The water of life!
Bamber’s a ginger tom, but he growled at the postman yesterday, and the postman thought it was a dog and ran for it! That’s Lucy in the picture, wishing she was a cat. Postmen don’t run away from Lucy! Alleycat doesn’t growl at anyone; his mere presence is enough to fill onlookers with awe. He’s terribly wise too and not like the dogs at all. After he’d been poisoned, he developed a toothache that incapacitated him for a while, but even in his weakness he had the wherewithal to punch Lucy on the chops once or twice a day. Lucy didn’t mind. She understands she’s only a simple cocker spaniel, whereas Alleycat’s wise and brave and several rungs above her on the cosmic ladder. Alleycat deserves this important position in relation to the rest of us. One night we found him in the garden, next to an old rusty standpipe that hadn’t worked in years and didn’t (as far as we knew) have any water left in it all. But the moonlight was dripping off the end of it, and Alleycat was sitting with his tongue out lapping it up. I mean that he was drinking the moonlight and the moonlight was making him better. Since then we’ve often found him there, waiting for the moon to cure his ills.