Bodacious: The Shepherd Cat. Suzanna Crampton

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       Sun and Showers

      As March becomes April, The Shepherd keeps a close eye on the leaf buds as they swell on the oak and ash trees, since they are an age-old predictor of summer weather. This ditty surfaces every year, she tells me:

      Oak before ash, we are in for a splash,

      Ash before oak, we are in for a soak.

      So every morning leaf buds are inspected and compared between these two species.

      While daffodils still bloom in the fields, the grass, wild herbs and flowers really start to grow in the milder weather. The edges of the fields begin to prick out in many colours as the muddy month of March fades. The subtle pale greens of lords and ladies appear, celandine yellows the bottom of hedgerows with its rich egg-yoke flowers, while pale yellow primroses appear on banks and dog violets spread purple under trees, their colours deepening as the trees’ leaves unfurl and shadow them. The fields are covered in strong yellow dandelions all humming with bees and other pollinating insects as they have their first good feed on blossoms after a long winter’s hibernation. Cowslips burst up and out of their flat-lying leafy rosettes with pale yellow bells bobbing on any hint of wind. No longer are they picked to make cowslip wine, as they are a rare sight to behold in any quantity. Speedwell and vetches, blue and purple, add flashes of stippled colour through grasses as they flower. The Shepherd loves to eat vetch flowers as they taste like nutty flavoured green garden peas, and they add flavour and a beautiful colour to a fresh spring green salad. Rabbit food to me, but some humans are mad keen on their salad greens.

      As flowers burst out and mild southwest winds blow in to warm the earth, young lambs frolic and cavort around trees or play a game of ‘King of the Log’ atop a fallen tree from a recent winter storm. I find the most transfixing to watch is a whole flock of lambs, who race to see who is fastest up a hilltop. They turn as if at an invisible marker, then with tails spinning like speed-inducing propellers, they race downhill in great leaps with a flourishing bouncing twist, which shows how healthy and happy they are.

      Often while we watch these lambs’ skylarking romps, the canine crew follow The Shepherd in a slow procession. Pepper watches with disinterested, amused tolerance, The Big Fellow is watchful for any mishaps that might occur and ready to step in as a concerned caretaker, while silly Bear trails behind with a look of longing, wanting to join in the fun they all seem to be having without him.

      The collection of nettle leaves will form part of a delicious seasonal vegetable dish for the household of humans. I have no real interest in nettles. We cats find most vegetables dull compared to a tasty morsel of chicken, or a nice fresh mouse. Intermittently I will partake of a green bean, or some spears of grass I personally pluck to alleviate and dislodge an occasional hairball. Once nettles are cooked their sting is nullified and the resulting simple dish of nettle leaves steamed like spinach is served with a knob of butter, which The Shepherd tells me is scrumptious. However, I much prefer when The Shepherd makes nettle soup, because she uses stock made from the boiled bones from the Sunday lunch of roast chicken. The carcass has been steeped overnight in the simmering oven of the Aga with extra seasoning and chunks of carrots and onions, filling the kitchen with a delicious aroma. She then drains the chicken stock and to it, adds our fresh picked nettles with diced potatoes, boiled until they are soft. Then she whizzes with a very noisy whizzy machine till it’s smooth. She adds some frozen green peas, stirs them in while reheating it only briefly so the peas still have a nice pop when crushed between the teeth. She then serves it with a good scrape of fresh nutmeg on top and if she’s feeling really fancy a spoonful of crème fraîche or a nice dollop of Velvet Cloud sheep-milk yogurt. She talks a lot about the vitamins and minerals in the soup, and I pretend to listen, but really I’m only interested because it smells of chicken.

      The Shepherd has not always been an expert in the kitchen, it has to be said. Long before I came here, in The Shepherd’s distant youth she decided to dye some white trousers black. It was the most inexpensive way to get an article of seemingly new clothing. She bought the dye and asked her granny which pot she could use in the kitchen to boil water to dye the trousers. Her granny often used a big pot to cook dog food, which was made up of cheap scrap meats from the butcher. The meat was called offal or ‘lights’ and was usually mixed with lungs, tripe, sheep heads and cow stomachs. Puuurrsonally, I prefer The Shepherd’s proffered raw liver and heart chunks. Her granny would cook this mix slowly in the Aga overnight. It filled the house with a distinctly different odour from that of stew or roast meat. This canine cookery event happened at least twice a week. Once the meat mix was cooked, it was removed to the meat safe just outside the kitchen door, which got little sun and where it perfumed the air in the scullery. The meat safe was an open wooden-shelved structure covered with fine metal mesh and it had a tall latched door to lock it. They were commonly used before refrigerators were invented. In fact, The Shepherd often tells me that the farmhouse’s first refrigerator was rented and it was just a very small white box. The deep freeze proved to be a more useful purchase for her thrifty grandmother: it froze fruit for jam-making and blanched vegetables, which was how The Shepherd’s granny and grandpa extended their season of dining on homegrown produce. Whenever there was over-production of garden fruit and veg, they also saved it to sell as well as for future household use.

      Back to dyeing The Shepherd’s white trousers … Granny had said that she could use the dog food pot between her stewing sessions for the canines. But this was impossible since The Shepherd planned to go out wearing the dyed black trousers the very next evening and she had found the pot of homemade dog food still quite full. There was another giant pot that was used to make jam or to boil ham and tongue for the human household to eat. The Shepherd thought this would be fine for her to use as long as she cleaned it well after use. So she worked away dyeing her white trousers black. She stirred the big boiling pot of white trousers and black dye on the Aga’s hottest burner. When she had finished, she scrubbed the pot clean, or so she thought, and pronounced herself very pleased with a job well done. A few days later, her granny placed a ham in the big pot to boil for lunch that day. The boiled ham emerged coloured a deep indigo, much to the fury of The Shepherd’s granny. Lunch that day was a very quiet meal as they all munched on indigo ham. Luckily, there were no guests on that day, or indeed on the succeeding days until they had consumed the whole ham.

      I find April a great deal more annoying, because of horse chestnut trees. Just before their leaves unfurl in spring, the horse chestnut release a sticky sap, which covers its leaf-bud protectors. They fall to the ground, then seem to love to get caught up in my fine coat. I spend hours trying to rid myself of these sap-covered bud protectors, often only making it worse as I pull them off, unintentionally spreading the stickiness, so my coat becomes such a tangle that mats form. I then resign myself to the hands of The Shepherd to untangle my mats and comb out my fine hair. She has said this reminds her of times when she worked for the wildlife charity twenty-six years ago, when she watched geckos or lizards as well as big Komodo dragons. How she makes the connection I just don’t know, but it seems when lizards lick their faces and clean their eyes, the way their tongue moves across their face seems like their tongue is sticky but in reality it’s quite smooth.

      The Shepherd describes once when the call of nature awoke her in the middle of the night when she was doing fieldwork in Malaysia. Not being able to find her torch, she had to feel her way along the walls to the bathroom. She takes particular delight in describing the hole in the floor that was their litter box – I have no idea why – but on this night, just as she was feeling her way down the steps to the litter box, a gecko jumped onto her face and ran across it, its cool little feet sticking to her skin like miniature suction cups, before leaping onto the opposite wall. Luckily, she didn’t jump in fright or she might have fallen down СКАЧАТЬ