Marx & the Cats

One night when we were out our house was burgled. While it was a horrible experience, the intruder puzzled us. For example, he had a good taste in records, taking some of our favourite LPs, but he took the electric kettle without the flex. After consulting the headmaster, we called the police. A white officer sat drinking coffee in our sitting room leaving a black constable to poke around for evidence. Had the officer looked at our shelves he would have found books on and by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and various anarchists as well as the English version of Mao Tse Tung's 'Little Red Book', and I would have spent far longer in jail than any petty thief.

To guard our property we had already bought a dog but the puppy was so cute we had taken him with us when we went out to dinner on the night of the burglary.

He grew up to be a very handsome dog. Marx was a De Beers alsation, bred to guard the diamond mines, and rather prejudiced against black people. Since the boys had to come to our house to renew an exercise book when it was full, they filled them very full indeed before they ran the gauntlet of Marx.

Marx needed huge amounts of exercise so he very much appreciated the school's 4,000 acres of bush. We both walked with him, but Gill took him many more miles. One of the fruits of a local tree was called a kaffir orange, and we threw these for him to chase, so for every mile we walked Marx ran five.

Marx did have his less endearing side. He would disappear from the house and return later having eaten something disgusting which he had found in the bush. He also rolled in filth, after which he was bathed, which he hated.

The cats were not amused by his arrival, and took to navigating the rooms via the tables, chairs and the tops of the room partitions. Later the three made friends, and when Nhata (above) had her kittens, which she produced one morning on our bed, her family shared Marx's basket.

When Nangatanga damaged his right front leg I had broken the scaphoid bone in my right wrist, so both of us were in plaster. My damage occurred while playing for the school's staff team. We travelled all over the place, playing teams such as the local Public Works Department and the police. All the other players were black, and some, particularly the police side, took some pleasure in being particularly rough with me. The wrist damage occurred when I was tackled by a very large police sergeant.