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Authors: Doreen Tovey
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sweaters on the bed. I knew what I was going to find.
  He'd done an absolutely outsize wet â through the sweaters, through the quilt, right down to the blankets. The hot water bottle had been dumped on the floor. In a futile hope I picked it up and checked it. Alas, it wasn't the bottle that had done the leaking, though the swamp on the bed was big enough. I looked at the undoubted culprit, watching me warily from the dressing table.
  Why couldn't he have used a corner in an emergency, like any other cat? I wailed. If it came to that, why couldn't he have held on for a mere two hours? Normal cats don't use their boxes every five minutes like demented fountains. Why did he have to make such a point of it?
  He regarded me with his Elizabethan philosopher look. His face always seemed much longer when he was solemn. I knew how he got Nervous, he said. How did he know it would only be two hours? He'd thought it was through not doing it that he and Shebalu had got locked in. He'd only been making a Libation.
  He'd done that all right. I had to change all the blankets and it took days, after I'd washed it, to air the quilt. Even then I had to mount guard on it when Sass was anywhere near. He kept sniffing it with an air of unfinished business. More than that, he'd gone right back to his obsession about wool â obviously wetting the sweaters had brought it back to him. It became his main preoccupation and for a while it felt like ours as well.
Seven
Charles, given to reading peacefully in his armchair after supper, got fed up with seeing Sass eternally going past with one of his socks. He'd take it away, sit on it, resume his reading... The next thing to catch his eye would be Sass going past with the other sock, en route to dumping it by the kitchen door which was the nearest he could get to putting it outside. If it wasn't a sock then it would be one of Charles's sweaters, dragged along as if Sass's very continuance in this world depended on it.
  According to him it did. Hadn't he stopped wetting on wool because we'd persuaded him, and got shut in the bedroom as a result? Where he and Shebalu might have been locked for Ever if he hadn't done some conciliatory work on the sweaters? Got to wet this one Too, he would inform us, struggling across the floor with his burden â and Charles would yell, slap his book down exasperatedly, and make a hurried grab for that. Why did that cat always take his sweaters and socks? he demanded. Why couldn't he occasionally take mine?
  Because I didn't leave them where Sass could find them. On the bed or the bathroom stool was Charles's usual wont. One day, however, Sass went upstairs. I could hear him thumping around. It sounded as if he was moving a piano, but Siamese activities usually do. When he reappeared he was stumbling along with something big and dark, legs straddled as if he were carrying a pheasant. Charles's sweater, I thought, cocking a glance across the room from where I was watching television â and then I realised it was mine. My new Shetland sweater that I hadn't even worn. It had been on a shelf in the bedroom cupboard.
  Charles, it transpired, had put all his things away for once and Sass, searching for a sacrificial offering, must have got the cupboard door open attracted by the peaty scent of the wool, which to him was probably worse even than the ordinary kind. This one smelled Awful, he informed me as he passed. Boy, were we lucky he'd found it. He'd just put it over by the kitchen door and perform his Magic Action on it...
  Oh no he wouldn't, I said. I took it away from him and put it behind me in the chair, not wishing to miss the programme I was watching. Next thing I knew, he'd bitten me hard in the arm and I nearly hit the ceiling.
  As I say, it needs psychology to understand Siamese cats. He hadn't bitten me because he was angry with me. It was just that I was wearing a woollen
  He'd done an absolutely outsize wet â through the sweaters, through the quilt, right down to the blankets. The hot water bottle had been dumped on the floor. In a futile hope I picked it up and checked it. Alas, it wasn't the bottle that had done the leaking, though the swamp on the bed was big enough. I looked at the undoubted culprit, watching me warily from the dressing table.
  Why couldn't he have used a corner in an emergency, like any other cat? I wailed. If it came to that, why couldn't he have held on for a mere two hours? Normal cats don't use their boxes every five minutes like demented fountains. Why did he have to make such a point of it?
  He regarded me with his Elizabethan philosopher look. His face always seemed much longer when he was solemn. I knew how he got Nervous, he said. How did he know it would only be two hours? He'd thought it was through not doing it that he and Shebalu had got locked in. He'd only been making a Libation.
  He'd done that all right. I had to change all the blankets and it took days, after I'd washed it, to air the quilt. Even then I had to mount guard on it when Sass was anywhere near. He kept sniffing it with an air of unfinished business. More than that, he'd gone right back to his obsession about wool â obviously wetting the sweaters had brought it back to him. It became his main preoccupation and for a while it felt like ours as well.
Seven
Charles, given to reading peacefully in his armchair after supper, got fed up with seeing Sass eternally going past with one of his socks. He'd take it away, sit on it, resume his reading... The next thing to catch his eye would be Sass going past with the other sock, en route to dumping it by the kitchen door which was the nearest he could get to putting it outside. If it wasn't a sock then it would be one of Charles's sweaters, dragged along as if Sass's very continuance in this world depended on it.
  According to him it did. Hadn't he stopped wetting on wool because we'd persuaded him, and got shut in the bedroom as a result? Where he and Shebalu might have been locked for Ever if he hadn't done some conciliatory work on the sweaters? Got to wet this one Too, he would inform us, struggling across the floor with his burden â and Charles would yell, slap his book down exasperatedly, and make a hurried grab for that. Why did that cat always take his sweaters and socks? he demanded. Why couldn't he occasionally take mine?
  Because I didn't leave them where Sass could find them. On the bed or the bathroom stool was Charles's usual wont. One day, however, Sass went upstairs. I could hear him thumping around. It sounded as if he was moving a piano, but Siamese activities usually do. When he reappeared he was stumbling along with something big and dark, legs straddled as if he were carrying a pheasant. Charles's sweater, I thought, cocking a glance across the room from where I was watching television â and then I realised it was mine. My new Shetland sweater that I hadn't even worn. It had been on a shelf in the bedroom cupboard.
  Charles, it transpired, had put all his things away for once and Sass, searching for a sacrificial offering, must have got the cupboard door open attracted by the peaty scent of the wool, which to him was probably worse even than the ordinary kind. This one smelled Awful, he informed me as he passed. Boy, were we lucky he'd found it. He'd just put it over by the kitchen door and perform his Magic Action on it...
  Oh no he wouldn't, I said. I took it away from him and put it behind me in the chair, not wishing to miss the programme I was watching. Next thing I knew, he'd bitten me hard in the arm and I nearly hit the ceiling.
  As I say, it needs psychology to understand Siamese cats. He hadn't bitten me because he was angry with me. It was just that I was wearing a woollen
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