The Young Country Doctor Book 7: Bilbury Pudding by Vernon Coleman

Author:Vernon Coleman [Coleman, Vernon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-04T21:00:00+00:00

CAT UP A TREE

There is no fire station or fire engine in Bilbury. On those rare occasions when there is a fire in the village which cannot be dealt with effectively by villagers wielding metal buckets and garden hoses we have to telephone Barnstaple and ask for an engine and crew to be sent out. Since Bilburians are proud of being self-contained this is something we try to do as infrequently as possible. In 1952, a large fire at the vicarage (caused, it is rumoured, when the vicar fell asleep in his study and let his post-prandial cigar slip to the floor and set fire to the carpet) was effectively extinguished by a human chain, twenty galvanised buckets and the contents of the carp pond at the bottom of the vicarage garden.

Only once in the last ten years have we had to call the fire brigade. And on that occasion it wasn't because there was a fire. It was because Mrs Pettigrew's cat (a plump and usually lazy mackerel tabby called Catarina who was, on occasion, surprisingly agile) had got stuck up a large oak tree at the end of her garden.

Agatha Pettigrew was a dedicated and committed ailurophile. In her late sixties, she had never been married, never had a job and never lived anywhere other than in Bilbury. She only rarely ventured outside the village boundaries (once a year she went shopping in Barnstaple and that, she said, provided her with more than enough excitement) and once told me that she had never once spent a night away from the cottage where she'd been born and raised. Her parents, both long dead, had left her the cottage and she lived on a small unearned income derived from a modest portfolio of National Savings certificates and an even smaller income derived from the sale of stories about her cats; delicate, loving tales which she illustrated herself with pen and ink line drawings. She supplemented this totally inadequate income by growing much of her own food and mending her clothes until each item contained so many patches and darns that the original colour of the garment was no longer discernible.

Mrs Pettigrew's one luxury was her cats.

Some people scrimp and save in order to buy beer, wine, tobacco or expensive frocks. Others forego more basic delights in order to buy rare stamps or commemorative ashtrays.

Mrs Pettigrew fed herself on home-made leek and potato soup and occasional mutton stew, and at the village shop was a regular buyer of dented tins which had lost their labels and were, therefore, culinary mysteries offered at a heavily discounted price.

Everything Mrs Pettigrew did not have to spend on survival she spent on her three cats: Catarina, Chloe and Chantelle. She bought them the best of everything and gave them all her love.

When I received a message asking me to visit Mrs Pettigrew I was surprised. I knew where she lived, I'd met her once or twice at Peter Marshall's village shop and I'd often seen her tending her vegetables as I'd cycled past her cottage.

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