In the morning, bedraggled figures with ghostly-white faces could be seen dragging themselves out of their tents and towards the house, where Mum prepared breakfast for everyone. Those were fun times.

In summer we had treasure hunts, when our property was swarming with youngsters looking for hidden clues and generally behaving oddly. One year, Caroline and I set up a treasure hunt with various challenges. The speed-eating of dry breakfast cereal turned out not to be my favourite thing, but the stringing up of doughnuts (much tastier than the cereal) on the washing line was fun. Once the guests had arrived and the hunt was on, however, the danger of being run over drove me indoors, where I watched the party unfold from Robin's desk. This provided an excellent view of the washing line, where the challenge involved eating the doughnuts dangling down without using hands. The guests were not very good at it – it had to be difficult when their faces were so flat. However, once the first team left the area, having hardly made a dent in any of the doughnuts, Max came along. He had no problem at all eating them without using his paws. In fact, he'd eaten all of them by the time the next team appeared. His jumps were really amazing.

Once or twice, guests brought their dogs along. Those were not good days for us cats. I don't think they were particularly good days for the visiting dogs either, as Mishka and Max shadowed them closely and jealously the whole time, allowing no slack for them to have a quiet sniff around. They always looked pretty harassed by the time they left, and none of them came back a second time.

Tammy was not at all into parties. As soon as the guests appeared, she vanished to her favourite hiding place among Emily's soft toys, or, if things got really perilous, into Mum and Dad's bed, where she crawled under the duvet and spent the day as a small bump in the centre. She did this even on very hot days, emerging almost roasted once all the guests had safely left.

The dogs, on the other hand, loved parties of all kinds and always participated in any way they could. They were generally banned from bonfires, as they could not be trusted with the sausages, and Max had to be restrained during races and ball games, where he got a bit carried away. But they were always around when food was served on the deck during summer parties. I think their job was to keep the ground scrupulously clean, which they did. Mishka in particular gobbled up anything that came her way, even if it wasn't strictly-speaking food: party hats, napkins, little charms and paper cups all made their way into her stomach, and she was never any the worse for it.

We also entertained a succession of grown-ups, but those were much quieter affairs where the real action was happening in the kitchen beforehand and later on by the barbecue when Dad put on his black apron and got out the big barbecue tongs, which he snapped together with little clicking sounds in time with the party music. Sometimes he tried to catch me by the tail with his tongs, but he was never quick enough for me and besides, I didn't have time for his little games; I was busy elsewhere. There was much to be had in the way of nibbles on the kitchen worktops once everyone had gone outside to eat. Although Mum has an annoying habit of tidying up before meals and covering up any plates of food, she sometimes forgets to pull the covers tight all around the plates, in which case it is just possible to get hold of a slice of ham or a piece of fish from the side and pull it out. This is particularly exciting as you never know how large a piece you're going to get. Some can be enormous – too big to eat in one sitting – , in which case it's best to push the leftovers off the worktop and on to the floor, where they may not be detected for a while in the general rush and confusion of a party.

One sunny afternoon in spring, Mum and Dad had friends over for tea. Mum had baked a lovely cake which was sitting on the kitchen worktop, hidden under one of those silly fly covers that so easily catch on your claws. The guests had arrived and were sitting outside on the deck, and Mum breezed in to get the coffee tray down from its spot on the freezer in the pantry. Now it just so happened that our long-term guest, the rat, had recently moved from behind the dishwasher into the pantry and was asleep on the tray. When Mum lifted it down and they were suddenly face-to-face across its rim, they were both equally startled. The rat panicked and catapulted himself off the tray while Mum jumped backwards and banged the pantry door shut, locking him in. I tried to tell her she wasn't being very nice to our guest, but she didn't listen. The party continued pleasantly enough and without any mention of the rat, but as soon as the guests had left, Mum assembled the family and asked everyone to help her catch him. It seemed like a churlish thing to do when Tammy and I had just been so welcoming to their human visitors, though I agreed in principle that it was time for the rat to leave. So I remained neutral to begin with and left the humans to do what they felt they had to. The rat gave everyone a good run for their money, and it didn't look as though they would ever catch him. Eventually I had to step in. I told him the front door was wide open and suggested he might want to use it, which he did without delay. We never saw him again after that.

Mum had a quiet word with me and Tammy afterwards about not inviting strangers into the house without letting her know. Tammy listened with her trademark round-eyed expression of innocence, when it had actually been her idea to invite the rat in the first place! I complained loudly, but of course nobody listened.

I was completely innocent when it came to our next lodgers: the deck – or rather the fine beam structure inside its roof – had attracted a pair of furry, grey creatures with large, jet black eyes and long, ringed tails, who had built their nest in there. They sat on the beams in the evening and watched what went on below, ringed tails hanging down, and took a particular shine to one group of visitors who liked to make music and sing after dinner. The pair provided an appreciative audience, and our guests were enchanted by the friendly wildlife. Afterwards, the creatures were so roused by the performance that they played chasing games on the tin roof all night. It sounded as though we had a herd of elephants running overhead; quite scary.

Time passed, and once I had resumed my active life-style I soon lost my surplus weight and regained my athletic figure. The wildlife in the surrounding bush began to treat me with the respect I deserved – all except the snakes, who knew they had the upper hand on everyone and were smug about it – and my reputation was restored. Once again, I was able to observe a satisfying scuttle in the undergrowth whenever I emerged from my cat door. All was well.

I was strolling through the nature reserve at the bottom of our hill one late afternoon, minding my own business and keeping a look-out for interesting prey, when Mum and Max appeared at the end of an overgrown path, heading towards me. I faded quietly into the undergrowth. You can learn such a lot by watching.

Max was off the lead. I mentally tut-tutted Mum, as the rest of the family would if they knew. In spite of the fact that Max disappointed Mum's trust in him time and again, she never gave up trying to train him to be obedient. This time, she seemed to be succeeding: Max was trotting nicely next to her while she talked to him. They passed right by me. Max's nose twitched a couple of times and he turned his head my direction, but Mum called him to attention and he obeyed. They were almost at the end of the overgrown path where it joined the road leading up to our gate when disaster struck.

A small mob of kangaroos came bursting out of the bushes just in front of Mum and Max and bounced right across their path. Max froze only for a moment, tail up, ears forward, one paw raised and that mean killer look in his eyes, before he took off after the kangaroos. Mum's hand reached for his collar a split second too late and grabbed thin air. She stood, stunned, while the silence of the bush around us was shattered by the sound of cracking branches, the thumping of the bouncing kangaroos in flight and the sharp gasps of Max's breath in hot pursuit. Peering through the scrub, I saw the leader of the mob turn around and head Max off as his relatives fled on by themselves in the opposite direction. Max was confused at first; presumably he had hoped for a tasty young joey, easily caught, but then, never able to resist a good chase, he followed the leading male as he crashed through the undergrowth in big leaps. Up the hill they raced, then back downhill in a wide curve. Old Man Kangaroo was an excellent bouncer, and fast as Max was, he couldn't catch him.

Mum, meanwhile, had given up shouting Max's name and a few other names I won't repeat here and ran back along the overgrown path, across a rickety little bridge to a muddy forest pond. This brought her directly into the path of the chase as Old Man Kangaroo and Max came thundering down the hill. Old Man bounced right past Mum, heading straight for the pond and launched himself into its muddy waters, where he stood up in the very centre, submerged up to his chest. He was a big old kangaroo, easily as tall as Dad, with sharp claws on his muscular forelegs and an angry frown on his face. Everything about him told me he was not going to take prisoners. Mum made a fine but futile effort to throw herself on Max as he came flying by, but he deftly avoided her and jumped into the water after what he foolishly thought was his prey.

I scaled a tree for a better view of the pond; I hadn't seen this much excitement in years. Mum and I watched, one of us in horror and the other with growing interest, as Old Man and Max took turns to dunk their opponent under. At first it looked as though Max's teeth might gain him the upper hand as he clamped them around Old Man's throat and pulled him into the murky depths, but by and by it turned out that being able to stand up in the water gave Old Man an advantage over the furiously paddling Max, who, after spending a good minute or two pushed under water by an unforgiving claw, emerged coughing and spluttering, his fighting spirit temporarily diminished. Anyone could see he would lose this fight – well, anyone but him. As soon as he had his breath back, he wanted to go back for more.

Mum, however, saw her chance, and while Max was still recovering from his ordeal at some distance from Old Man, she started hurling anything she could find at Max's bobbing head: large and small branches, pine cones, prickly seed pods rained down on him and several actually hit him. I was impressed. Mum isn't generally known for her ball skills, but despair gave a mean edge to her throws, and eventually her efforts were rewarded: Max, who had judged himself free of Mum's restraining powers, suddenly realized she could get at him still, even in the middle of a forest pond. Or perhaps her blows finally cleared his head and he realized his game was up. He swam over to Mum and dragged himself through the mud to her feet. I expected her to welcome him with a lecture and a couple of good smacks, but she seemed to be too weary or too shocked for either. Instead, she wordlessly put him on his lead and marched him off down the path towards home, where she would definitely have to give him a bath: the stench of the muddy water still hung over the path for some time after they had left.

Old Man Kangaroo stayed in the water and gave a disdainful growl as he watched them go. I felt that at least
some
one in the family should demonstrate some manners, or else he might think we were all barbarians, like Max. So I slipped down the tree trunk, walked up to the edge of the pond, minding my paws where the mud began, and apologised sincerely for my family's behaviour – because, whether I liked it or not, I had to admit Max was a member of our family. Old Man stopped growling, but gave me a dark look of scorn that reflected the black depths of the pond and of the shadowy bush beyond and conveyed both the resigned wisdom of his years and a quiet contempt for lesser mortals. Then he jumped out of the water and returned at a leisurely bounce to where his family must be hiding somewhere up the hill.

As I strolled back home to check on the commotion that Mum's report of Max's disgraceful behaviour had undoubtedly created by now, I practised the look I'd seen in Old Man Kangaroo's face and stored it away for future use. It had been most impressive, and you never knew when it might come in useful.