The Nine Lives of Montezuma Read online

  Montezuma lay on his back, his front paws still instinctively sweeping the air above, blinded by the blood from his ear. Matthew talking to him, stroking his side to calm him. ‘All over, Monty,’ he said. ‘You’re all right. You’ll be all right.’ He picked him up carefully. ‘What did you do to get Sam all riled up like that? I’ve seen him kill a rat once, but he was never that angry. What did you do?’

  Back in the kitchen they cleaned Montezuma up. The wounds were superficial, although his ear was badly torn and his leg would need stitching. Once the blood was cleared away, he looked more his old self. They took him to the vet who stitched him up and injected him; and for two or three days after he lay by his stove not eating and going out only when he had to. ‘He’s sulking,’ said Matthew’s mother.

  ‘He’s had his come-uppance,’ said Matthew’s father. ‘That Sam taught him a thing or two.’

  ‘He’s in pain,’ Matthew said. ‘You can tell, he must be in terrible pain.’

  But they all three had it wrong. Montezuma’s pride had been hurt to the quick. He had made an elementary mistake in allowing himself to be taken by surprise. He felt no enmity towards the dog, but was consumed by a grim determination never to be caught off guard again.

  The ear never straightened out after that, and his leg mended slowly. Within a week or so Montezuma was back on patrol, his pride damaged but intact. For his part, Sam had a gash across his face, a scratched eye and torn nose; it was enough to persuade him to avoid another confrontation. The two eyed each other with mutual respect now, acknowledging each other as the king in his own world.

  THE FIFTH LIFE

  MATTHEW HAD LEFT SCHOOL AND HAD come back to work full time on the farm alongside his father. Like Montezuma, Matthew was fully fledged now and the two came to spend more and more time together. Farming is a solitary way of life and Matthew welcomed the company of the cat as he followed him to all corners of the farm. He never called Montezuma to come, but he expected him to be there with him and he always was. No matter where he was or what he was doing, sheep-shearing, hedge-laying, hay-making or out shooting, the cat would be there even if Matthew could not see him.

  By the third winter of his life Montezuma had inveigled his way into the inner sanctum and established himself in the sitting room. It had been a gradual, imperceptible invasion, but he had now come to occupy the arm of the sofa nearest to the fire. Matthew’s father had put up a stern resistance, bowling him out through the door and back into the kitchen on several occasions. ‘I’ll not have it,’ he’d say. ‘I spend all my days with beasts and I’ll not have the mucky things taking over in here.’ But Montezuma was immune to his insults and crept back in surreptitiously, hiding behind the sofa. One evening, however when Matthew’s father was too tired to bother, Montezuma was allowed to clamber up onto the sofa and stay there, and from that moment the cat knew the battle was won. Matthew and his mother were tactful enough never to draw attention to the cat as he purred provocatively on his perch overlooking the fire. The exchanged knowing looks and smiled secretly at the subtlety of Montezuma’s quiet victory.

  It was in the middle of lambing, sometime after Christmas, that the unbelievable happened. Matthew came in after evening milking. He had checked the in-lamb ewes out in the fields, bringing in those that looked nearest to lambing into the safety of the big barn. He called out from the back door as he came in: ‘Could be snow on the way, so I brought the ewes inside again.’ But his mother was waving at him to be quiet, her finger pressed against her lips. On tiptoe they approached the door of the sitting room and peeped in. Matthew’s father lay back on the sofa, his feet occupying Montezuma’s sleeping patch. Montezuma however had chosen the only soft place still available to him on the sofa. He lay stretched out on the old man’s stomach, gently rising and falling in rhythm with the snoring. But Montezuma was not asleep; he was too content to sleep. He looked up towards the door and winked at them, the smile of a sybarite unashamedly on his face. The two behind the door were convulsed with mirth. They were quite unable to control their delight and clung to each other in an effort to stifle their laughter, but it was too late. Like the fee-fi-fo-fum giant, Matthew’s father awoke at their muffled giggling and the cat was astute enough to leap for cover, but it did not move fast enough. He was picked up roughly by the nape of his neck and held up by his adversary whom he now faced nose to nose, his feet dangling in the air. ‘Never again,’ said Matthew’s father. ‘No cat climbs on me and lives, not twice. Never again.’ And he threw the cat out through the door, past Matthew and his mother who were still laughing too much to lift a finger in protest. Montezuma picked himself out from under the pump in the kitchen and ran out into the night, bruised but not bowed. He would be back to claim his rights.

  It was a cold, still night and the cat had been inside for most of the day. At the end of the garden path he stopped, lifted his nose and sniffed the air. There was a strange heaviness he had not experienced before and it alarmed him. He heard the dogs barking at each other across the valley as they did every night, but then sharper to his ears the call of the distant she-cat. Montezuma listened intently for a moment, plotted the direction of the call and calculated his course. Then he padded away under the gate, up through the hedgerow and down across the black fields towards the river.

  That night the snows came, gently at first in huge floating flakes, the kind of snow that builds up quickly and silently. By breakfast the next morning the snow was a foot high around the house and the world had turned perfect outside. The roads had merged into hedges and the hedges into the flat fields. The mud by the gate-ways was covered under the same universal white shroud. The farm was new again and deathly quiet.

  Matthew was not worried about his sheep; it was far better to have most of the flock out in the cold fresh air even in snow, than cooped up in the barns where disease could spread quickly. He had already checked the ewes brought in the night before and helped to deliver twin lambs before he came back in for his breakfast. It was then that he realised that Montezuma was still not back.

  ‘Seen Monty?’ he said. ‘He usually comes over and checks the sheep with me, but I’ve not seen him about. Have you?’

  ‘He’ll be back,’ said his father. ‘He always comes back, that cat does. Night out on the tiles I shouldn’t wonder. Little divil.’

  ‘Sit down, Matthew and eat your breakfast,’ said his mother. ‘And stop worrying about that cat. It’s the sheep you should worry about. If this snow goes on ...’

  ‘It won’t, Mum. It’s stopped already and the sun’s working on it now. Won’t be anything left by the evening.’

  ‘You watch those sheep, my lad. They can only stand so much depth of snow. Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ Matthew said, ‘I’ve seen them. They’re all right. They found cover in under the trees by the brook.’

  ‘You counted them?’ his father went on. ‘You’re sure they’re all there?’

  ‘Every one, Dad. They’re all there.’ But Matthew had his mind elsewhere. Montezuma had always been back by the morning. He would hear him yowling on the window ledge outside his bedroom window; he would talk to him as the cat followed him around on his early morning work. He had never gone missing before.

  It was almost all sheep work those deep winter days. His father had taken the milking in hand and left the flock to him. It was an incessant round of checking the in-lamb ewes, the single couples and the double couples and feeding them; injecting the new-born lambs, ringing the tails, feeding the tame lambs and then back to help with another lambing. So far it had been a good lambing year with no scour and very few stillborn lambs. There had been problems with one set of twin lambs getting tied up with each other inside and presenting themselves backwards, but they had only lost two living lambs and one ewe that never recovered after giving birth.

  So Matthew was busy all that day, too busy to do anything about Montezuma. From time to time he thought of the cat and called out for
him, but there was no answering cry. There was no time to go looking for him.

  The snow did thaw during the afternoon but Matthew was sure it would be gone by the next day. That was why he left most of the flock outside that night, bringing in again only those about to lamb and those freshly lambed. Last thing before he turned in, he went over to check the sheep; as he came back across the yard, scuffling through the muddy snow, he called out once more for the cat and listened for the response, but none came. It was just as he reached the top of the granary steps that he thought he heard Montezuma, a faint call, possibly coming from the sheep field across the brook. Matthew ran down towards the brook and then stood silent in the snow to listen again. He called out time and again but heard nothing more. The wind was getting up and he was cold. The cat would come back when he was ready, he thought; but he went to bed that night troubled and unconvinced by his own artificial optimism.

  While they slept the blizzard struck. The snow swirled around the house, whipped up from the fields around and driven by hurricane-force winds that battered the house. Matthew was woken up by the rattle of his windows and a door banging outside in the farmyard. He sat up in bed to listen to the howl of the storm. It seemed to him that the house might be uprooted at any moment and carried off; as the gusts hit the house he felt it shake and shiver in its foundations. He knew he would have to get up; the sheep should not be outside in this. He met his father, who had woken with the same thought, in the passage outside. Both dressed quickly, pulling on heavy overcoats and buttoning up against the storm.

  Matthew fetched Sam from the shippen where he slept and they stumbled out together across the meadow and down the hill towards the brook. They took shelter in the spinney under the old quarry before crossing the bridge into the sheep field. At times they had to walk backwards to prevent the snow stinging their eyes. Each had to pull the other out of great drifts that had gathered like breaking waves across the field. Every word had to be screamed out against the wind, and even so in the end they had to resort to sign language. The torches they were carrying proved useless, unable to penetrate the driving snow. They could feel their cheeks freezing up. The snow stung their eyes, blinding them. They fought it, bending into the wind forcing their legs forward.

  Finally they discovered the sheep sheltering down in the corner of the field where the hedge joined the brook. They were packed together, a great off-white huddle in the snow. Sam worked well that night. Bounding through drifts of snow several times his own height he drove them cleanly across the bridge, up over the hill and into the shelter of the yard. It was a slow drive, the sheep wanting to return to the shelter they had left.

  Counting was difficult. The sheep moved incessantly around each other like massed molecules. After two counts the grim truth had to be accepted – they were missing six ewes with their lambs. A further trek out into the fields proved fruitless and the storm drove them back indoors, exhausted and cold. In the comforting warmth of the kitchen Matthew and his father cradled the hot tea that was pressed into their hands. They sat in silence around the stove, each buried in his own despondency. ‘Monty will have a job getting back in this,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Never you worry,’ his mother said. ‘He’ll be hiding up somewhere, like the sheep.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, my dear,’ Matthew’s father sounded broken and old. ‘Soon as the storm blows itself out, we’ll have to search every drift. But if it goes on like this they won’t last long; nothing will, not in this.’

  For two days and nights the blizzard continued. Water pipes froze, the electricity was cut off and then the telephone went dead. They were besieged on all sides by drifts of snow that seemed to have grown every time they looked, cutting off the light from the windows and covering the lanes from one hedge top to the other. Tractors were useless. Every bale of hay had to be manhandled over the snow. It was all they could do to keep the stock fed and watered, and then every spare moment was spent shovelling the snow away from the doorways and paths in an effort to keep open the lifelines to the barns.

  On the morning of the third day, the wind dropped and the sun shone. They could begin the search for the missing animals. Montezuma was nowhere to be found. Matthew had searched every barn and shippen he could reach. He called out across the white wasteland, but even as he called he knew there could be no hope. With the snow more than three feet thick everywhere and drifts of twenty feet, even his faith in the cat’s ability to survive had faded. He turned his mind to the missing ewes and tried to forget the cat.

  Every available hour of daylight now was spent probing in the drifts for the sheep. The washing line pole, broom handles, anything that was long enough was brought into service. They worked systematically around the perimeter drifts of each sheep field. On that first day after the storm they searched the drifts in the field by the brook and found nothing. But the next morning they discovered their first missing ewe trapped in a drift up against the spinney. She was lying dead with her lamb beside her. It was an ill omen, but just finding her gave the rescuers the encouragement they needed to work on. Like his father, Matthew was consumed by an exhaustion so profound that they had ceased to talk to one another. Once fed and warmed up back at the house, they were out again probing into drifts in a tacitly agreed determination not to give up.

  Three days later, a week after the storm began, when hope of finding anything alive had all but vanished, Matthew felt his stick strike something soft. Like a desperate angler who cannot believe the pull on the end of his line, Matthew refused to believe his first impression. He probed once more close to the same hole, gently. His stick met a little resistance at first and then sank into something that moved as he touched it. He screamed his excitement and in a few seconds his mother and father were at his side probing to confirm his find. The sticks were thrown to one side and the digging began. It was a huge drift that had climbed half way up the trunk of a great oak tree whose roots bulged out from the bank creating a warren of holes and hiding places, a favourite playing place for the lambs. In half an hour they had broken through into the roof of the hollow. Matthew pulled the snow away feverishly and peered through. ‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘They’re all here, all five, and the lambs as well, and everyone’s alive!’ As if to prove the point one of the lambs set up a tremendous bleating. The rest was easy, they scraped away the side of the hole, reached in and hauled the sheep out one by one onto the snow.

  Matthew was reaching in to catch the last lamb that didn’t seem to want to leave his sanctuary, when he noticed there was something lying in a hole behind one of the roots. At first he thought it was another lamb for it was covered with a thin coating of snow, but lambs do not mew and they are not ginger striped underneath. Montezuma was staggering towards him, shaking the snow from his back.

  He looked up at Matthew, his eyes squinting against the sun. Matthew reached in and picked him up carefully. He turned to his mother and father. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ he said. ‘Back from the dead!’

  THE SIXTH LIFE

  FOR MATTHEW IT WAS NEITHER DAFFODILS nor primroses that heralded the spring, it was the call of the invisible wood pigeons from the high branches of the elms behind the old cob barn. He stopped to listen one morning as they answered each other across the yard. Spring itself had been a hard time on the farm with the lambing barely over and the problems of tilling the barley weighing more heavily each day. The long dry days were spent on the tractors, ploughing, harrowing and tilling; and when it was wet there was the frustration and worry that it might never stop and the barley might never be tilled. The cooing of the pigeons brought Matthew the hope of summer and the memory of the sun warm on his back.

  Montezuma was with him as usual that morning, but he was keeping his distance for they were driving yearlings out to grass, and Sam was running about looking busy and officious. Like Matthew, Montezuma had heard the pigeons for the first time and welcomed the sound, but for different reasons. He pricked his good ear and lifted his head,
but the sunlight through the filigree branches dazzled him and he had to turn away. But he had registered the place, and he would remember.

  Montezuma was now in his hunting prime and this was the beginning of the hunting season, for birds that is. The secret of his success was his acute computer memory. Every nest was surveyed and recorded meticulously. For the next month or so he charted the comings and goings of the parent birds as they fed their young. Sitting silent and immobile in the shadow of the hedges, the cat kept his vigil from the early strident cheepings from the nest to the appearance of the fledglings. He was always there to pick up the rejects or those unfortunate enough to fall from the nest before they could fly. Any robin suicidal enough to sit on a nest within reach of the ground was plucked off and eaten.

  No one much liked Montezuma during the bird-hunting season. Boots were thrown more often than usual and there was never any reward nor even congratulations when he brought in a murdered pied wagtail and dropped it on the kitchen floor for all to admire. But his talent was not appreciated and so he came home less often, preferring to spend his days patrolling his killing ground around the farm. And all the time he kept the cooing pigeons under constant observation.

  The ploughing was all done now, the winter mud replaced by dust. The mowing grass was three feet high on the front meadow; they would be hay harvesting any day now. The air was humming with summer.