Cats in the Belfry Read Online Free

punch Charles's nose for swerving all over the place and not giving signals, and Charles himself was shouting that if I didn't get that damblasted cat off his neck she'd have us up a telegraph pole.
    Â Â It was even worse on the return trip. First of all we had my aunt to contend with. My grandmother's concern for animal welfare had always gone to extremes. When she was younger she had had a tame owl called Gladstone whose favourite perch was on top of the bathroom door. My father swore that sometimes it was so draughty with the door open you could see waves on the bath water and in the winter my grandfather used ostentatiously to bring a hip bath down from the attic and wash in his bedroom instead, but it made no difference. Grandma wouldn't have the door shut. She took the line that human beings could look after themselves but poor dumb animals couldn't, so you either took your bath with Gladstone glaring ghoulishly down at you – as like as not with a piece of dead mouse lovingly provided by Grandma in his claws – or not at all.
    Â Â I can remember her myself hurrying down, armed with my old push-chair and scarlet with indignation, to fetch home a collie which somebody told her had been pledged at the local pawnshop. Actually the pawnbroker had taken the dog in, without any hope that the owner would ever redeem it, rather than see it starve; and he had looked after it quite well. Nothing would convince my grandmother, however, that it hadn't been heartlessly ticketed and stacked with the rest of the goods in pawn. She wheeled it home in the push-chair telling everybody she met that it couldn't walk and reducing them practically to tears with the harrowing story – quite untrue – of how she had lifted it off the pawnshop shelf with her Own Two Hands. I remember it so well because for a fortnight after that I was the one deputed to push Baldwin, as she called him – this of course was years after Gladstone had eaten his last mouse on top of the bathroom door – to the park in the pram every day for an airing. And when at last Grandma decided he was strong enough to stand on his own feet again, I was the one – Grandma said she knew I loved poor dumb animals just as much as she did and God would reward me for it – who was persuaded to take him for his first walk and, in consequence, had to face the music when he promptly jumped into the first pram he came to and sat on the baby.
    Â Â She was just as firm in her convictions even when, in later years, she grew too old actually to look after the animals herself. The first time we left Blondin with her, for instance, in spite of our assurances that he would be perfectly happy locked in the spare room with his basket and climbing branches she insisted that my Aunt Louisa had him in her bedroom in case he was lonely.
    Â Â If he had been locked in the spare room Blondin would have settled down quite happily in the wastepaper basket filled with old pullovers which he used in the garden house, but when he saw my aunt's comfortable bed it proved too much for him. He grabbed a nut, dived under the eiderdown, and there he stayed all night, rattling his teeth like castanets every time the poor soul moved.
    Â Â She complained about it the next day but my grandmother merely asked sternly whether she was man or mouse, to be afraid of an innocent little creature who had come to her for comfort. After fifty years of living with Grandma poor Aunt Louisa was, alas, indubitably mouse, so for the next fortnight she shared her bed with Blondin and his nuts, hardly slept a wink, and discovered on the last morning that, tired of sleeping under the eiderdown, which presumably allowed draughts to seep in through the gaps, Blondin had chewed a hole in the cover and was blissfully asleep inside. My Grandma was furious about that, I remember, but not with Blondin. With my aunt who, she said, shouldn't have allowed him to do it.
    Â Â It was a