Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again
W. B. Yeats, Death

The day the British surrender Singapore is not one of Carl's days to scout aeroplanes, so he walks back to Evelyn Road with Professor Dyer, his colleague. Una and Li know the man a little but it is only a little, because they are seldom in the university orbit.

'It is the end,' he says, 'of the British Empire.' Professor Dyer says this while at chess with Carl. This infuriates Puck, who, thereafter, spends the man's visit throwing peanuts at him with deadly aim. But Dyer takes this in good stride. He says, unruffled, 'Excellent aim, he's got, Carl. Shame we didn't have him firing the ack-acks, eh?'

In Una's ear Li whispers, 'Do we tell him he is not special? That Puck throws peanuts at everyone?'

'You could tell him,' says Una, 'that it could be worse.' This makes Li laugh her silver-fluted laughter. It is a welcome sound after the news of the surrender, the explosion of the causeway. Puck laughs with Li and throws more peanuts at Dyer. Then, because Puck likes peanuts, he scarpers around the room collecting them back. Iris helps.

Una wakes early the next morning to what she first thinks is the ack-ack guns. But it is the wrong time of day, and the sound isn't quite right. She cannot hear the mynas or the oriels, though, only…Una stretches under the Trip Around the World quilt, half-awake and registers that it is Papatee, lowing. He lows balefully, as if some great catastrophe has befallen him. She supposes it has, now that Singapore is alone in the world, without the British to save it. Strange that Papatee knows.

Or not so strange, she thinks, and spares a thought for Dog Monday, ragged and lonely down at the train station. He howled his little dog heart out for Walter, after all. Una stretches again, and feels Nenni curled asleep and protective at her feet. This is Nenni's great thing, guarding Una's feet. She did it from a kitten. But it's strange, Una thinks in the watery February first-light, that she does not shift and reposition herself as Una moves. Usually she does.

Papatee lows again, sad and plaintive. When no claw stretches out lazily to test the texture of Una's quilt, disquiet builds. This has nothing to do with Singapore, which is still her home but perhaps not itself. Una sits up and reaches awkwardly for Nenni.

Nenni is not asleep. Nenni is stiff the way starched laundry is stiff. She lies unmoving and orange on the Trip Around the World quilt, her spots a contrast to its myriad blues and whites. She has gone cold, too, her beautiful spotted fur atypically still. It does not puff and swell like a bellows as Nenni breathes through her pink nose, currently snug between equally pink toes. Nenni is dead. She died in her sleep. And perhaps a yard or so away the buffalo Nenni loved is singing her requiem.

'Oh,' says Una and strokes Nenni's beautiful, cold fur. 'Come here.'

She gathers Nenni, stiff and uncomplaining into her arms. Nenni was not a tactile cat, particularly, not with everyone. But she was Una's. Carl gave Una Nenni as a peace offering after Puck, and Nenni knew it. Una knows this because Nenni never passed up an opportunity to torment Puck, to chase him, or pounce on his tail. Secretly, Una suspects that Nenni decided she loved Papatee purely because Puck so obviously did not.And now, Nenni is dead.

Una feels this. An emptiness between her ribs, just under her heart. Cats bring a particular shape to their households, to the lives they interweave with, and Una feels the absence like a limb. Papatee lows again, plaintive and doleful and Una knows that he feels it, too. What other cat would have the pluck to sit astride his back and bathe him like that, a great hulking buffalo? Or fall asleep there afterwards, or balance on his head while Papatee meandered around the garden, Nenni looking for all the world like the Egyptian God she believed she was.

Una stands on the cool bedroom floor, bare-shod, Nenni in her arms a moment longer and wonders what on earth to do now. The room smells of the last gasp of night-blooming jasmine and faintly now, of death under the flowers. She moves unthinking from bedroom to hallway to downstairs where she stops because she does not know what to do next.

'You're awake early,' says Li, appearing at the top of the stairs. 'I blame Papatee.'

Then she sees Nenni in Una's arms. Una watches understanding blossom like a flower, opening slowly and lily-wide across Li's face. She is down the stairs two, three at a time and her arms come around Una tight. Nenni, between them, does not complain. Nenni would complain, normally. In life. She would sink her claws into Una's shoulder and spring herself, hissing and howling over Una's shoulder. They stand there, Una's head pressed against Li's shoulder for a long moment. All Una can smell is the coconut oil and orchids smell of Li, mixed faintly with residual sleep. Una cannot smell the death-smell of earlier and she is glad.

'Poor Nenni,' says Li.

'She was old,' says Una, and this is true. Nenni lived at Trinity house very nearly twenty years. As long, in fact, as Una has lived here.

'She was a Singaporean cat,' says Li. 'I suppose, now that the British will not rescue us, she wanted to die one, too. While she still could.'

The logic makes Una smile against Li's shoulder. They can still hear Papatee lowing the sad song of the bereft buffalo.

'Poor Papatee,' says Una. 'He's alone, now.'

'Well,' says Li, 'he has you. And Carl, and Iris. But he will miss his friend.' Li touches her fingers to Nenni's spotted head. She says, 'We should bury her.'

Carl comes looking for them, and it's Carl that digs the grave. He has to disrupt the soil to do it and it means that in addition to dust and faint burning from elsewhere the morning air smells of rich, tumbled earth. But first Carl fastens the old halter to Papatee and leads the buffalo into the back garden, because, as Carl says, Papatee should be there. Everyone agrees with this. Una holds Nenni close, feels the soft, rich fur one last time. She finds it incredible that in mere moments she will never see it again. And she finds it comforting that Papatee tempers the earth-smell of the ground with his own, buffalo smell.

But Una has been meaning for months to plant more catmint for Nenni in the far corner of the garden. The seeds sit in a packet on the kitchen windowsill. So, Una sets Nenni gingerly down and goes to fetch them, because she can do this last thing for her cat. When she comes back, Papatee has great hooves one either side of Nenni, who is still curled in her round, sleepy ball. She looks smaller than ever between the buffalo's feet, and as Una watches, Papatee buffets her with his nose. He does it again and again, and Una realises that improbable though this is, Papatee is bathing his dead friend. His tongue – just the tip – darts out and back, out and back. Because she isn't there to wash him, Papatee is washing Nenni.

Una freezes. They all do. They watch as months and months of grit and dust are lifted from Nenni's beautiful Bengal coat. Nenni did her best with it, of course, but there was so much dust, and a cat's solemn bath rite is such a strangely specific thing, that there was always more. Papatee is not specific. He does not focus obscurely and obsessively on Nenni's ears or tail or forepaw. He washes all of her until she is as striking as she ever was, there in her curled, restive sleep. Finally, Papatee raises his head heavenward and bellows and almighty and doleful bellow. He demands his friend back of the sky, and when the sky does not comply, he does it again. He does it a third time for good measure, or luck. Then he sets his great, buffalo head down, nose to Nenni's tail and falls silent.

Una meant to wrap Nenni in something, but Papatee has washed her so clean that Una cannot, in the event, bear to cover Nenni's fur. So she buries Nenni as she is, and nestles a beloved Valarian mouse next to her for company. Now, Nenni can kill it everlastingly in the hereafter. Supposing heaven doesn't provide of valerian mice, which it probably does. But they won't have been sewn by Una. She plants the catmint, and a sleepy Iris helps her pat the ground smooth. Papatee kicks gently at it for good measure and gives a last, doleful rumble.

He tries to bunt Una's side the way Nenni did but he is so much bigger that it has the effect of shuffling her sideways. Una doesn't mind. She strokes Papatee's nose and goes with him back to the garage, where she feeds, but does not bathe him. No one does.

Parnokianlipstic- Berg has the distinction of being that rare composer I cannot listen to. He's genius, and I can see the genius, but Una very much got my reaction there. And of course Ravel is deeply tied to the Camomile Lawn, so whenever I hear that quartet I think this time period.

Onion layers is the perfect description of Yeats. There's so much bubbling away under the surface -no wonder it suits Una. It's darker earlier here too, but nothing on you, I'm sure. A medieval coin expert I knew once spent a semester out Norway-ward for a season and said coming home she was so grateful for sun. Not that Scotland that far north had much either. Gesu Bambino over here (Battle and Straad) now as I get Christmas pieces underway. And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which I'm sure Una would appreciate if I'd started this story in November...