Animals

Jane loved animals of all kinds. Her first sentence was  ‘Awful cat gone’, uttered with profound concern in her deep dark voice to anyone who came to the house. It was her contribution to a fraught family conversation.

The ‘awful cat’ which had gone was a mangy smelly creature which had entered the garden and terrorized our own two cats, Susie and Pixie.  Susie and Pixie were extraordinarily affectionate creatures and Jane treated them as important members of the family, as indeed they were.  She loved the story of how Susie had been found in Peckham market, her tail bitten to pieces by the other kittens, and how Pixie had quickly eaten a freshly-cooked omelette during a seventies power-cut.

Over the years we had many cats but one of her favourites was Tabitha who lived until she was nine. Tabitha had a litter of kittens and was a sweet, playful cat. She had a habit of greeting members of the family first thing in the morning. When she died Jane wrote a tribute to her in the form of a small book.

To say Jane anthropomorphized animals was an understatement: she saw into the souls of these creatures and they responded with love and appreciation. She wrote heartfelt poems about our  cats and was devastated should any of them die. Another ‘awful cat’, a ragged, mud-spattered, brown and white Persian, which appeared in our garden in later years, she christened ‘Cinderella’.

Jane had helped to choose Holly, our (unusually large) miniature poodle, in 1987. She accompanied her mother to a house in Croydon where they found Holly, a very un-groomed, straggly-haired puppy, banished to a cardboard box in the kitchen. The dog looked more like Dougall from The Magic Roundabout than a recognisable poodle. Holly took to the whole family with delight and became a wonderfully loyal member of the family.

Dogs and cats, Jane valued each implicitly. When Jane was home recovering from chemo sessions Holly would sit at her feet for hours as Jane read or wrote.  On Jane’s death, Holly grieved intensely for several weeks, unable to fathom out what had happened.

On the day of Jane’s funeral, as the hearse made its way slowly down the streets, numerous cats came out from every nook and cranny and sat on garden walls as if to pay their respects.  Inside the church,  a stray cat walked across the sanctuary and sat underneath her coffin throughout the service.

In her novel Jane shows remarkable empathy for animals and all things natural. The wolf, Scarr, is given the most noble human characteristics. There is a beautiful passage describing a flight of butterflies as the spirits of nature materialize in the forest.

The trees in our garden were named Robinette and Christabel in recognition that they were, after all, living things. Robinette, a dwarf fir tree, died during a storm but Christabel, a foamy, white, blossoming cherry tree, still survives in all its glory.