This is a secret

..so listen close and I will tell. The night was dark and stormy and the wind howled and moaned and rattled the windows and pushed its paws beneath the doors and down the chimney fawr. Mr Griffith was alone but for his memories and one orange cat who had gone to visit during a break in the clouds. And now we sat together and he told me about the cats he had shared his life with. He thought I was the ghost of Ewan the Ginger, but even so he put out a dish of food, meat and biscuits, and turned the fire up a bar.

So he told me of Smokey the grey cat, beautiful as a Russian blue, sleek smooth, a hunter. And of Daffyd the Black who wandered the hills from farm to farm, a Cassanova of cats who left behind many a broken hearted queen cat and a litter of kittens that would stretch from here to St Davids.
I sat on his lap and he stroked my fur, which warmed his cold hands, and I did not mind that he called me Ewan as he told of Ebryll, named from the Welsh for April, the month when he came to live with Mr Griffiths, only a few days after Daffyd died, another cat with a reputation for romance and wide ranging territory. Then Nadolig, Named after Christmas, who would visit with Ebryll, his father, until the time when Ebryll was run over by a car near the bear at Treath Mawr. So old he could barely walk and yet when spring came he would go singing his cat love songs.
Outside the wind still howled and beneath its note I thought I could just make out the tender love songs of the pied ghost cat. Glyn was tired. He turned off the fire and went upstairs to his small bed beneath the eaves of his cold white cottage and step for step I followed. Then as he laid down his head and pulled up the blankets I curled beside him to purr a song of thanks to a man who all his life has cared for cats.
And all the next day I stayed with him. When I returned home I was greeted with great hugs and more food, so obviously She appreciated the fact that while She has been so wrapped up in Her work for so long that She has not even had time to call round and see how Glyn was keeping as winter draws close someone had time for him. And it is good to be home.
Elmo.