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Authors: Denis O'Connor

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BOOK: Paw Prints in the Moonlight
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‘What colour is it?' I asked with a lump in my throat, willing it to be Toby Jug. I waited, fearful of her reply.
‘Well it's hard to tell 'cause it's all covered in mud but it seems to have a black-and-white face from what we could see. It's hard to get near it 'cause the wee thing's awful nervous. I think you'd better come over and see for yourself,' she concluded.
I told her I'd be there as soon as I could. Filled with new heart-thudding hope I set off at once for the farm.
Betty and Joe Green met me as I drove into the farmyard. At the sound and sight of my car their two sheepdogs were roused to a fit of barking, but at a soft word from Joe they
subsided to frenetic tail-wagging. It was getting dark but I saw that Betty held a huge torch the size of a lantern by her side.
‘It's over in the cowshed,' Joe said, and bade the dogs to lie and stay.
It was dark and there were pungent animal smells in the shed which had a stone-tiled floor. As Betty shone her torch all I could see were lumps of mud and cow dung spattered with straw.
‘It's there in the corner,' she pointed as Joe stood back lighting his pipe.
Stooping low under a wooden crossbeam I peered into the corner. Suddenly I saw him. It was Toby Jug as I'd never before seen him. Dirty and bedraggled with the pathetic look of the waif, he lay blinking his green eyes in the fierce torchlight. Relief flooded through me like a blood transfusion.
‘Is it yours?' Betty's voice intruded.
‘Yes!' I gasped as I picked him up and hugged him to my chest, concern for the plight he was in smarting my eyes with tears. ‘Most certainly yes, he's mine all right; thank you, thank you both,' I managed to blurt out, overwhelmed as I was with relief and joy.
Betty insisted, in that kind way that farming people have, that I should come back to the farmhouse for a warm drink and some supper. I was about to put Toby Jug in the car to wait for me but Betty wouldn't hear of it.
‘You must bring him into the kitchen so I can clean the wee thing up for you. I'll not be having him going back with you in that state,' she said firmly.
Joe and I sat in the farmhouse kitchen, drinking steaming mugs of hot chocolate and eating home-cooked, cinnamon-flavoured apple pie. Meanwhile, Betty washed Toby Jug in a large bathtub that she ordinarily used for the dogs. Huge but gentle hands that had delivered many a lamb and calf now cleaned and soothed my stricken Toby Jug as if he were a baby lamb. He lay still, totally compliant, with only the occasional glance in my direction, as she worked her healing charm and we ate and we talked.
It appeared that Toby Jug had been found on the day after the hunt. Joe had noticed him first. They had an enormous black cat aptly called Black Bob whom Joe saw was paying rapt attention to something in the corner of the cow byre. At first Joe thought it must be a rat then he saw that Black Bob was actually licking and attempting to groom a small cat which was caked in mud and looked half-dead. The amazing thing about it, Joe told me, was that normally Black Bob would attack and chase away any cat that invaded his territory.
‘Except for that grey she-cat last Autumn,' Betty cut in. ‘They ran together for days on end,' she said.
‘Aye but that were different,' Joe said. ‘They were mating. Black Bob's a heck of a tom cat.' He chuckled, proud of his
cat's prowess. ‘Come nights I could hear her wailing with the mating like, then she disappeared.'
As I listened my mind clicked with the realization that here could possibly be the final piece of the puzzle regarding the mystery of Toby Jug's parentage. It all dropped into place. I started to feel sure as I glanced at the magnificently sleek body of Black Bob lying in a rapture of warmth in front of the Aga cooker. Could it possibly be that he was Toby's father? That was why he hadn't attacked Toby Jug for invading his territory. Somehow, by means only known to cats, he had recognized his own offspring. Either that or he'd taken pity on Toby Jug, small and frightened as he would have been.
Whilst I was lost in my own thoughts, Joe had continued his account of how Toby Jug had been found. In answer to my questioning it appeared that Joe and Betty had at various times tried to catch Toby Jug and find out what was wrong with him. But since they were both quite stout in build and Toby was scared stiff, they hadn't succeeded. Joe reckoned that somehow Toby Jug had got in the way of the hunt and had fled to the farmyard. On the way he would have had to run through the mud pool at the end of the field leading to the farm. That must have been how he ended up caked in mud.
‘Clarts,' Joe said, referring to the mud. ‘He was covered in clarts when I first set eyes on him but what I can't understand
is how Black Bob has taken to him. It's beyond me,' he finished, puffing away at his pipe.
Just as I had done with Mrs Erskins I explained what I knew to Betty and Joe.
‘I knew there were something special about that silver she-cat,' Joe said. 'I could have sworn she wasn't from hereabouts. '
By this time we were all tired and Toby Jug was dry and snug, lying fast asleep next to Black Bob. It was long past midnight when Toby Jug and I left Joe and Betty at Oak Grove Farm. It had been an historic occasion in more ways than one. Toby Jug now looked little the worse for his ordeal but I knew the emotional scars would remain with him for some time. Never again would he run with the fox and hounds. I could bank on that.
In the days that followed Toby Jug gradually regained his strength and lively personality. How many lives have you left? I asked him. But he was away up the apple tree foraging for insects and the like and seemed oblivious to the threat of dangers which had now passed into his subconscious. It was great to have him back and I slept only moderately that first night of his return, waking periodically to check and reassure myself that he was asleep at the foot of my bed and that I wasn't dreaming. He had returned and was alive and well. I slept with the hope that his adventures were over for the present, at least. And I felt satisfied in my own mind that I
had finally found the cat which had fathered him. So much for the meaning of that thing called coincidence.
 
Soon preparations for Christmas were in full swing. There were concerts to celebrate the end of term at the college, and in Alnwick town the various churches were rehearsing for their carol services and Christmas concerts. The shops everywhere were putting up their decorations and lights. Atop the Bondgate Tower, the Duke had given permission for the town council to erect, for the first time, a neon-lit Santa Claus with sledge and reindeer. All together, the town was looking very jolly, in stark contrast to the weather which was fiercely cold and damp.
There is a special feeling about Christmas time which, for me at least, neither age nor blatant commercialism can demean. It evokes in most of us feelings of nostalgia which are vintage childhood and images of the story of the birth of Jesus, the exciting tales of Santa Claus and the opening of longed-for presents are carried with us for a lifetime. Parties and seasonal food, such as roast turkey and Christmas pudding, tend to make us as adults regress to the happy times of childhood as we waited in eager anticipation for Christmas Eve. I tried to capture this innocent spirit of Christmas in the cottage.
It would have to be an extra special celebration this year because it was Toby Jug's first Christmas and soon he would
be one year old. The intense feelings that people have about Christmas can be infectious and so it proved in the cottage with Toby Jug. He joined in wholeheartedly with my own excitement when one dreary wet Sunday afternoon I began to dress the Christmas tree. The colourful baubles and strings of tinsel were a delight to him and I had to frequently restrain him from trying to leap up among the tree decorations. I have to admit that Toby's enthusiasm for life in general made the preparations for Christmas that year less of a chore and more of a shared joy. He was a great companion. With him around there was never a dull moment.
I have a tradition at Christmas which derives from my childhood days when my family lived near Axwell Park, close to Blaydon-on-Tyne. On Christmas mornings, after church and when the presents had been opened, my sisters and I would go for a walk down to the lake in the park and feed the swans. If it was a cold winter's day then we would have to break the ice at the lakeside to feed them. When the birds saw us with our pieces of bread they would leave the open water near the island where they nested and come gracefully flapping and sliding across the ice to us. It was a rare experience to be so close to these wild birds who would sometimes leave the water to be hand-fed. Images recalled from those times always come into my mind as Christmas approaches – standing in the frosted grass, under a grey sky,
with the gaunt shapes of the mist-shrouded trees in the background and the coldness piercing our muffled forms, freezing our hands and ears. And then returning home to look again at our presents and feast on roast turkey with all the trimmings. These for me are among the best residues of my childhood past.
Now, at Christmas time, whenever I can I go for an early morning walk by a lake and take bread to feed the ducks and swans as a gesture to fond memories and to make a contribution to nature in the spirit of charity to all creatures. Since coming to live at the cottage I had been able to indulge this ritual by going down to the local lake just beyond St Michael's Church. This year I had a lot to be thankful for, especially because of the cat in my life, and I wanted it to be a particularly good day, one to remember.
On Christmas morning I was up and out of bed very early. Toby Jug was up before me although he often slept late on the dark mornings of winter. On this occasion he was rooting around the cottage to find one of his red balls for a solo play session. Usually, once it was daylight, I would find him staring through the bedroom window at the feathered activity on the garden bird-table. I had no central heating in the cottage then, so in winter the window panes often frosted over during the night with characteristic white starry shapes. Toby Jug, cute little beast that he was, had got into the habit of licking the window pane, probably for the sharp
cold taste on his tongue but possibly so that he could see outside.
On this morning it was still dark outside and although the windowpanes were heavily frosted over he hadn't bothered with them. As I was putting on my dressing gown he joined me and we went downstairs together. I laboured to clear and light the fire as he kept nudging my legs with his head to remind me that he wanted his breakfast. Normally, I fed him first before I did anything else. Today was different, but he had no way of knowing that. I didn't want to feed him just at that moment because we would be having roast turkey for lunch so he had to suffice with a saucer of milk and a small portion of dried cat food. This did not go down at all well with him and he kept following me about and darting between my legs. Several times I almost tripped over him.
Having started the fire and sipped a few mouthfuls of hot tea, I got the car out at once, whilst it was still dark, because there was much to do. Since we could not go to the nearby lake in the woods as there were no longer any ducks there, Toby Jug and I set off for Bolam Lake which was several miles away.
Driving beneath a black and sullen sky we drove towards the lake deep in the Rothbury Hills. I like driving on country roads when there is nobody else about and on this morning our car was the first to make tracks on the white,
frost-covered road. Toby Jug sat on the back of the front passenger seat staring fixedly ahead, excited at where we were going at this unusual time in the morning. As we rounded a particularly sharp bend a barn owl flapped away in front of us, carrying something in its talons, probably a rat. Toby Jug almost fell off his perch trying to see more of this ghostly white marauder. It was sights like this, of nature in the raw, that made me happy to be living in these parts.
As we drew near to the lake the sky, although clouded, began to brighten ever so slightly. I parked the car between two thick oak trees close to the water. The first orange glow of dawn silhouetted the dark shapes of willows against the frosted lakeside. The lake itself remained hidden beneath long wisps of smoky mist lying just above the surface. I collected a bag of scraps from the car boot and strolled towards the water's edge, my boots crunching in the frozen carpet of leaves. Toby Jug was scampering along eagerly at my heels and glancing up at me now and again, his green eyes reflecting the early dawn light. He loved having new experiences as much as I did and he wasn't the least bit afraid as long as we were together. He trotted with his nose held high to sniff the air and to fully relish the scents and sights of this new place.
As I had hoped, the swans and the ducks were there, emerging eerily through the mist to consume the scraps of food I tossed them. Some of the ducks waded ashore,
jostling each other for the morsels I'd dropped. Toby Jug and the ducks eyed each other suspiciously and he retreated to my side in the face of their advance. As for the ducks, hunger won the day over any apprehensions they might have had about cats. Toby wasn't the sort of cat to attack a full-grown duck but I expect the ducks couldn't be sure about that. The swans didn't even leave the water, stretching their elegant necks instead to take the best morsels for themselves. At the sight of them, floating serenely nearer to us, Toby Jug leapt on to my shoulder and gazed at them with awe. He'd never seen birds as big as this before and they were making quite a strong impression on him.
BOOK: Paw Prints in the Moonlight
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