FLOYD THE DOG

Born in a barn on the Farm where their Mother, Mindy, lived and worked, Bindy and Cindy, the twin sisters, were their Mother’s pride and joy. They were, of course, as mischievous as kittens are meant to be. Mother tried to keep them both spick and span in the hope that they would always be presentable, but, as they grew older, it became more and more a forlorn hope. Bindy made the task more than usually demanding because of the brilliance of her pure white fur, whilst Cindy’s tortoiseshell pattern made any odd bits of dirt rather difficult to see. Nevertheless Mother was determined not to give up, and the twins were always given an extra special wash and brush up when it was time to send them off to school.

That was where they were supposed to be going one lovely spring morning. The sun was shining and the birds were singing in their hidden nests in the freshly dressed trees. Bindy turned to Cindy and said, “It is altogether much too nice a day to have to go to school and have boring lessons. Suppose we just go exploring instead.”

Cindy agreed. “Good idea. I wonder what’s on the other side of the hedge on the far side of this field. Let’s find out.”

They raced each other to the tree standing halfway across the field. There they stopped to get their breath back, then to dab at a butterfly dancing above some primroses. An angry wasp soon put a stop to that game, and the kittens resumed their expedition to the far side of the field. To their great delight, when they peered through the hedge they found, hidden behind it, a small pond. It was a purr-fect place for a swim on a warm spring day, which was a much more enticing prospect than being cooped up in a classroom full of rambunctious kittens.

Without more ado, they crawled through the hedge and took off their tails. (In those days it was the right and proper thing for any well brought up kitten to do before going for a swim.). They spent quite a while practicing the swimming skills which, though they did not stop to think about it, their Teacher had taught them just a short while before.

They were having a high old time of it playing splash-your-sister, when a shout from the shore stopped them. It was the Truancy Cat, and he was getting rather hot and bothered.

“What do you two kittens think you are doing?” He yelled. “You are supposed to be in School. It is not a holiday. The way you seem to be enjoying yourselves, you cannot be sick. Come out of there at once, get dressed and get yourselves to School at the double, before I report you to the Head Cat.”

The threat of being reported sent the kittens into a panic. They hurriedly left the pond, shook most of the water out of their fur and, grabbing the nearest tail, went scampering on their way to School. It was purely an accident, but each had, without noticing, put on the wrong tail. Cindy was wearing Binyd’s white tail, and Bindy was wearing Cindy’s tortoiseshell tail.

At the very same moment in time Queen Kataleen, Queen of all the Cats, who lived in Katmandu, a place high in the mountains to the north of India, was having problems with one of her sons, the one whose name was Manky. Manky, who liked to spend his day in the local Milk Bars, was forever being nagged to ‘do something with yourself’ by his wife, Natterly. Things came to a head when, unable to stand his wife’s continuous scolding, Manky took off his tail and started to wave it in the air in a most alarming manner. Natterly was quite frightened. Fortunately Manky’s brother, Lanky, saw what was happening and prevented any catastrophe from occurring.

When the matter was reported to her, Queen Kataleen was very upset.

“I will not tolerate even the slightest hint of domestic violence,” she declared. “From this time onwards, every cat’s tail will remain firmly in place. Whatever their current state, tails may no longer be either detached or replaced. In punishment, Manky is hereby exiled to the Isle of Man, and his tail is impounded as evidence. Furthermore, all his descendants will be born without proper tails so that there can never be any repetition of this scandalous behaviour.”

The Queen of all the Cats was, of course, very powerful. Her word was law, and not just around Katmandu. Whatever she decreed inevitably came to pass, anywhere and everywhere that there were cats.

When, as their furs dried after their swim that fateful summer day, Bindy first noticed that Cindy was wearing the wrong tail, she naturally pointed out the mix up, and asked for her own tail to be returned.

Alas! Tug, twist, pull, push, bend or cut as they would, they could not detach either of the tails which each wrongfully possessed. Tempers, tears, tantrums, pitiful pleas and pious prayers were all in vain. The tails could not be exchanged.

Mother Cat was furious, and threatened to start a breakaway Mother’s Union, to rebel against Kataleen’s rule. That was destined to come to nothing since the only sufferers under the decree were her two mixed up kittens and the Manx Cats, who kept themselves very much to themselves.

Shortly afterwards Bindy, the white kitten now with a tortoiseshell tail, and Cindy, the tortoiseshell kitten with a white tail, were each adopted by a different human family and were removed to their new homes, one in the far north of the country and the other in the far south.

The twins from then on were living separate lives, each taking with her the other’s tail. Many a long night was spent by each of them taking what consolation they could by cuddling up to the tail belonging to the other, remembering the happy days when they played together as impish youngsters.

Both wished that they had done as they were told and had gone to School instead of going swimming in the pond. Of course, as time passed by, the pain of separation lessened, but neither could quite forget the other, especially since they were never really totally parted from each other.

Bindy’s sadness did not go unnoticed by her humans. It took them quite a while, and a visit back to the Farm where the twins had been born, but eventually they realised that Bindy must be pining for her twin sister. They found out that Cindy’s humans had moved away from the address that they had given the Farmer, and thought that there must be some mix-up in the descriptions that they had from the Farmer and others who had known Cindy in the past. However, they decided to go along with the most recent description when they placed an advertisement in a local newspaper in the north: