Tropical Cat In A Tropical Garden

MRS. GORDON glanced down idly through the mosquito gauze on to her Solomon Island garden-boy’s glistening back.

The garden boy was crouching on what Mrs. Gordon was pleased to call her lawn, but what actually was a sort of mat of prickly grass dotted with weeds, the pulling out of which was the garden boy’s appointed task this morning. Now he was apparently brooding over a vague looking specimen weed or grass? in the indecision of one overcome by the futility of any occupation on such a vivid morning.

The sun beat down on his bare torso, dewed with sweat like raindrops on a cabbage leaf. His grimy calico was twisted up about his thighs in a manner designed to give freedom but which looked to Mrs. Gordon as though he had ren dered himself immovable for some time.

His wiry hair sprang ferociously from his scalp and was starred with paw-paw blossoms, which had drifted there when, with a fine show of energy, he had pulled down from the trees some of the dead leaves drooping like old tussore parasols.

Then her eye was distracted by an inky shadow which erupted from a bush, pounced on something unseen and came stepping delicately towards the house.

Henry, the cat, crossed the lawn, holding in his jaws a large grey lizard. First he dropped it; then he looked over one shoulder. He looked back, re-discovered the lizard and leapt on it, tossing it ex pertly into the air with a sideways move ment of his sharp black head, and finally turning a somersault on it.

And abruptly he forgot all about it, let his legs collapse at the knees and began to flow there was no other word for it —across the grass towards the bird-bath.

It was called a bird-bath but Mrs.

Gordon often thought that no more ghastly object could have been thought up to adorn a garden. Some GI, bored when the tide of war had receded from Guadalcanal, had patiently welded an up turned combat helmet to a section of pipe, enlivened the rather stark result with a pair of Mercury wings cut from a ration tin and then mounted the “tout ensemble’’ on a plywood base. The whole had then been painted a cheerful scarlet-

By Rosa Moore

and now, washed up with the flotsam and jetsam of war, rested on the grass to alarm the eye but, strangely enough, to attract a pair of hardened willy-wag tails who constantly bathed in it as long as the water was not higher than willy wagtail knee-level.

Innocently supposing his ebony form quite undetected against the tired green of the lawn, Henry advanced on his elbows and knees; and not even the most myopic of willy-wagtails could have missed the strenuous lashing of his tail, which ineffectually scythed the grass through which he passed, nor the strangled mews he muttered under his breath. Rocking on the edge of the bird bath and peering intently under their more remote feathers, the willies sup pressed giggles until Henrv was almost > with them; then up they darted to the paw-pdw tree and made a sound like the sharpening of miniature scissors, A BANDONING hope, Henry turned his amber gaze on the motionless gar den-boy, still stricken with sun and indecision. He made a wide circle through a cluster of wild zinnias (cochi neal pink, their petals twirled like pro pellors) and paused for a moment to sur vey his quarry round the side of the over turned watering can Then he tensed his black elastic muscles and sprang, black paws around one gar dening ankle and black legs kicking madly. Startled from his dream, the garden-boy jumned backwards and out came the weed which had lingered so long on the brink of destruction and on went the work of tidying one unrulv Guadalcanal garden y Mrs. Gordon smiled and reflected that it was always the unexpected small moments that made each day so effort lessly sunny. She turned her glance out side for the last time to see Henry’s finale. [y into the watering can he crept, turning round and round and prudently licking up the trickle of moisture that remained, Then he curled up at last for a nap that would last until the shadows moved from his shelter or the garden-boy decided it was now sufficiently hot to water the new bed of tender young lettuce.