Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey Page B

the hall when we got their food. Four of them clinging to his legs like Morris bells and Sugieh drooling hungrily in his ear were, as Charles said the day he cut his finger with the chopping knife, more than any man could stand. When the dishes were on the floor, however, and the hall door was opened, it was no ordinary litter of kittens that trooped forth to supper. It was a sheriff's posse with Solomon in the lead. Ears flat, tails raised, they drummed in a solid body through the living room, along the passage and into the kitchen, with Sugieh hard behind charging as enthusiastically – if a little self-consciously – as any of them.
    Â Â One day the garden door happened to be open as well and Solomon, whose two ambitions in life were to Eat and Be Out, had absent-mindedly galloped the posse out into the yard before he realised it. Father Adams, who was passing at the time, was loud in his admiration of the way in which he skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, turned, and with a mighty roar led the charge hot-foot back to the feeding bowls. If he'd been a hoss, he said, the little black'un would have made a mighty fine hunter.
    Â Â Solomon remembered that. The time was to come when he thought he was a horse, and, a pretty fine dance he led us. Meanwhile he was busy being head of the family, and a fine job he made of that too.
    Â Â In the mornings, when the posse tore out of the front door and up the damson tree so fast it hurt your eyes – half of their time they spent in the damson tree spying down through the leaves at unsuspecting passers-by and the other half they spent with their noses pressed to the hall window complaining there was somebody interesting going by Right This Moment and now they'd Missed Him – it was always Solomon who led the way, shouting This Morning he'd be first at the Top. It was always Solomon, too, who after an initial leap big enough to take him clean over the roof, was left clinging desperately to the trunk about two feet up yelling to us to Catch Him Quick, he was feeling Giddy.
    Â Â The only time he ever did get to the top – we imagined he must have been carried up bodily by the rush of kittens behind him – he was so overcome with excitement when the Rector went by that he fell out on to his head. Neither of them was hurt, though the Rector – red in the face and the nearest I ever knew him to swearing – said if we had to give him a Biblical name it should have been Beelzebub, and after that whenever he came to call he always used to stop at a safe distance and look up into the damson tree before opening the gate. He needn't have worried. Solomon never did it again. Our little black-faced dreamer, though he woke the whole household at five every morning shouting to hurry up and let him out, he knew he could make it This Time, couldn't climb for toffee.
    Â Â We were always rescuing him from somewhere. If it wasn't from the damson tree it was, more often than not, from the fourth bar of the five-barred gate which led into the lane. Sugieh, who had an eye for effect, was always encouraging her family up there. The idea was obviously to present people walking through the woods with a tableau of Mother and Kittens on a Gate that would absolutely stun them. Very effective it would have been too, if only Solomon had been able to make it. When visitors came past, however, Solomon, wailing with mortification, was always completely and hopelessly stuck on the top bar but one while Sugieh, instead of smirking at them with coy, half-closed eyes from a nest of cuddly kittens as planned, lay flat on her stomach frantically trying to hook him up with her paw.
    Â Â Failing to climb the damson tree never worried Solomon a scrap, but for some odd psychological reason not being able to get on top of the gate did. In the end he gave up trying. When the other kittens hurled themselves up the gatepost with squeals of delight, to balance-walk across the top