Pets

I just thought I might tell you about a few of the pets in our life, first there was Joey the budgie he lived with my mother at Worksop in her little old folks bungalow, the problem was that Joey never stopped talking and he was sending her up the wall. So we agreed to give him a home. We installed him at Highwood Grove and Barbara taught him even more little homilies, two of his best were "Peters gone to London" and " Auntie Betty lives in Huddersfield" when you spoke to him it always set him off and if you asked him a question every now and again the answer fitted in. Well on one occasion when I was away and Babs. had friends in she said to Joey "where's Peter" and Joey replied "Peter's gone to London" so Babs, pushed her luck and said "where's Auntie Betty', and you've guessed it, Joey replied "Auntie Betty lives in Huddersfield" well the company where amazed and Joey's reputation as the worlds best talker was established.

To go back to Ranby Peter and my mother acquired a boxer dog which was a bit frisky if not down right bad tempered at times and one day while my mother was sat at her sewing machine the dog went berserk grabbed her by the dress, luckily Peter came in, finding my mother trapped in the corner of the room he was able to get the dog off her and get Flo out of the room. He then made a sort of club out of electric cable and went back in and thrashed the dog into submission. I don't know the right or wrong of it but I do know that the dog lost it's aggressive tendency, Peter never had to hit it again and the dog did not have to be destroyed.

On a happier note there was Scruffy the cat, she was a ginger and white long haired cat whose back legs looked like Russian boots, she adopted me at Spring Grove Terrace, her name relates to the state she was in when she first arrived. She very quickly took charge of the house, she arrived just before I married Barbara and when she moved in she had to work very hard to be accepted and to convince scruffy that she meant her no harm. We had a letter box about eighteen ins. high on the door and scruffy used to first give a light tap on the flap, to be followed by two harder taps if there was no response, and finally a barrage of taps to bring us to our feet, on opening the door she often swung in hanging on to the letter box. My brother Bob lived next door with his wife Connie and when we were out Scruffy used to honour them with a visit, she would ignore all the traffic that went by or stopped outside, but when our car arrived she recognised the sound of its engine, jumped up and went to the door to be released. Bob kept canaries down in the cellar and one day Scruffy got down there and had a birthday, all the cages where pulled down onto the floor half the fronts were broken and about six birds lay dead, others were flying round in a state of terror and Scruffy was having a ball.

Round about nineteen sixty five we rented a new empty shop which was part of a new estate at Park Avenue, Allerton Bywater a mining village near Castleford. Well at first Scruffy was a very unhappy street cat moved into this strange land of woods and fields but she soon discovered mice, rabbits and birds and became the worlds greatest hunter bringing home enough bounty to feed a family . After we had got the shop going we had to take great care because many of the mice she brought home were only stunned and she would let them go in the store room and until we were able to catch them they caused havoc with our stock. The estate was half private and half council so we had council house cats and dogs and private cats and dogs, most of the private dogs were sort of small pedigrees and the council house dogs tended to be biggish mongrels, there was one lady who always complained of the damage done by those horrid council house dogs. We called the shop P & B Stores and Barbara used to keep shop while I went off to work in Leeds. We had to sell up when I went to work at Bradford and we set up home in Moortown, a suburb of Leeds.

Scruffy settled very well back in Leeds, it was her home town after all, at the back of the house there is a wood so she was able to continue her trade of hunter and trapper with the extra treat of lots of grey squirrels to run around after. She eventually died Of old age and was buried in the back garden.

Well next door there was a black cat called Portia and she took a liking to Barbara and would sneak in when ever she got a chance and settle down on Barbara's knee. One day she went into Shirley's garage our neighbour on the other side and knocked over a can of yellow paint and managed to get her self completely covered, she ran home leaving a trail of yellow paint and paw marks. She had to spend an overnight at the vets and looked a bit forlorn for a week or two with most of her hair cut off. When her owners moved away she stayed back and simple moved into our house. Her liking for Barbara grew into a sort of obsession and she wanted to be with her all the time. Barbara could do any thing with her, Portia had complete trust in her and when she was holding her she was completely relaxed, if Barbara had let go Portia would have fallen like a stone. If we had to give Portia a pill she would sit her on her knee open her mouth, pop in the pill tickle under her chin and Portia swallowed it. She was the most loving cat I have ever known but she would furiously defend our house and garden against the intrusion of any other cat, and had battle scars all over her body to prove it. In the last week of her life when she was very weak and hardly able to walk she limped after an intruder intent on attacking it. When both Barbara and me were working Portia would call and visit a local lady but after I retired she never visited her again, the way cats use people and make them do their bidding is amazing.

Just to go back to Scruffy and Spring Grove Terrace, Bob who used to collect strange things had a stuffed sea gull and much to the amusement of passers by he used to stand it at the top of his door steps, it used to keep out stray cats and dogs and it terrified Scruffy and under no circumstances would she pass it so if she was in she was in and if she was out she was out.

Now in nineteen ninety five there is a cat called Tigger and she lives two doors away, if we were to feed her we would never get rid, I feel it is all starting again.

I must tell you about Bengy, well he arrived in our garden at the peak of the red hot summer of ninety five, he was a pedigree ginger Persian which must have cost the earth, well he settled down and shared his favours with us and our neighbours on either side, we were all feeding him, brushing him and petting him, he was living the life of Riley. After about a week his owner turned up and laid claim to him, we were all very sorry to see him go. It turned out that Bengy lived about half a mile away the other side of the wood and was normally kept indoors but had escaped and they had been searching for him night and day. Any way there is a happy ending he now pays us a visit about once a fortnight, spends about two hours with us and then goes home, he is by the way here now rubbing round my legs as I write this story.

I have just remembered something and I must tell you, when we were selling the shop we had a couple call to talk over the final details of the sale, we were having a cup of coffee when scruffy came walking in and dropped a half stunned mouse at our feet. We had a real job convincing them that she had brought it in from the fields via the cat flap and that the shop did not have vermin. Now I ask you was the cat bringing us a present or was she trying to stop the sale?, you never know with cats.