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by a waving set of claws and a series of openmouthed spittings. He was trapped in his corner or he would have been off with the speed of light. Examining him was going to be a problem. I turned to Mrs. Bond. “Could you let me have a sheet of some kind? An old ironing sheet would do. I’m going to have to wrap him up.” “Wrap him up?” Mrs. Bond looked very doubtful but she disappeared into another room and returned with a tattered sheet of cotton which looked just right. I cleared the table of an amazing variety of cat feeding dishes, cat books, cat medicines and spread out the sheet, then I approached my patient again. You can’t be in a hurry in a situation like this and it took me perhaps five minutes of wheedling and “pusspussing” while I brought my hand nearer and nearer. When I got as far as being able to stroke his cheek I made a quick grab at the scruff of his neck and finally bore George, protesting bitterly and lashing out in all directions, over to the table. There, still holding tightly to his scruff, I laid him on the sheet and started the wrapping operation. This is something which has to be done quite often with obstreperous felines and, although I say it, I am rather good at it. The idea is to make a neat, tight roll, leaving the relevant piece of cat exposed; it may be an injured paw, perhaps the tail, and in this case of course the head.
    I think it was the beginning of Mrs. Bond’s unquestioning faith in me when she saw me quickly enveloping that cat till all you could see of him was a small black and white head protruding from an immovable cocoon of cloth. He and I were now facing each other, more or less eyeball to eyeball, and George couldn’t do a thing about it.
    As I say, I rather pride myself on this little expertise and even today my veterinary colleagues have been known to remark: “Old Herriot may be limited in many respects but by God he can wrap a cat.
    ” As it turned out, there wasn’t a skin growing over Alfred’s eyes.
    There never is. “He’s got a paralysis of the third eyelid, Mrs. Bond.
    Animals have this membrane which flicks across the eye to protect it.
    In this case it hasn’t gone back, probably because the cat is in low condition—maybe had a touch of cat flu or something else which has weakened him. I’ll give him an injection of vitamins and leave you some powder to put in his food if you could keep him in for a few days. I think he’ll be all right in a week or two.” The injection presented no problems with Alfred furious but helpless inside his sheet and I had come to the end of my first visit to Mrs. Bond’s.
     
    It was the first of many. The lady and I established an immediate rapport which was strengthened by the fact that I was always prepared to spend time over her assorted charges; crawling on my stomach under piles of logs in the outhouses to reach the outside cats, coaxing them down from trees, stalking them endlessly through the shrubbery. But from my point of view it was rewarding in many ways. For instance there was the diversity of names she had for her cats. True to her London upbringing she had named many of the toms after the great Arsenal team of those days. There was Eddie Hapgood, Cliff Bastin, Ted Drake, Wilf Copping, but she did slip up in one case because Alex James had kittens three times a year with unfailing regularity. Then there was her way of calling them home.
    The first time I saw her at this was on a still summer evening. The two cats she wanted me to see were out in the garden somewhere and I walked with her to the back door where she halted, clasped her hands across her bosom, closed her eyes and gave tongue in a mellifluous contralto. “Bates, Bates, Bates, Ba-hates.” She actually sang out the words in a reverent monotone except for a delightful little lilt on the “Ba-hates.” Then once more she inflated her ample rib cage like an operatic prima donna and out it came again, delivered with the utmost feeling.