Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey Page A

up on one side and pinned with a natty sweep of pheasant's feathers that was all his own idea. All he needed now was to learn to shoot – and one evening Allister came over with his equipment and they went out on the hillside to make a start.
    Â Â Half an hour later a procession entered the kitchen. Charles first, trembling like a leaf and carrying the blue boys; Sugieh marching alongside with crossed eyes and bushed tail yelling that he'd Nearly Killed Them All and they were going to Leave Home That Very Night; Allister behind, wearing the bewildered expression that marked everybody who ever came up against our Siamese in force; and, far in the rear, Solomon and his sister happily dragging home Charles's hunting hat by its feathers.
    Â Â What had happened was quite simple. Allister, showing Charles the correct stance and draw, had let fly across the valley and scored a magnificent bull in an oak tree. Charles, using exactly the same stance and draw, had hit a stone two feet ahead of him. The arrow had ricocheted off smartly to the right – and before his horrified eyes had landed slap in the middle of the posse, headed by Solomon, just as it appeared in a body round an outcrop, nosily intent on seeing what Charles was doing. Nobody was hurt. Only, said Charles, he had lost another ten years off his life. Over a mile he and Allister had walked to find a safe place and those cats must have tracked him every inch of the way. If he put the Channel between them, he said bitterly; if he went to Japan or somewhere to practise archery, he bet that lot would turn up the moment he took aim and swear he had done it purposely.
    Â Â Whether they would or not, that was the end of Charles's ambition to be an archer. Allister left the blunted arrow behind – in case, he said, Charles should change his mind, then he could practise with it. But it was the kittens who played with it, not Charles. We kept it under the Welsh dresser, from which it was apt to emerge precipitately at all hours of the day, two kittens dragging it by the feathers like a battering ram and the other two charging behind shrieking it was Their Turn Now and Hurry Up and get it Into the Garden.
    Â Â We took their playing with it for granted, like all their other nefarious pursuits, and anyway we knew the arrow was blunt. But the old lady who used to worry about Sugieh eating scraps in the lane and now felt it incumbent to keep an eye on the way we were bringing up the kittens nearly had a fit the day she looked over the wall and saw them tearing round the garden with it like a pack of Comanche Indians. Did I think it was right, she enquired breathlessly – you could see the dust still settling on the path behind her, she had scuttled up it so fast – to allow those dear little kittens to play with a dangerous missile like that? The wee black one was screaming so hard in the middle of the lawn that indeed she feared he had hurt himself already.
    Â Â They were a lot safer playing with it than Charles was, I assured her. And if the wee black one let out just one more peep because the others wouldn't let him be Hiawatha and carry the arrow all by himself he was going to get his bottom smacked so hard he wouldn't sit down for days.
    Â Â If it was any comfort, Charles wouldn't have had much time for archery anyway. He had all he could do that summer trying to keep the garden straight. Now we had not one cat digging holes all over it but five, and as it only needed one to give a speculative scratch for all the others enthusiastically to follow suit, most of the time the garden looked like a map of the moon.
    Â Â Somewhere or other the kittens, unlike their mother, had discovered that holes could be put to a more practical use than mere play. Visitors going round the garden were continually coming across the embarrassing spectacle of four small kittens squatting solemnly among the roses with four scrappy tails raised like matchsticks