Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (18 page)

‘You can see he’s got cataracts,’ said Miss Millichip, reconfirming her ‘would-be-vet’ status. ‘And I’d suspect he’s got some fluid in his tummy … wouldn’t you?’ She reached over and cupped her hand under his pendulous abdomen.

Once having palpated Nelson’s abdomen myself, I was able to confirm Miss Millichip’s observations.

‘Could be his heart I suppose,’ she was saying, ‘although he hasn’t been coughing or getting out of breath. So it’s unlikely.’

Having listened through my stethoscope to Nelson’s heart, all seemed pretty normal, no murmurs, no arrhythmias, so I had to agree with Miss Millichip. Again.

‘He’s got good teeth for a 12-year-old, hasn’t he?’ remarked Miss Millichip as I opened his mouth. ‘All his incisors are still present and there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with his back molars, does there?’

Yes. For the third time, I had to agree.

‘And he didn’t object when I felt his lower lumbar spine and his hips,’ she went on as I was about to start my own examination of them. ‘So no obvious problems with arthritis, then.’

‘No,’ I said, finishing my own rotation and palpation of Nelson’s hips, wondering whether it was worth me bothering to go on.

Throughout, Nelson was a model patient, stoically standing or sitting when requested. Only towards the end of my examination did he start to pant a little, his large, pink tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.

‘Well done, old fella,’ I said, as I finally finished and tickled him at the base of his ear. It was an action that immediately had him twist his head to one side and produced the biggest grin I’d ever seen in such a small dog, his lips curling back to almost lose themselves behind his ears.

It certainly made me smile and Miss Millichip was quick to notice.

‘He needs a good home,’ she said, going on to explain that she couldn’t cope with his anti-cat stance. I liked Jack Russells, didn’t I? Just look at the way Nelson had taken to me – that winsome grin of his, so appealing, wasn’t it? And he was in good nick for his age, didn’t I think? He just needed a loving, caring home with someone to deal with any problems as they arose. Yes?

Her battering tirade persisted until I began to buckle and, with one final push, saying I was just the sort of owner he needed, all my defences were breached. I surrendered … and found myself driving home that evening with Nelson sitting on the seat next to me. Although not grinning now, he certainly seemed to have a very pleased expression on his face – who was the stupid mutt, me or him?

But I’d forgotten one thing. And as I turned off the lane down to Willow Wren and eased the car round into the hard standing in front of the garage, I suddenly realised that I’d capitulated in the face of Miss Millichip’s onslaught only to land myself with a far greater battle ahead. For some inexplicable reason, I’d totally forgotten one thing in agreeing to take on this smiley old mutt who, the minute I stopped, brought his head up level with the bottom of the window and started sniffing with inordinate and rather troubling interest. Although there was the barrier of the car and the thickness of Willow Wren’s walls, it seemed that Nelson’s radar was so finely tuned that he could already sense what lay within those walls and what was, no doubt, reclining with regal grace on her favourite armchair – Queenie, Lucy’s cat.

‘Wait there, old chap,’ I whispered, slipping out of the car and going round to the side gate, entering the cottage as if I was about to commit a heinous crime. Which I suppose, in a way, I was.

‘Luce?’ I said softly, tiptoeing into the living room. She wasn’t there. But Queenie was. She looked across from her throne (our settee) where she was stretched out along its back in all her regal, green-eyed splendour, her long, silky, white-and-grey robes (fur) flowing down the front of the settee while the tip of her sceptre (tail) curled up at the sight of me. It was like a regal staff summoning me over. I had to fight the urge to hurry forward and prostrate myself on the red carpet before her, begging to have my sins forgiven by royal pardon.

‘Paul? What’s up?’ It was Lucy coming down the narrow stairs, looking over the banister to where I was standing in the middle of the living room, staring at Queenie, thighs squeezed together, hands wedged between them, ready to drop to the ground in supplication. ‘Do you need the loo?’ she added, curious at my stance. Although, at that stage, Lucy and I had only been living together less than six weeks, it had been long enough for me to suss out that she had what is termed by some as ‘a woman’s intuition’, and Lucy had it in bucket-loads.

Many a time she observed what I was saying or doing – or maybe not saying or doing – and with uncanny accuracy knew immediately the reasons behind my actions, almost as if she could read my mind. More than a touch of the Madam Mountjoys, there, I thought. Quite unnerving really. She’d shown that intuition when I acquired Gertie, the goose, and this evening I knew the moment she clamped her eyes on me that she’d twigged something was afoot. Maybe my feet were indeed the giveaway – the way they were nervously padding up and down in the middle of the room, rather like a tom cat’s hind-legs dance just before he ejects a stream of urine up a wall. Fortunately I wasn’t that nervous, and so there was no danger of wetting myself or the living room wall.

‘Paul.’ Lucy took a step nearer. I lowered my head, my eyes sliding from her glance – a glance which clearly said, ‘I know exactly what you’ve done.’

‘You haven’t, have you?’ she continued.

‘What, love?’ I said, all innocence, trying to smother the guilt in my voice – a hopeless task with Lucy’s radar on full scan.

‘Brought home another animal.’ Now, had she said that unaided, then I truly would have thought her a mind reader; but just at that moment, Nelson decided he’d waited long enough in the car and let out a mournful howl. On hearing it, she was quick to elaborate. ‘And a dog by the sound of it.’ Well, at least it saved me the task of telling her the nature of the beast. Lucy took a deep breath and then sighed. ‘Well, I trust it likes cats.’ She arched an eyebrow at me.

I looked across at her and said, with as much conviction as possible, ‘Cats? Oh, he adores cats.’ Well, that was true up to a point. Nelson did adore cats – adored chasing them. No good. Lucy’s intuition revealed itself with excruciating clarity. ‘Bloody hell, Paul. Don’t tell me – he hates them.’

I didn’t think it fair to reach that conclusion based on the fact that she could read my mind. For all she knew, the 12 or so cats I had in mind, trembling outside Miss Millichip’s kitchen windows and doors, fearful to step inside while Nelson was in there, may just have been a figment of my imagination. But I knew they weren’t … and so did Lucy.

‘OK … OK,’ I admitted. ‘Nelson’s not
too
keen on cats. But I’m sure Queenie will soon put him in his place.’ I looked across at her royal highness as I spoke; judging from the disdain etched on her face, that place had already been decided – the Tower of London, ready for the chop.

The meeting between the two wasn’t as dramatic as I feared. Sure, Nelson trotted in, full of jauntiness, his flagpole tail erect and quivering; and as soon as he spotted Queenie, he raced across the living room, braking to a halt at the settee, then springing onto it with remarkable agility considering his 12 years. Was he expecting Queenie to shoot away, giving him the excuse to give chase? If so, he was sorely disappointed. She’d already stood up when he’d entered the room, and, as he approached, had arched her back and given a warning hiss. All those warning signs were missed by Nelson. But then he was deaf and
poor-sighted
– or maybe just plain dumb. So by the time he was on the settee with his paws on its back, her own back was well up, arched ready to give him a mighty biff on his nose. Which she did with royal aplomb, as if knighting him.

With an almighty yelp, he reeled back, fell sideways onto the seat of the settee, and then rolled off onto the carpet, where he struggled to his feet and, with a distinct air of disbelief, shook himself, before, his tail erect once more, he trotted out into the kitchen, discovered the remains of Queenie’s supper and devoured the lot in a couple of gulps.

Her royal highness, meanwhile, watched him disappear, and then set about rearranging her robes with a good lick of her tongue. And that was the end of the matter. The uprising had been quelled and no further disturbances (apart from those between Lucy and me) were to mar Queenie’s reign, Nelson making sure he kept a respectful distance whenever he was in her presence.

I only wished some of the other residents of Willow Wren could have kept their respectful distance. Along with the cottage, we seemed to have inherited a colony of mice, which wasn’t in the inventory I’d checked through with Eric and Crystal before settling in. They were a happy band of rodents who, on our arrival, welcomed us with open paws, and a cheery twitch of their whiskers, showing their interest in us by immediately delving into all and sundry, trekking across the loft at night, popping down to rummage through the drawers in the kitchen, with the occasional squeak of delight at having found a tasty morsel – Camembert, Brie and Roquefort were particular favourites. It made me wonder whether we’d inherited a special breed that had smuggled their way in under the cover of one of those French farmers’ markets that periodically invaded Westcott – stall holders dressed in berets and blue-and-white jerseys, displaying their strings of onions and stacks of baguettes with plenty of ‘
Bonjours
’ and ‘
Saluts
’ in the pedestrianised High Street, much to the bewilderment of the old dears trying to get to the Co-op.

These mice certainly had the
sangfroid
of the French and I half expected to encounter one eventually, leaning against our pine dresser, a Gauloise rakishly stuck in the corner of his mouth while watching his mates play boules with some salted peanuts we’d forgotten to put away that evening. They were certainly quite brazen in their comings and goings; often, when I was sitting on the toilet, one would come pattering across the floor, nut rather than ciggie in mouth, to dart into the gap between the lavatory pan and the floorboards.

One even developed a routine whereby he or she would visit me when I was in bed – at the time, I had rather a slovenly habit of having snacks in bed just before going to sleep, which meant a plate with crumbs and often an apple core were left on the bedside cabinet overnight. That is until a mouse discovered my unsavoury habit, and I began finding an empty, scoured plate there the next morning. The rodent’s visits got earlier and earlier until, one evening, I’d only just put the plate down when onto the cabinet he skipped, sat up, whiskers aquiver, barely a foot from me and then lifted the apple core between his paws, spun it round as if checking for palatability before sinking his teeth into its centre and scuttling off with it.

‘People will think you a bit weird,’ Lucy warned me one night as she walked into the bedroom to find me sprawled on the bed in my boxer shorts, digital camera mounted on a tripod with extension release pointing at the cabinet, while I waited to get a flash photo of my core-nicking friend. And, yes, I did get one … and a few rather more racy shots of Lucy and me later, so in one evening I managed to capture two sides to the wildlife in our bedroom.

‘We’re really going to have to do something about these mice,’ declared Lucy the next morning as she rummaged in her knicker drawer and pulled out a pair in soft-cream satin with dainty, lace trim round the waist – I’d bought them at the Christmas sales, all the racy red satin numbers in size ten had gone. She held them up, stretched between her hands, turning to show them to me. ‘See? Just look at that. Completely ruined.’ And just to emphasise the point, she stuck a finger through the hole in the gusset where a mouse had chewed it.

I had thought the presence of Queenie might have deterred the hordes of mice.

‘You must be joking,’ Lucy told me. ‘That’s not her thing.’

Queenie’s thing, it seemed, was to cast a regal eye over the mousy proceedings without batting an eyelid at their frequent toings and froings across her empire. She would not stoop to conquer; not for her Boudicca-style charges to snatch a rodent or two. The likes of next door’s Tammy could catch and bring in her spoils of war should she choose to, but for Queenie that was far beneath her, far too demeaning. In fact, the opposite was true of her – she expected the spoils of war to be brought to her … or rather, the spoils of our cooking.

‘She’s bloody faddy,’ I once declared, as she padded over to the bowl of gourmet, tinned food I’d forked out for her, gave it one cursory sniff and then walked over to the fridge, sat down and patted the door with a paw.

‘She’s got good taste, that’s all,’ said Lucy opening the door to take out the remains of our chicken casserole, spoon a portion into a dish and put it down for Queenie, who immediately tucked in with great relish.

‘Hey, I was saving that for our dinner tomorrow,’ I cried.

Lucy shrugged. ‘You’ll just have to find something else.’

I looked down at the pile of untouched gourmet chicken and liver cat food and wondered if I could curry it.

Queenie’s indifference to the mice was one reason Lucy and I didn’t discourage Garfield when he first made his appearance. It was a late summer’s evening as I was returning from an emergency appointment at Prospect House – an evening when Lucy had been the nurse on duty and so was sleeping in the flat that night, reluctantly, as we were still nuts about each other at the time; in fact, had it not been for the animals to be seen to at Willow Wren, I would have stayed in the spare room with her, even though it risked Mandy overhearing our lovemaking, which could be noisy at times. It was something I kept forgetting at Willow Wren, wondering the next morning as we got woken by Wilfred’s screeches penetrating the dividing wall whether our equally vocal ‘aaargghs’ and ‘uurrrffs’ of the previous evening, accompanied by the rhythmic pounding of bedsprings, ever impinged on Eleanor’s sleeping patterns. Nothing was ever said. But then how could a genteel lady whose son was a vicar broach such a subject? She could hardly say, ‘Would you mind being a little less zealous in your bonking?’