Part 36 (2/2)

I nodded thoughtfully. She was so right. Over the years I had been attached to those cats, enjoyed the sight of them trotting down the slope for their food, playing in the long gra.s.s in the field, being fondled by Helen, but I was a comparative stranger to them. I felt a pang at the realisation that all that time had flashed past so quickly.

”Well, maybe it's too late. Is there anything I can do?”

”Yes,” she said. ”You have to start feeding them. You'll just have to make the time to do it. Oh, I know you can't do it always, but if there's the slightest chance, you'll have to get out there with their food.”

”So you think it's just a case of cupboard love with them?”

”Absolutely not. I'm sure you've seen me with them often enough. They won't look at their food until I've made a fuss of them for quite a long time. It's the attention and friends.h.i.+p they want most.”

”But I haven't a hope. They hate the sight of me.”

”You'll just have to persevere. It took me a long time to get their trust. Especially with Ginny. She's always been the more timid one. Even now if I move my hand too quickly she's off. Despite all that's happened I think Olly might be your best hope-there's a big well of friendliness in that cat.”

”Right,” I said. ”Give me that food and milk. I'll start now.”

That was the beginning of one of the little sagas in my life. At every opportunity I was the one who called them down, placed the food on the wall-top and stood there waiting. At first I waited in vain. I could see the two of them watching me from the log shed-the black-and-white face and the yellow, gold and white one observing me from the straw beds-but for a long time they would never venture down until I had retreated into the house. Because of my irregular life it was difficult to keep the new system going and sometimes when I had an early morning call they didn't get their breakfast on time, but it was on one of those occasions when breakfast was over an hour late that their hunger overcame their fear and they came down cautiously while I stood stock-still by the wall. They ate quickly with nervous glances at me, then scurried away. I smiled in satisfaction. It was the first breakthrough.

After that there was a long period when I just stood there as they ate and they became used to me as part of the scenery. Then I tried a careful extension of a hand. They backed away at that, but as the days pa.s.sed I could see that my hand was becoming less and less of a threat and my hopes rose steadily. As Helen had prophesied, Ginny was the one who s.h.i.+ed far away from me at the slightest movement, whereas Olly, after retreating, began to look at me with an appraising eye as though he might possibly be willing to forget the past and revise his opinion of me. With infinite patience, day by day, I managed to get my hand nearer and nearer to him and it was a memorable occasion when he at last stood still and allowed me to touch his cheek with a forefinger. As I gently stroked the fur he regarded me with unmistakeably friendly eyes before skipping away.

”Helen!” I said, looking round at the kitchen window. ”I've made it! We're going to be friends at last. It's a matter of time now till I'm stroking him as you do.” I was filled with an irrational pleasure and fulfilment. It did seem a foolish reaction in a man who was dealing every day with animals of all kinds, but I was looking forward to years of friends.h.i.+p with that particular cat.

I was wrong. At that moment I could not know that Olly would be dead within forty-eight hours.

It was the following morning when Helen called to me from the back garden. She sounded distraught. ”Jim, come quickly! It's Olly!”

I rushed out to where she was standing near the top of the slope near the log shed. Ginny was there, but all I could see of Olly was a dark smudge on the gra.s.s.

Helen gripped my arm as I bent over him. ”What's happened to him?”

He was motionless, his legs extended stiffly, his back arched in a dreadful opisthotonos, his eyes staring.

”I...I'm afraid he's gone. It looks like strychnine poisoning.” But as I spoke he moved slightly.

”Wait a minute!” I said. ”He's still alive, but only just.” I saw that the rigor had relaxed and I was able to flex his legs and lift him without any recurrence. ”This isn't strychnine. It's like it, but it isn't. It's something cerebral, maybe a stroke.”

Dry-mouthed, I carried him down to the house where he lay still, breathing almost imperceptibly.

Helen spoke through her tears. ”What can you do?”

”Get him to the surgery right away. We'll do everything we can.” I kissed her wet cheek and ran out to the car.

Siegfried and I sedated him, because he had begun to make paddling movements with his limbs, then we injected him with steroids and antibiotics and put him on an intravenous drip. I looked at him as he lay in the big recovery cage, his paws twitching feebly. ”Nothing more we can do, is there?”

Siegfried shook his head and shrugged. He agreed with me about the diagnosis-stroke, seizure, cerebral haemorrhage, call it what you like, but certainly the brain. I could see that he had the same feeling of hopelessness as I had.

We attended him all that day and, during the afternoon, I thought for a brief period that he was improving, but by evening he was comatose again and he died during the night.

I brought him home and as I lifted him from the car his smooth, tangle-free fur was like a mockery now that his life was ended. I buried him just behind the log shed a few feet from the straw bed where he had slept for all the years.

Vets are no different from other people when they lose a pet and Helen and I were miserable. We hoped that the pa.s.sage of time would dull our unhappiness, but we had another poignant factor to deal with. What about Ginny?

Those two cats had become a single ent.i.ty in our lives and we never thought of one without the other. It was clear that to Ginny the world was incomplete without Olly. For several days she ate nothing. We called her repeatedly but she advanced only a few yards from the log house, looking around her in a puzzled way before turning to her bed. For all of those years, she had never trotted down that slope on her own, and over the next few weeks her bewilderment as she gazed about her continually, seeking and searching for her companion, was one of the most distressing things we had ever had to witness.

We fed her in her bed for several days and eventually managed to coax her onto the wall, but she could scarcely put her head down to the food without peering this way and that, still waiting for Olly to come and share it.

”She's so lonely,” Helen said. ”We'll have to try to make a bigger fuss of her than ever now. I'll spend more time outside talking with her, but if only we could get her inside with us. That would be the answer, but I know it can never happen.”

I looked at the little creature, wondering if I'd ever get used to seeing only one cat on that wall, but Ginny sitting by the fireside or on Helen's knee was an impossible dream. ”Yes, you're right, but maybe I can do something. I'd just managed to make friends with Olly-I'm going to start on Ginny now.”

I knew I was taking on a long and maybe hopeless challenge because she had always been the more timid of the two, but I pursued my purpose with resolution. At mealtimes and whenever I had the opportunity, I presented myself outside the kitchen door, coaxing and wheedling, beckoning with my hand, but for a long time, though she accepted the food from me, she would not let me near her. Then, maybe she needed companions.h.i.+p so desperately that she felt she might even resort to me, because the day came when she did not back away but allowed me to touch her cheek with my finger as I had done with Olly.

After that, progress was slow but steady. From touching I moved week by week to stroking her cheek, then to gently rubbing her ears until finally I could run my hand the length of her body and tickle the root of her tail. From then on, undreamed-of familiarities gradually unfolded until she would not look at her food till she had paced up and down the wall-top again and again, arching herself in delight against my hand and brus.h.i.+ng my shoulders with her body. Among these daily courtesies one of her favourite ploys was to press her nose against mine and stand there for several minutes looking into my eyes.

It was one morning several months later while Ginny and I were in this posture-she on the wall, touching noses with me, gazing into my eyes, drinking me in as though she thought I was rather wonderful and couldn't quite get enough of me-when I heard a sound from behind me.

”I was just watching the veterinary surgeon at work,” Helen said softly.

”Happy work, too,” I said, not moving from my position, looking deeply into the green eyes, alight with friends.h.i.+p, fixed on mine from a few inches away. ”I'll have you know that this is one of my greatest triumphs.”

A Biography of James Herriot.

James Herriot (19161995) was the pen name of James Alfred ”Alf” Wight, an English veterinarian whose tales of veterinary practice and country life have delighted generations. Many of Herriot's works were bestsellers and have been adapted for film and television. His stories rely on numerous autobiographical elements taken from his life in northern England's Yorks.h.i.+re County, and they depict a simple, rustic world deeply in touch with the cycles of nature.

Wight was born on October 3, 1916, in Sunderland, in the northeast corner of England. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where his father worked as a s.h.i.+pbuilder and as a pianist in a local cinema. His mother was a seamstress and professional singer. At age twelve, Wight adopted his first pet, an Irish setter named Don. The bond he formed with his dog led to his interest in veterinary medicine.

Wight graduated from the Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939 at the age of twenty-three. After working briefly in Sunderland, the town where he was born, he moved to the town of Thisk in Yorks.h.i.+re County, England, where he settled down. In Yorks.h.i.+re, he met Joan Danbury, whom he married in 1941. The couple had two children. Son James Alexander, born 1943, would go on to become a vet and partner in his father's practice, and daughter Rosemary, born 1947, became a family physician.

Though he'd always had literary ambitions, Wight got a late start as a professional writer. Starting a family, serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and then establis.h.i.+ng his own busy veterinary practice all delayed his literary debut. In 1966 at the age of fifty, he finally began writing regularly with the encouragement of his wife. After trying his hand unsuccessfully in areas such as sportswriting, Wight found modest success with the publication of If Only They Could Talk in 1970 and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet in 1972. He adopted the pen name James Herriot because self-promotion for doctors and veterinarians was frowned upon in England at that time. In the United States, his first two books were combined by his New York publisher and released as All Creatures Great and Small (1972), the volume that would make the name James Herriot famous. Within a couple of years, All Creatures Great and Small had been adapted as a successful film starring Simon Ward and Anthony Hopkins and as a long-running BBC program.

Throughout the seventies, Wight released several writing collections in England as James Herriot. In the States, these volumes would be paired up and released under new t.i.tles as omnibuses, including All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and All Things Wise and Wonderful (1977). Wight declared his intentions to retire from writing life after publication of The Lord G.o.d Made Them All in 1981, but released a final volume, Every Living Thing, in 1992.

Wight pa.s.sed away in 1995 at the age of seventy-eight at his home in Thirlby, near Thisk, Yorks.h.i.+re.

Wight with his first dog, Don, a beautiful, sleek-coated Irish setter, as a puppy.

Wight while he was at Hillhead High School. It was the strong discipline and fine standards of Hillhead that helped develop his optimism, work ethic, and ambition.

Wight (center row, left) matriculated at Glasgow Veterinary College in 1933, qualifying as a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1939. While there, he played on the football team.

Wight at work with his son, James, who followed in his father's footsteps, first training as a vet in Glasgow, then at the practice of Sinclair and Wight in Thirsk, England, and finally as an author, penning a biography of his father, The Real James Herriot, which was published in 2000.

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