Dangerous Animals

Dangerous large animals were everywhere today. First a great firey red tractor coming from the field where daffodils nodded their heads in the wild wind. It pulled a trailer with flowers heading for market on St Davids Day. Then at the top of the hill, great beasts with hooves and teeth.

Famous Friends no.1, Bagpuss

Wise Cat Words for a Wet Day

When the wind blows and the rain falls hard from the sky, curl up in a warm place with your tail wrapped around you and your paws in tight.

At Night

It is said that in the night all cats are gray. On nights when the moon is a small sickle in the dark night and the stars burn our eyes this is true. We flow then like liquid shadows through the dreams of small creatures. But when the moon is full, and bright bone white, and moonshadows dance over the earth, we glow golden like the setting sun.

Ambush

Chasing the dog's tail, hiding in the hammock chair. This is the life!

The other cat

This night the place of choice above the fire was taken by Max, The Other One, he that is not ginger. For some reason Max is the cat She always paints. He is in book after book that she paints, playing the violin in How The Whale Became, and Can You See a Little Bear, and now in Singing to the Sun where he seems to be in every painting that she does.
The other one, The Old One, the one that She calls Martha, is eating much better now. We think she may have had tooth ache for a long time. But she did not bring her tooth home from the vet and the cat tooth fairy had to search and search before we told her where the vet had hidden the tooth. Then she came back with a tiny sugar mouse for Martha.
While She has been sleeping we have been reading the new book that She has left in our way. It is a cat's tale too.

Parma Ham

He came to stay for the weekend with his dog. The dog is big and smelly, but has a tail that is good to chase. Sometimes when He visits He brings Parma Ham. Then no one is safe to go into the kitchen. For Parma Ham is better even than mice!

Fire Cats

Today the basket came out. All prowled around, but it was The Old One who was chosen and she did not like being in it. The Old One was taken to the vets, and when she returned she told us how the vet had pulled out one of her teeth with a pair of sharp things. They went in the car, and The Old One did not like it. But now she eats better, and looks happier.
We spent the day, which was wet and dreary, curled above the fire in the place of choice, sleeping.

Even later the same day, sad news from the city.

Today we mourn the sad loss of one of our brethren, an urban cat who led a good life and met an untimely end. He lived with Nick Green and his family.
Tonight we will sing songs to the claw moon to guide his spirit safely to cat heaven, where the mice are swift and juicy and birds are surprised by cats with wings.

An obituary for Red.


The grasshoppers of Hertford are missing a playmate today. Red (aka Red-cat or dig-dat by the youngest member of his family) was hit by a car mere yards from his front door, and was buried in his beloved garden, under a claw
moon, on 21 February by his heartbroken best friend.

Red‚s early life was marred by struggle. Sentenced to time in Battersea not once but twice for antisocial behaviour, his good side was finally allowed to shine when he was granted the patience, love and garden that he most sorely needed. Branded independent and standoffish, he dropped this pretence as soon as there was no more danger of being mistaken for a dog.

The arrival of a baby in the house showed him up for the prodigy he was; no volume of screaming, no pulling of whiskers, no board-book bombardment could provoke this cat to scratch his Little Friend ˆ this cat who would take chunks from any adult‚s hand as soon as look at them. Now at last given the room to spread himself, he did, over every visible surface. He regularly sold his soul for lemon sole, only to refuse payment, and developed a passion for paper ˆ his lifelong ambition, sadly unrealised, was for his own ream of A4.

The sadness of Red‚s loss is tempered by the knowledge that, for a precious three years in his turbulent life, he was home. In the post of housecat he will one day be succeeded, but he will never be replaced.

And the next morning...

...we were still tired. Did someone say walk?

Tired

Long walk. Long sleep in a warm place.

King of the castle

Walking in sunshine

Walking in the sunshine, and our coats held the warmth from the sun, caught in the fur. The dog’s coat held something else. Something it had rolled in, something that was not warm but it did smell awful.
At the bottom of the hill we played “King of the Castle”

Helping to write in the pink kitchen

Days like pearls

Yesterday she did nothing but paint, shut away in her studio. Outside it rained and we curled around each other and the fire and dreamt.
Today the world woke to a pearly haze of fog. Together we walked up to the top of the hill following the wide spread paw prints of badgers, then down to the heaving water where the waves crash against the cliffs. Along the cliff path, the edge of the world, with the sea on one side, land on the other, while overhead ravens flew.
The longest walk for a while, and when we came home our feet were muddy, but we sat on the table in the kitchen anyway and helped her write some words for a picture book about stars. But every time we put in the word “cat” she deleted it. What is the use of a book with no cats in it.

We Three Went Walking

We Three went walking, despite the greyness of the day, we followed her up the hill and over. The sky was grey and rain fell softly down, and she trod a path that went through tangled bramble ways, to a sparkling jewel of a pond filled with wriggling tadpoles. The grass was long, the path was steep.
Later we slept on a sofa soft and purred our quiet songs. Martha, the other ginger sat above the fire, warm in the place of choice, and she went and hid in the room she will not let us in, and painted.
In the morning we woke early, hungry, and scratched the door until she woke and fed us. Then we slept again and helped to wrap paintings, rolling in bubble wrap and climbing up big pictures, balancing on the top, hiding in the car amongst the pictures, tips of tails showing through the layers of paintings.

Who We Are

We three are ginger cats. We walk the wild hills, we sleep we eat. At night when they are all asleep, into the studio we creep and there we paint the picture books, correct mistakes and write. She wonders why we sleep all day. It is because we paint so much.
Today the wild wind keeps us in, stretched long by the fire on a sheepskin rug so fine a blue it makes our ginger coats glow with gold. It rattles at the doors and windows, shakes the tiles on the roof. We melt, and gently snore and dream of mice.