... to the sound of an animal crying.
I seize my dressing gown ready to do battle with (I assume) an amorous feral ginger tom on the terrace, switch on the lights and fling open the French windows and hiss loudly. No cat, but the sound continues and I realise it's Bertie. Afraid he's been badly hurt in a fight, I grab a torch and in the light see a desperate face with wide frightened eyes in the far corner of the swimming pool. He's scrabbling unsuccessfully to get a purchase with his front paws on the tile surround, his back legs flailing in the water to try and keep afloat.
I grab him under his armpits, hoik him out and cuddle him in my arms as I race back to the house. He's soaked to the skin, freezing cold and trembling violently. Swimming pool water pours off him over the kitchen floor and he runs to the lounge to try and dry himself against the sofa covers. I fling on heaters, hunt for large bath towels - mine, clean - throw them over him and rub him and rub him to try and get some heat back into his body. He has the wisdom not to resist. I fear for a seizure or heart attack.
He sits upright in front of the gas fire in the kitchen as I continue to towel him. He's so close I swear I can smell singed fur. Gradually, gradually his fur dries and the trembling abates. He tucks himself down in "his" corner and sleeps, while I make a hot chocolate drink and read a Lidl's catalogue cover to cover. I don't want to leave him and it's the only reading matter to hand at this hour of the morning.
He recovers enough to accept breakfast, which I take as a good sign but still feel I need to keep an eye on him - no working in the cottage today. So I do something I've been meaning to do for years - make the cover for the foam seat for the Lloyd loom chair in one of the bedrooms. It's always on the list below more important stuff and I always finish up just plumping up a square pink cushion, which looks less than ideal wedged in a half-moon seat. I get my sewing machine and the material I'd already planned to use and plonk them on the kitchen table and, while he snores gently in the corner, I work and reflect on the fact that it takes me all morning. In that time the contestants make a full-length evening dress on the Great British Sewing Bee!
He awakes, drinks, goes back to sleep, wakes again, goes out for a widdle, but nowhere near the lawn that leads to the pool. After lunch I decide to take him into town for a gentle stroll round the park behind the Town Hall. It's where we walked all those evenings when he was convalescing with his knee and I know that we will move at a snail's pace as every clump of grass and tree trunk has to be investigated and marked. He does well, so I decide a detour in the merc to the artisanal patisserie for comfort food is called for. By the time I return he has squeezed himself past the netting that is supposed to keep him in the back and is waiting, front paws up on the glove box, grin on his face, ready for "a treat".
He tells me he thinks he will live.
