Marmite
AND FROM THEIR WALKS ALONG CROCODILE BEACH, THEY TRAVELLED MORE THAN SEVEN THOUSAND MILES TO NORTH WALES, AND THE CRUNCHING SHINGLE OF DINAS DINLLE.
world, on the salty, seaweed beach just below the cliffs of the Iron Age fort… and the sea so keen and tangy and cold! And the gulls, a whirling of great white birds, screaming and squalling in a sweet, salty breeze! And no other dogs, except a few sleek and glossy characters with their sleek and glossy owners! And no crocs! Not a crocodile for more than seven thousand miles! Gudrun and Smokey came along soon afterwards. From the sultanate of Brunei Darussalam to the royal borough of Caernarfon… Gudrun and Smokey, two cats we brought with us. We’d
Smokey gets deep and meaningful
found Gudrun on another night of lashing monsoon, outside our favourite fish restaurant. She was huddled in the sodden
Gudrun and Smokey… like Poppy and Marmite before them,
remains of a cardboard box, all sticky with slime as though
they snuggled in the belly of an aeroplane for 18 tumultuous
she’d been stuck in a mud-slide, and so utterly emaciated that
hours and arrived in London. And so to North Wales.
she looked like a strip of rag that had been tossed out of the restaurant kitchen and onto the street outside. The waitresses
Sadly now, Poppy the sweet foxhound and lovely, loving
in the restaurant, to give them some credit, had been leaving
Gudrun are no longer with us. They’ve passed on – they’ve
a few scraps for her to sniff and lick – but the poor little
made another journey, even more extraordinary than their
creature was too weak and apathetic to try and eat.
passage from Borneo.
We took her home. She would surely die. Except that my
But Marmite is still enjoying the cooler climes of North Wales.
wife tended to her so lovingly and carefully that she made an
Every day he explores the park on the outskirts of Caernarfon,
almost miraculous recovery. Gudrun, that would be her name…
sniffing long and deep into the dewy grasses and into the
and within another month she was strong enough to get up
shade of beech and oak and horse chestnut… no mosquitoes
and about and into the jungle around our house. She repaid
whining in his ears, and no crocodiles lurking in the shallows
my wife’s kindness with all the love she’d kept and stored
of the lake.
within her resilient frame – for she had a strongly beating heart full of love. And sometimes she would return from her
And Smokey has a life of leisure and luxury in a comfortable
forays into the jungle with a gift… a snake, black and writhing,
house… no air-con, but central heating. He prowls in the little
brought into our kitchen, or a mud-hen, a bird like a coot,
garden, where sparrows come for a scattering of peanuts and
bigger than Gudrun and still feebly fluttering in her fierce
there are gulls gleaming in a cool blue sky.
fangs. A long way from their native land, re-settled in North Wales – On one of her adventures into the neighbourhood she must
home from home. n
have met an ardent admirer, because Gudrun grew plumper and one evening she hid herself in the cupboard under the kitchen sink and had four kittens. They grew fast and they grew strong. Gudrun, who’d been skin and bones and starving not long before, was a super mother to her rumbustious, ebullient offspring. And when the time came for us to leave Brunei and return to Europe, we found loving homes for three of the kittens and kept one of them – a swift and sooty panther we called Smokey.
Page 22 NWM 2022
Stephen Gregory’s first novel, The Cormorant, which he wrote in Snowdonia 35 years ago, has been published several times in both the UK and the USA, and translated into German, Polish and Italian. The new edition, which is available from Parthian Books, is its tenth publication.
