cats and dogs

Edith Mabel didn't like small boys much but she did like cats and dogs.

Edith Mabel took my father-in-law and his brother in when they were aged 3 and 5. Elsie, my father-in-law's real mother died of TB when she was just 23. Her husband skedaddled, terrified by the weight of two toddlers. Nothing more was heard of him for years till Edith Mabel got the news he'd died a lonely alcoholic, somewhere in South Africa. All that's left of my husband's real grandparents now is a black-and-white picture of Elsie in my father-in-law's study, perched on the curtain rail -- a wistful girl with dark wavy hair that comes to just above her jawline. Her face is turned away from the camera.

My father-in-law doesn't have happy memories of his childhood. He remembers a big house in what was then Salisbury, somewhere near today's Mount Pleasant suburb. Edith Mabel believed boys should be occupied to keep out them of trouble. They weren't allowed out of the house in the mornings for school until they'd "performed" with the help of a spoonful of cod liver oil. The boys were often late for school.

In school holidays Edith Mabel sent the brothers to ballet lessons and had them water the enormous lawn using a square grille she'd invented. The boys were each given a watering can and square grille about the size of two shoeboxes stuck together. Their job was to lay the grille on the grass and water through the holes. Then the grille had to be moved a square along, and the process repeated. Little wonder my father-in-law says he didn't start living until he met my husband's mother, a dark 17-year-old with a waist you could fit your hands round.

There were just a few light moments. One day Edith Mabel's husband (he's always nameless) brought a cat home. Edith Mabel had a big dog, a mastiff of some kind. The husband sat in a winged armed chair with a roll of newspaper and the cat on his knee. The dog was brought in, straining at the leash. He made for the cat -- and was slapped sharply on the muzzle before he could close his jaws. The process was repeated, until dog and cat eventually managed to co-exist in -- strained -- harmony (apart from when supper was served, but that's another story).

I think of Edith Mabel when we bring home two stray kittens from the SPCA. (There is still an SPCA here, with branches across the country). We have two rottweilers (not pure, and the smaller one definitely has a bit of goat in her). The rottweilers have been encouraged to chase small furry things with tantalisingly long tails that hang around in tree branches and raid my loquat/mango/granadilla crops. It occurs to me when I settle the new acquisitions in my study with a rusty old oven pan filled with leaves for a litter tray, that kittens are remarkably similar to monkeys (but they don't have blue testicles. Will the rotters ask to see their testicles before they decide whether or not to chase them? I doubt it). So we go the Edith Mabel route. My husband arms himself with a sisal branch, truncheon-size. The kittens are let onto the verandah. The dogs watch. The big one licks her lips. When either dog advances, my husband brandishes the truncheon.

Amazingly, it works. Six weeks down the line, the dogs wag their bottoms when they see the kittens. The kittens rub themselves against the dogs' paws. As long as the kittens don't climb in the loquat tree at the same time as the monkeys, they're safe. It's not quite the Garden of Eden but hey, this is Zimbabwe.