Night

It is night time, dark and quiet. Tonight, like every night, before we settle to sleep and dream we walk around the small village where we live. We walk always clockwise as withershins might bring bad luck.
And tonight the sky is bleached of stars by the bright glory of the bone white full moon.
Moonshadows are long. They follow our footsteps. All is quiet, just the barest whisper of the sea on the distant sand. No wind. Not a breath. Moonlight paints the leaves with silver. At night all cats are gray but on a night such as this we shine with the latent light of the setting sun and glow a pale fire colour held in our fur.
Mice chatter in the bushes and ruins of houses where people once lived. Careless mice. Moths brush past our whiskers, just a sigh of movement, pursued by the winged ones of night, the bats.
You can almost hear the few bright stars that still shine through the moonlight.
Soon there will be shooting stars. Soon it will be August, and we will sit in the garden at night and watch the stars fall from the heavens, as they do every year.
The night belongs to us.
And still we wish for wings.

A quiet day.

Hot day, blue sky, white clouds very high.




Yellow flowers all around, and a sap green frog, with golden eyes.

Hot Ginger 2

New Proverb

Proverbs flew around the catblogosphere like so many swift winged birds. Meanwhile, here in Wales we discovered where Tom was finding fish. Have checked out form of transport, surf boards and have a new proverb.

If the fish won't come to the cats
Then the cats must go to the fish.

So, little fishes in the sea, now it is time to beware of me.

We tag Adan and Michico

Waiting for a call

I am waiting for a phone call from The People Magazine. They want to interview us about taking a human for a walk, and then we are going to be in another magazine. We might mention Her books if She pays us enough.

Haymaking while the sun shines.

On top of the hill the farmer had tidied his field, folding all the long and golden grass into neat bales.


The field smelt of all the mice who had lived there and had lost their homes. We will have good hunting tonight.



But for today we play. And Pixie is almost squashed, hiding from the sun under a huge bale in the shadow.

The cat of death

She was working hard again and we listened to the radio, to a story about a cat in America who can sense when death is near. His name is Oscar, tabby and white with wonderful eyes.
It seems that he lives in a hospice or home for very old people and always sits with people when they are about to die. The humans think that this is cute. We know the truth.
Oscar collects the lives of people and sells them on to cats who are short of their nine lives.
And one kitten who will be needing Oscar soon is a ginger fur ball in Scotland. Living dangerously! Looks so sad. We hope he finds a safe home soon, with no more joy riding!

Proverb

Two cats in a bush,
Birds better beware.
One cat on a lap,
Birds safe anywhere.

We tag Daisy of the beautiful ears and curling coat for a proverb meme.

Early morning light

The sun shone through the dusty windows and woke Her up. The sky was blue. It is busy now in St Davids and we have to be careful when we walk. More people and more dogs. So She got up and took us out in the early morning light, when people on holiday are still sleeping.




Over the hill and down to the sea where the post points the way along the snaking cliff path.





There were stonechat and whitethroats and buzzards and all manner of things. Everyone got lost, except for Elmo, in the tall bracken when She tried to walk us up through the golden grass. He called and called and looked and looked but we were all together and so lost. Then he found us and we walked back to the path and up to the rock where the early morning pale sunlight painted our fur to beautiful hues.




Then over the moorland where the purple heather scented the air like honey.




Home now, we are tired. We lie in the sun and rest.
Later Martha has promised to tell us a story of owls and of flowers.

Painting

Across the fields the sun paints the cathedral with a golden light. It is quiet and you can hear the bells from the tower, distant, a whisper, a memory of bells.
The sky is beautiful.

High as the birds.

Everywhere is green and filled with flowers. We pulled her away from Her painting. The dogs needed to walk we said. Up the hill where the dragonflies rattle dry wings and hover in the still air. Where buzzards call from high in the clouds. Where the grass is dotted with yellow and the tall grass flowers hold the gold of the sun.




Purple heathers smudge the hillside with darker colours. Lichens paint the rocks a soft green. And from high above we see the coast path snakes around the cliff tops. High on the rocks we watch the world like birds do, looking down to the sea. Higher still in a fury of sound a flock of pigeons shake the air with a roar of swift wings and are gone, racing away from the danger of peregrine, home swift to a loft and soft hands to welcome them in. City birds.
We watch from on high, looking down on the flight of raven and buzzard and kestrel and wren. And in the distance white fulmars wheel around the cliffs, balancing the air on straight, stiff wings, kings of the cliff face.

Hot ginger

Lost

It was busy in the morning. Tom and Hannah went to school. She went off in the car thing and came back with more paintings and things in wonderful bags that crinkled and wrinkled and slid. Some of the things smelled quite nice, but she took them away and put the things in them away.
Tom and Hannah came back from school and it started to rain ( some kind of chemical reaction, Tom thought, to it being the start of the school holidays).
We had some food. It was then that we noticed that Pixie was missing. Not to worry, early yet. But then it started to rain more and she still hadn't come home. Hannah walked around the village, calling, calling. Still no sign. She did the same, worried about cars or people who might find a ginger cat and thinking it lost take it away. The rain got heavier and now we were all a little scared.
She thought for a bit, called some more. No Pixie and tears began to come and fear.
And then She thought some more. She had bought things to put in the freezer. The freezer is in a small room outside. She pushed at the door and it was hard to open, and there, behind the door, struggling to dig herself out, was Pixie. She was scooped up and hugged and taken to Hannah, who put away here tears and brought out a smile and hugged and hugged the precious ginger lost thing. Then Pixie had a quiet supper on her own in the kitchen and curled up to recover from her fright and ordeal.

Shadow

The day was full of butterflies. I could hear the gentle thrum of their wings as they searched for sweetness in the flowers. I could feel the push of the air under their wings as it brushed against my whiskers.




The sky carried clouds and I could smell the salt rain as they passed over, high above, to drop their rain somewhere other than here. The sun shone on my fur. It was warm. The fields are patchworked with haymaking. The sky is patchworked with birdsong.




All around the wild hillside is patterned with the deep purple of sweet heather. My shadow follows me.

High wire, golden evening

Late in the evening we walked to the top of the hill. The landscape is a patchwork of green and gold. A late evening fox was chased away by the dog, fast and sleek through the tall gold grasses. Over the sea on one side the sky filled with gold as the sun dropped through a hole in the clouds. Over the land rainclouds gathered, deep, dark, gray and filled to bursting. A rainbow arched across the sky. We went to look for the pot of gold.
Elmo practiced his high wire act on a five barred gate.

The owl and the pussycat

Your claws are sharp and curved as cat claws.
Your feathers are soft and light like cat fur.
Your eyes are deep dark midnight pools of reflection.
Like me you dream of mice.
I will search the land until I find a pea green boat and some honey and money and together we will sail away.

Blue sky and barbed wire

And golden grass and mice everywhere, and stonechats and whitethroats and bright jewels of goldfinch, and wrens and linnets, blackbirds and bluetits.




Purple heather and bright yellow gorse, stonecrop and scabeous, tormentil and meadowsweet, honeysuckle heavy with scent on a warm evening breeze. Leaping gorse bushes in the sunshine and letting Hannah carry us.

In twisting dreams

It rained again. All day it rained and the tall grass bowed with the weight of the falling water. It is cold, not like summer. So we curled together in the warm and dreamed.




In our dreams we twisted and turned. Elmo dreamed of being a circus cat, fierce as a lion, on a high wire in a blue circus tent spangled with gold stars, while below people roared their applause.




Pixie dreamed of sailing with an owl on a pea green boat to an island where a turkey lived, of gold rings and shillings, honey and money.




And I dreamed of hunting, the great snark mice, sneaking behind them in the summer sunshine with my shadow carefully hidden in a pocket of fur.
At the horse farm, Steve, who is ginger, sheltered from the rain in the barn where swallows nest and dreamed of his tail.
Then the rained stopped and we uncurled and stretched and went out. Everywhere was mud and water and mist.




We carried our dreams still in our minds. The trails of mice were washed away, but soon they would come out again and the hunt would start afresh. And after the rain the sun will come and all will smell beautiful.

After the rain the sun, after the sun the rain.

It started slowly. A quiet and then a splash. A drop falling on a leaf and the leaf flicked like a lizard tail. Then more, still light, whispers of water. Later the sky grew dark and the raindrops grew heavy and the leaves on the trees danced in the falling rain, a frenzied dance to the music of storm. The wind blew and the spears of rain began to slant across the land. Rain washed over the roof like waves in the wind and we curled inside and waited, warm, together. It played a loud lullaby over the tiles and we dreamed of being ships cats as the wind shook and rolled around the house. At the window the world became fragmented by raindrops. Still the sky was heavy with water. Night and day we saw no moon, no stars. Water ran down the path, turning it to a babbling stream. The salt wind burned and ripped the leaves from the ash tree. All of the mice stayed secret in burrows and the swallows grew hungry, trapped by the weight of falling water, unable to fly.
And then it stopped. The clouds rolled away to show a sky washed to a sparkling bright blue. In the sunshine the world looked fresh and the roses again dropped perfume to fill the garden. Martha found shelter from the tail of the wind in a sunshine patch on the blue bench and slept. Sleeping outside is always better.
We were rested and the mice were careless with hunger.

Dog gives birth to cats.

In Cambodia a small dog gave birth to a kitten. A forest monk, a holy man, said that the dog fell in love with a tiger, a beautiful, wild and huge ginger cat that roamed the forests.
Maybe the kitten will grow to be huge and wild like Cath Palug.

Here in Pembrokeshire we have a new story.


In Pembrokeshire in Wales a dog has given birth to three ginger cats. The cats are an ancient breed of Welsh Sheepcats bred by farmers for working sheep who are frightened of dogs.
"Sheepcats are very rare," said Jackie Morris. " As more and more farms in Pembrokeshire have been turned into holiday cottages demand for Sheepcats has dropped to a level where they have become an endangered species and it is years since a dog has given birth to three. They are notoriously difficult to train as they are easily distracted by rodents and butterflies, and so farmers in modern times favor using dogs. "