Every Living Thing (38 page)

When I had finished I couldn’t bear the thought of turning them out into that cruel wind. I lifted them again and tucked them one under each arm.

“Helen,” I said. “Let’s have another try. Will you just gently close the door.”

She took hold of the knob and began to push very slowly, but immediately both cats leaped like uncoiled springs from my arms and shot into the garden. We watched them as they trotted out of sight.

“Well, that’s extraordinary,” I said. “Ill as they are, they won’t tolerate being locked in.”

Helen was on the verge of tears. “But how will they stand it out there? They should be kept warm. I wonder if we’ll ever see them again.”

“I just don’t know.” I looked at the empty garden. “But we’ve got to realise they are in their natural environment. They’re tough little things. I think they’ll be back.”

I was right. Next morning they were outside the window, eyes closed against the wind, the fur on their faces streaked and stained with the copious discharge.

Again Helen opened the door and again they walked calmly inside and made no resistance as I repeated my treatment, injecting them, swabbing out eyes and nostrils, examining their mouths for ulcers, lifting them around like any long-standing household pets.

This happened every day for a week. The discharges became more purulent and their racking sneezing seemed no better, then, when I was losing hope, they started to eat a little food and, significantly, they weren’t so keen to come into the house.

When I did get them inside, they were tense and unhappy as I handled them and finally I couldn’t touch them at all. They were by no means cured, so I mixed oxytet soluble powder in their food and treated them that way.

The weather was even worse, with fine flakes of snow spinning in the wind, but the day came when they refused to come inside and we watched them through the window as they ate. But I had the satisfaction of knowing they were still getting the antibiotic with every mouthful.

As I carried on this long-range treatment, observing them daily from the kitchen, it was rewarding to see the sneezing abating, the discharges drying up and the cats gradually regaining their lost flesh.

It was a brisk sunny morning in March when I watched Helen putting their breakfast on the wall. Olly and Ginny, sleek as seals, their faces clean and dry, their eyes bright, came arching along the wire, purring like outboard motors. They were in no hurry to eat; they were clearly happy just to see her.

As they passed to and fro, she ran her hand gently along their heads and backs. This was the kind of stroking they liked—not overdone, with them continually in motion.

I felt I had to get into the action and stepped from the open door.

“Ginny,” I said and held out a hand. “Come here, Ginny.” The little creature stopped her promenade along the wall and regarded me from a safe distance not with hostility but with all the old wariness. As I tried to move nearer to her she skipped away out of reach.

“Okay,” I said, “and I don’t suppose it’s any good trying with you either, Olly.” The black-and-white cat backed well away from my outstretched hand and gave me a noncommittal gaze. I could see he agreed with me.

Mortified, I called out to the two of them. “Hey, remember me?” It was clear by the look of them that they remembered me all right—but not in the way I hoped. I felt a stab of frustration. Despite my efforts I was back where I started.

Helen laughed. “They’re a funny pair, but don’t they look marvellous! They’re a picture of health, as good as new. It says a lot for fresh air treatment.”

“It does indeed,” I said with a wry smile. “But it also says something for having a resident veterinary surgeon.”

“G
ET BACK HOME TO
bed, James!” Siegfried was at his most imperious, chin jutting, arm outstretched, pointing to the door.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Honestly I am.”

“Well, you don’t look so damn fine to me. About ready for Mallock’s yard, if you ask me. You’ve not fit to be out.”

His reference to the local knacker man was not inapposite. I had trailed into the surgery the day after one of my brucellosis attacks in the hope that a bit of work and exercise would make me feel better, but I knew that the weak, shivery object I had seen in my mirror didn’t look much good for anything.

I dug my hands into my pockets and tried to stop shaking. “I soon recover from these things, Siegfried, my temperature’s normal and lying in bed gives me the willies. I’ll be okay, I assure you.”

“James, you’ll maybe be okay tomorrow but if you go out into the country now and start stripping off you could drop down dead. I’ve got to be on my way now and I’ve no time to argue, but I forbid you to work! Understand? I tell you what. If you refuse to go home, you can go with Calum on his round. Just sit in the car with him—but don’t do anything!” He lifted his medical bag and left the room at a half-trot.

It didn’t seem a bad idea. Better than lying in bed listening to the household noises going on through the closed door with the depressing feelings of being detached from the workaday world. I had always hated that. I turned to our assistant. “Is that all right, Calum?”

“Of course, Jim. I’ll enjoy your company.”

I wasn’t such bright company as I sat silent, watching the dry-stone walls and the snow-covered hills roll past the car windows. When we arrived at the first farm, the gateway was blocked.

“We’ll have to walk over a couple of fields, Jim,” Calum said. “Or you could stay here in the car.”

“No, I’ll come with you.” I dragged myself out and we set off across the smooth unbroken blanket of white.

Even that short journey held something for my colleague. “Look, Jim, a fox has been along here. See his paw marks and the long trailing groove made by his brush. And those little holes—there are mice down there. The heat from their bodies melts the snow above them.” He identified the tracks of the various birds that had landed on the snow. They were just marks to me but a whole thrilling book to him.

The farmer, Edgar Stott, was waiting for us in the yard. Calum had never been to his farm and I introduced him. “I’m not too grand today, so Mr. Buchanan is going to see to your cow.”

Mr. Stott was known as a “clever bugger” among the local farmers. This didn’t mean that they regarded him as intellectually superior, but rather as an aggressive know-all. In his own eyes he was an outstanding wit and he did not endear himself to his neighbours by his propensity for taking people down a peg.

He was a big man and his bright little eyes in the fleshy face twinkled maliciously at Calum. “Oh, we’ve got the reserve man on the job today. Vet wi’ t’badger, eh? I’ve heard about you. We’ll soon see how much ye know.”

In the byre I sank down on a bale of straw, relishing the sweet bovine warmth. Mr. Stott led Calum along the line of cows and pointed to a roan animal. “Well, there she is. What d’ye make of her?”

Calum scratched the root of her tail and looked along the shaggy flank. “Well now, what’s the trouble, Mr. Stott?”

“Ah, you’re t’vitnery. I want
you
to tell
me.
”

My colleague smiled politely at the ancient joke. “Let’s put it another way. What are her symptoms? Is she off her food?”

“Aye.”

“Taking anything at all?”

“Just a bit.”

“How long has she been calved?”

“About a month.”

Calum took the temperature. Auscultated stomach and lungs. Pulled the head round and smelt the breath. Drew some milk onto his palm and smelt that, too, but he was clearly baffled. His enquiries about the animal’s history were answered by grunts from Mr. Stott, and several times when Calum stood back and gazed blankly at the animal the farmer’s mouth twisted in a sneer.

“Will you bring me a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel, please?” the young man asked.

He took off his shirt and thrust his arm first into the vagina then deeply up into the rectum where I knew he was palpating the abdominal organs. Then he turned to the farmer who was standing, hands in pockets, observing him with sardonic interest.

“You know, this is very strange. Everything seems normal. Is there anything you haven’t told me, Mr. Stott?”

The big man hunched his shoulders and chuckled. “Aye, there is summat I haven’t told ye. There’s nowt wrong wi’ that beast.”

“Eh?”

“I said there’s nowt wrong with ’er. She’s as healthy as thee and me. I just wanted to see if you know owt about the job.” Then he burst into a roar of laughter and slapped his knee in glee.

As Calum, naked to the waist, his arm covered in faeces, looked back at him expressionlessly, the farmer tapped him on the shoulder.

“Now then, ah know you can take a joke, young man, ha-ha-ha! There’s nowt like a good laugh! Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

For several long seconds Calum continued to stare at him, then his face relaxed slowly into a smile, and as he soaped his arm in the bucket and pulled on his shirt, he began to giggle gently and finally he threw back his head and gave a great peal of mirth. “Yes, you’re right, Mr. Stott! Ha-ha-ha! There’s nowt like a good laugh. You’re right, so right.”

The farmer led him along the byre. “This is the cow you ’ave to see.”

As expected, he had already diagnosed the illness. Mr. Stott knew everything. “She’s just got a touch o’ slow fever.” This was the local name for acetonaemia, a metabolic disease easily cured. “There’s that sweet smell about ’er and she’s losin’ flesh.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Stott, it sounds like it. I’ll just check her over.” Still chuckling, Calum drew a few squirts from the udder, smelt the breath, took the temperature. All the time he kept murmuring, “How funny, what a good joke,” then he began to whistle cheerfully. It was when he had his stethoscope on the stomach that the whistling slowed down and then stopped. He began to listen intently, grave-faced, moving from the left side of the cow to the right, then back again.

Finally he straightened up. “Can you get me a spoon from the house, please.”

The grin faded from the farmer’s face. “A spoon? What the ’ell for? Is there summat wrong?”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I don’t want to worry you. Just get me the spoon.”

When the farmer returned, Calum recommenced his listening at the left side of the cow, only this time he kept tapping the lower ribs with the spoon.

“My God, it’s there!” he exclaimed.

“What’s there?” gasped the farmer. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“The tinkle.”

“The tinkle?”

“Yes, Mr. Stott, it’s the tinkling sound you hear in displacement of the abomasum.”

“Displacement…what the ’ell’s that?”

“It is a condition where the fourth stomach or abomasum slips round from the right side to the left. I’m awfully sorry, but it’s a very serious ailment.”

“But how about the sweet smell?”

“Well, yes, you do get that acetonaemia smell with a displacement. It’s very easy to confuse the two things.”

“What’s goin’ to happen, then?”

Calum sighed. “She’ll have to undergo a very large operation. It requires two vets—one to open up the left side of the cow, the other to open the right. I’m afraid it’s a very big job.”

“And it’ll cost a lot of money, too, ah reckon!”

“Afraid so.”

The farmer took off his cap and began to churn his hair about. Then he swung round at me, slumped on my bale. “Is all this I’m hearin’ right? About this tinkle?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Stott, but it is,” I replied. “That tinkling noise is classical. We get quite a lot of these cases now.”

He rounded on Calum again. “Bloody ’ell! And will she be all right after the operation?”

The young man shrugged. “Can’t guarantee anything, I’m sorry to say. But most of them do quite well.”

“Most of ’em…And what if she doesn’t have the operation?”

“She’ll waste away and die. You can see she’s losing flesh now. I’m really very sorry.”

The farmer stared, open-mouthed and wordless, at the young man.

“I know how you feel, Mr. Stott,” Calum said. “A lot of farmers hate the idea of the big operation. It’s a gory, messy business. You could send her in for slaughter if you like.”

“Send her in…? She’s a bloody good cow!”

“All right, then, let’s go ahead with the job. Mr. Herriot is quite ill and unfit to do anything, but I’ll telephone Mr. Farnon to come out with the equipment.”

The farmer, totally shattered, dropped down on my bale and his head sank on his chest. As he sat there, staring at the ground, Calum’s face broke into a grin that almost reached his ears.

“It’s okay, Mr. Stott. I’m only kidding.”

“What?” The farmer gaped up at him uncomprehendingly.

“Only kidding. Just a little joke. Ha-ha! She’s only got acetonaemia. I’ll get some steroid from the car. A couple of shots and she’ll be fine.”

As Mr. Stott rose slowly from the bale, Calum wagged a finger at him.

“I know you like a joke. Ha-ha-ha-ha! As you say, there’s nowt like a good laugh!”

A
S A CAT LOVER
, it irked me that my own cats couldn’t stand the sight of me. Ginny and Olly were part of the family now. We were devoted to them and whenever we had a day out the first thing Helen did on our return was to open the back-door and feed them. The cats knew this very well and were either sitting on the flat top of the wall, waiting for her, or ready to trot down from the log shed that was their home.

We had been to Brawton on our half-day and they were there as usual as Helen put out a dish of food and a bowl of milk for them on the wall.

“Olly, Ginny,” she murmured as she stroked the furry coats. The days had long gone when they refused to let her touch them. Now they rubbed against her hand in delight, arching and purring, and, when they were eating, she ran her hand repeatedly along their backs. They were such gentle little animals, their wildness expressed only in fear, and now, with her, that fear had gone. My children and some from the village had won their confidence, too, and were allowed to give them a careful caress, but they drew the line at Herriot.

Like now, for instance. I quietly followed Helen out and moved towards the wall and immediately they left the food and retreated to a safe distance, where they stood, still arching their backs, but, as ever, out of reach. They regarded me without hostility but as I held out a hand they moved farther away.