“I went to the pet shop in Kensington High Street one morning and in the window there were five kittens from the same litter. Each was completely white save for a few marks which were hardly noticeable.
It was as much as I could do to stop myslef buying one there and then for Freddie.
I went back to Garden Lodge, put on my waders and started cleaning out the isolation tank for the koi. Joe and Phoebe came through the back door.
‘We’ve got a favour to ask you,’ said Joe.
‘I’ve just come from Kensignton Hight Street and …’ he began.
‘And you passed the pet shop and saw the kittens? I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re only £25 each. Phoebe and I will give you the money. Will you get the whitest one for Freddie?’
‘Why don’t you buy it?’ I asked
‘We decided to ask you,’ Joe said, ‘because if you buy it then Freddie won’t scream and shout if he’s annoyed.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘But only on one condition: that if Freddie does start screaming and shouting, you’ll share the blame.’
So I set off for the shop in the Volvo. There were only three kittens left. I picked one out, drove back to Garden Lodge and slipped the kittens into my jacket as I walked in. Freddie was in the garden, so I walked slowly towards him, beaming. Freddie scowled at me.
‘You bastard!’ he said. ‘You’ve got another cat, haven’t you?’
‘How did you know?’ I asked.
‘His tail is sticking out from under your jacket!’ he said. I took the kitten from my jacket and put her on the ground. Freddie bent down, stroked her and couldn’t resist picking her up. Freddie quickly christened our sixth cat. ‘We’ll call her Lily!’ he said. So Lily it was.
Although he adored the new kitten, he wondered whether her arrival would upset the other five cats. Oscar was a cat who preferred his own company, and the arrival of the latest kitten proved to be the final straw. Increasingly he would roam off to visit other homes in the area and adopted one neighbour especially. He even started sleeping out at night, but Freddie didn’t mind.
‘If Oscar’s happy, then that’s all that matters,’ he ould say.”
Mercury and Me - Jim Hutton