Four Ducks on a Pond (5 page)

I have said that Corrie and the goats were flourishing, so it is only fair to mention that I, too, was putting on a considerable amount of weight. Young rabbits are very tasty, and comparatively
easy to catch, and if at times I ate rather more than was good for my figure, well, you can hardly blame me. Besides, at this time of year there were a few rather attractive young tabbies that I
had my eye on, and even though, without wishing to be thought conceited, I knew I was the best catch in the south of Mull, I knew too that there would be certain toms who would be anxious to
contest me. So I needed my strength for my romantic future, with long distances to travel and with a fight to face before victorious return.

In the house a great deal of packing was going on. Fionna’s trunk was being got ready for her return to school, and this meant checking through long lists of clothing which she had to take
back with her, while Puddy and Kitten, and indeed all the family, grumbled about the petty regulations which schools impose upon one. Fionna had little to do with this preparation of her
possessions, preferring to cycle round the country, armed with a pencil and notebook in which she recorded the habits of birds. This is a veritable paradise for a birdwatcher, and I should know,
for I’ve done long hours of it myself, though not with the intention of recording my observations. And if you think that my thoughts were focused on the tasty meal this or that bird might
provide, you are not far wrong, though I’ve said it before and I say it again – the family love the birds so I leave them alone. I’m an affectionate cat and I like to please.

It was not only Fionna who was packing. Margie was so much better now that she was going back to London, and she would soon be working again at the film studio near the pet-shop where first I
met my family. I often climbed on her knee and rubbed myself against her and tried to make her understand that there were messages I wanted to send to my old friends in Ealing. But it was no good.
She tickled my ears and said endearing things to me, but of the things I was telling her she had no idea. So I gave up and went to see Corrie, to tell her more stories about London, of which she
never tired.

Corrie had a great ambition to visit London, and her dream was that one day she would take part in the Horse of the Year Show, and would parade in the very same arena that rang with applause for
Foxhunter and Tosca and Winston-the-Horse-the-Queen-rides. But in Corrie’s dream, the chief applause would be for Corrieshellach, and the band would play ‘The Road to the Isles’
as she marched proudly under the spotlight, her silver mane flowing and her silver tail skimming the ground with almost nothing to spare. For it would be Corrie’s beauty that would win her a
place in that parade, and beauty in a Highland pony means that very long, flowing tail and other virtues besides. All of which Corrie possess a hundredfold.

The third lot of packing was being done by John, whenever he wasn’t digging ditches or repairing fences or doing his Russian dance and asking for
FOOD
. John’s
packing meant digging through luggage in an outhouse, and scattering all manner of strange objects around the backyard. There were long black tin trunks, which he called his uniform cases, and
there was a canvas hold-all for bedding, and a camp basin and a mosquito whisk. This latter he said he wouldn’t need in Stirling.

Crumpled khaki uniform was brought out of the cases, and the anti-moth powder shaken out. Then Kitten hung the things in the sun and dared the goats to eat them. The tunic of the suit had
several coloured ribbons on the left breast and three gold stripes on the right arm, which Puddy said were ‘wound stripes’. This meant that John had been through a very bad time during
the war. I would like to have told them that there would not be room on my coat for all my wound stripes, but perhaps they would have thought me frivolous.

John had left the army after the war and had gone back to Oxford University. After that, he had written a lot of film scripts, which kept him travelling round the world, but soon he decided he
would rather be in the army and had given up films. He had come home to Mull, waiting for his call-up. And that was the
OHMS
envelope I told you about in my last
chapter.

Corrie watched these preparations sadly. She didn’t say, ‘It’s chust like I told you.’ She would consider that boastful, and Corrie is the most self-effacing mare I have
ever met. But she knew, as I did, that when John left, it would not be in the bus, and that his going would be for a much longer time than Margie’s or Fionna’s would be. Even the goats
must have had a sense of impending loss, for they chewed the cud much more thoughtfully than ever before, and sometimes I noticed that there was a tear in Flora’s eye. (I have since
discovered I was wrong about that. Puddy cured Flora’s tears with boracic eye-lotion.)

But before John left, a very big and important and sad thing was to happen. So big and so important that, although, like I said, it has now become just a point of time, when the family say,
‘That was before the foot and mouth’ or ‘That was after the foot and mouth,’ it still sends a chill down my spine.

Yes, that tells you what happened. No sooner had Fionna and Margie gone, leaving a very empty feeling of sadness behind them, than the shocking news spread like magic through the district. Foot
and mouth disease had struck the Isle of Mull. Cattle only two miles away were infected. Eight vets were already on their way to supervise the slaughter of contacts. Yes,
SLAUGHTER
. I’ve written it huge because that’s what it was.
HUGE
.

And these memories have so upset me that I’ll have to stop writing about them until tomorrow.

There was a bath of disinfectant at the front gate. There was a bath of disinfectant at the side gate. There was a bath of disinfectant at the back gate. And anyone entering
our grounds had to wash his shoes in that disinfectant before entering the gates. Rushes soaked in disinfectant were spread on the drive, to clean the wheels of any approaching cars, and every day
a vet called to look at the goats and the bullocks. These vets wore gumboots and mackintoshes and sou’westers so that they could be sprayed with disinfectant before and after their visits.
This must have been very trying, for the weather was warm and it was necessary for them to walk many miles every day on their tours of inspection, because their cars could not get by road to
anything like all the suspect crofts and farms.

Arnish butting Flora

Let me say here and now that nobody could have carried out a hateful, indeed repugnant, job more tactfully and with greater thoughtfulness than did those vets. Every cloven-hooved beast in a
given area had to be destroyed. That was the law and it had to be carried out, no matter what private opinions there might have been about this wholesale slaughter. But the distress this edict
wrought can scarcely be described.

Often and often the family had grumbled at the stray flocks of sheep which had a way of finding our land more tasty than the vast areas they were supposed to graze, and consequently it was very
difficult to keep them from climbing into our fields, knocking down the stones from the top of the walls and doing no end of minor damage. Now it was known that these very sheep would have to be
destroyed, the family would gladly knock down the walls themselves to admit the poor victims, if by doing so, they could have given them sanctuary. But of course that couldn’t be.

No time was wasted in carrying out the slaughter policy. A huge pit was dug in the waste land behind our house, and on a bright Saturday in May the macabre procession of cattle moved along the
road to the pit. There was a shot, a flick of a tail, and the animal fell into the pit, to be followed by the next animal. Finally, the calves were led to the pit, and those too small to walk were
carried.

Afterwards a lorry laden with quicklime was driven up to the pit, and a crowd of men got busy with spades, first shovelling in the quicklime, then covering up the huge grave. And that was that.
I don’t know where the sheep were buried, lambs and all, and I never enquired.

I’ve told you as briefly as possible, because I don’t want to disgust you or tear at your heartstrings. But I expect when you hear about outbreaks of foot and mouth on the wireless,
you think all the important news is over, so you just switch off and never give it another thought. Unless it is in your area and the animals that have been part of the landscape are suddenly there
no more, and the people you know, who have reared and loved those animals, are faced with this terrible loss; then you realise what that brief announcement means, and you pause to think and pity
and wish you could help.

By great good fortune, the area to be cleared for the present outbreak ended at the side road over by the church. That meant there was some waste ground between us and the infected land. At any
moment an animal on our side of the road might become infected, and that would mean our own bullocks and goats would have to go to a horrid pit somewhere.

I think Puddy’s worryings must have been beyond imagining, for she worried so much anyhow! She tethered Arnish and Flora so that they could not leave our grounds; she reinforced the fence,
so that there was no chance of the bullocks escaping, and she would not take Corrie out on the road for fear of carrying home germs. Corrie became quite incredibly fat – but that is to
digress.

When Carla was taken for walks, she was dipped in the tub of disinfectant on her return home, and from that time to this, Carla hates walks, remembering always that horrid ducking.

In order to help, I gave up my courtship of a particularly attractive young cat at Kintra (one of the villages in the infected area) and confined my activities to wiping out a few more rabbits
and a great many mice. But a little incident will show you how thoughtless one can be – even I, who pride myself in trying to please.

Just after the foot and mouth outbreak, when the vets had first arrived and everyone was feeling rather confused, I set off for Kintra, and because of a contretemps with a couple of rivals, I
stayed there rather longer than I had expected. A couple of days in fact. Returning home one afternoon and feeling, I may say, rather the worse for wear, I found Puddy at the front gate, talking to
two of the vets.

‘We have absolutely no contacts with anything outside our own land,’ I could hear her saying. ‘I never even take the pony out. So you can’t think that the goats are
likely to be infected. Nothing from here goes anywhere else.’

Imagine how I felt as I approached the gate! It was too late to slip away and hide, for already I had been seen. I could feel Puddy looking at me in dismay and anxiety, and I knew the vets were
looking at me too. She went on talking to distract their attention. I climbed under the gate, and very carefully and deliberately walked in a circle round the disinfected straw. It was the best I
could do, to undo the wrong I had done, though I hated the smell of the disinfectant, and knew that I would hate still more licking it off my paws. It might even kill me, but if I had brought germs
to my dear friends, I deserved to die.

I was so ashamed that I scarcely went near the house for days, except for meals. I lived in daily dread that one of our animals would break out with the disease. I told Corrie something of my
fears, but not everything, for I did not want to distress her kindly heart too deeply. She was already much upset, for all round us the still, quiet countryside seemed to impress on us, in its
strange silence, the catastrophe that had befallen our land.

Then one day, with my anxiety almost at breaking point, Puddy came out and untethered the goats. ‘We’re out of quarantine. We’re safe,’ she told them delightedly, and
Arnish rose up on her hind legs and dived down on Flora, just for the sheer joy of being released from captivity. Whether she knew the reason for that tether, I have no idea, but I overheard her
saying to Flora that this was the result of having Tories in power. It was a shocking statement, but I had long ago found that politically-minded people don’t care at all what outrageous and
untrue statements they make about one another, so it’s no use getting upset about it. However, I resolved that I would avoid politics, and so avoid having to tell a pack of lies to my
friends.

It would be a while before the people whose animals had been destroyed would be allowed to restock, so the air of sadness hung over the district for some time. Those few who, like us, had
escaped, talked in hushed voices of their good fortune, and of their sympathy for the ones who suffered.

The disinfectant tubs were removed from the gates (the straw had blown away from the drive long ago) – and the urgent notices warning people about infected property were removed. Corrie
was taken out on the road and sweated so much with the little scrap of exercise that Puddy had a fit of worrying about her, fearing she might get pneumonia. Carla continued to slink away, avoiding
walks. Peter and Iain chewed the cud and appeared not to know anything had ever been amiss, and Arnish redoubled her propaganda about the New Era.