H2, Etc., by A.J. Alan

WE'VE got a cat. She's a black Persian—a shocking great beast — and she weighs over fifteen pounds on our kitchen scales, but she's awfully delicate. If she stays out too long in the cold she gets bronchitis and has to be sat up with. So, unless it's really hot weather, we reckon to get her indoors by eleven o'clock. Well, one night not long ago—it was after eleven—in fact ten past twelve, and we were sort of thinking of bed, when my wife said, " I wonder where Tibbins is." Tibbins is, of course, our cat, and at that time in the evening she ought, according to her schedule, to have been lying in a heap with the dogs in front of the fire. However, the dogs were there but she wasn't. No one remem- bered having seen her last, so I made a tour of her usual haunts. She wasn't in her basket by the coke stove down in the scullery, where she generally takes her morning nap, neither was she in hell. Hell is a place at the top of the house where the hot-water cistern is. She often retires there in the afternoon. At all events, I drew a complete blank, so we were finally forced to the conclusion that she wasn't in the house at all, and my wife said, " I'm afraid you'll have to go out and meow for her." So I went out and meowed. I searched our garden, but as she wasn't there I went through the main garden. Perhaps I'd better explain that all the houses in our road have their own gardens at the back, and these have gates into what we call the main garden. This runs right along behind them, and there's one of these main gardens to every eight houses or so, but they are divided off from each other by the side-turnings which run into our road. I'm afraid it sounds rather corpolicated. However, our particular main garden is about a hundred yards long and forty yards wide, and it's quite big enough for a black cat to hide in, as I found. I walked round every blooming bush in it and said, " R-r-r-wow," or words to that effect, in what I considered to be an ingratiating manner, but without any success, and I was just going to chuck my hand in when I saw our Tibbins sitting on the end wall. That is to say, the wall which divides the garden from the road. She let me sidle quite close, but just as I was going to grab her she jumped down on the far side (the road side). Then she skipped across the road and squeezed through the bars of the gate into the next main garden. I said a few things and climbed over the wall and followed her. Of course, I couldn't squeeze between the bars of the gate so I had to scramble over the top. She very kindly waited while I did this and then moved off just ahead. She frolicked about with her tail in the air, as who should say, " Isn't it fun our going for a walk like this in the moonlight ? " and I told her what fun I thought it was. I'd already torn my dinner-jacket getting over the gate, but it's no good being sarcastic to a cat. She continued to lead me up the garden, darting from tree to tree, until we got half-way along, and then she turned off to the right and went into one of the private gardens. Luckily the gate was open and I didn't have to climb over it. The house it belonged to was all in darkness, of course, but when I got to the middle of the lawn the lights suddenly came on in one of the ground-floor rooms. It had a French window and the blinds were up. Well, this startled the cat and she let me pick her up, so that was all right, but just as I was turning to come away a little old man appeared at the window. He was so close that he couldn't have helped seeing me if I'd moved, so I stood quite still and held Tibbins up against my shirt front. He was a very old man indeed, rather inclined to dodder, and he had on a dark blue dressing-gown. He'd got something white hanging over his arm, I couldn't quite see what it was, but it looked like a small towel. Anyway, he peered out for a bit and then he drew the bolts and pushed the window open. He came and stood right outside, and I thought, " He's bound to see me now," but he didn't seem to. After a minute he wandered back into the room again, and sat down and began writing a letter.