All was peaceful in the House of Ginger

Rosie and Maurice curled on the dog bed, dreaming, while Pixie was pinned to the path by the weight of late summer sunshine.
 

Rock, water, stone, feather.

Although we know She should be working we thought itwas time that She should be walking, so we clawed Her out from Her studio, away from the cheetah She was painting and up the hill to a land of blue sky. All the way up the green lane the garss was wet, but not with tears for Martha, who loved to walk this way. The land will miss her soft pawed carress, but it does not weep for her.

Full of life we were and free on this beautiful warm sunshine day, and each step that we took, each paw that we raised and planted on the dark earth we did so in celebration of Martha's life. The air was all golden birds and dark chough. At the Standing Stone, all softened with lichens, we played King of the Castle, Rosie and me.

I won.

We were on top of the world. The sun was warm, the salt air full of birdsong. We were alive and we were here to celebrate.

Floss and Rosie found a high place. In the sky the moon hung silent. I climbed to their high place to be closer to the beautiful moon.

 On the way back down a raven circled where we had been walking, tumbling and turning in the joy of having wings. On the hill we all found a quiet sense of peace, the bright moon, the dark raven, the golden birds and memories.

 

 

Life's End.

At times like this the cats move over to let me speak.
Martha has been ill for some time. Well, not really ill, but old. Today she was put to sleep, in my arms, in the garden full of sunshine and birdsong.
I buried her with her brother, Arthur.
Martha lived with us for fifteen years. The gentlest of cats. Hannah was just a year old when I picked Arthur and Martha up from Catherine Street in St Davids in a cardboard box and both she and Tom loved these little ginger fluff bundles. She was always the smallest, and in many ways the kindest of the cats that have lived with us. Not a killer. Almost every night of Hannah's growing Martha would purr her to sleep before heading out to look at the stars, and be back on the bed when Hannah woke in the mornings.
No more. Such a beautiful day. It was hard to tell when she had died the sun was so warm on her fur.
So, if I could have one wish for Martha it would be this: not that she will wait for me at a rainbow bridge in some future. I had fifteen years with her and that was a good measure of time. I hope and I wish that when she has rested for a while she can be reborn as a falcon, wild, fierce. That she can grow wings and sharp eyes and curved claw and scream across the skies, that all this is hers. 
Or maybe that is what I would wish for myself and Martha may have other ideas, for cats are independent creatures and that is why I love them so.
I have the memory of her young ginger beauty. That is enough.

Last days of summer and the first few pages.

Things have been quiet for a time in the House of Ginger. We have been staying close to the house, watching the rosehips ripen to red, watching the swallows gather and by night stalking in moonlight  beneath the bats, or sitting by the house where moths dance in the windowlight and bats come too.
There have been a few evenings of fires, just small ones. Woodsmoke and warmth.
And at last She has started work on I Am Cat. Just a few tentative drawings to begin, and She has too much to do in time for work to go to a book fair.

 

 

By day we catch the last of the warmth of summer, lying curled in the garden in patches where the sun still throws down her shawl for us to sleep on. In the evening, as the dark comes in, we gather on the sofa and wait for the strike of the match. And all the time we watch.

Autumn, exhibitions and a reading of bears.

Gingercat, where a cat should be, on a lap! By Amanda Popham.

For the past week or so She has been so busy, and always on the computer, on something called Facebook, Her website, another blog, that we have not been able to get out gingery paws onto the key board. And to add insult to injury She went away and left us to make an exhibition of Herself in England! She is a bad Cat's Mother.

And what have we been doing? We have been watching birds gather to fly to warm places, sitting beneath the rose bush that hangs with shining hips, following the leaves that begin to tumble from trees, for if you catch a falling leaf then you can have a wish. We have been stalking the stars in thegarden by night and seeing the moths dance in delight, hunted by bats. And we have been listening to Her reading a story about a boy and a bear.

 

 

Soon it will be time for the lighting of the first fires of winter. There is wood in the woodshed, great piles of dry logs where we sometimes sit to watch as mice run through the tunnels between logs. But for now there are still warm days with autumn sunshine and our fur which glows like flames.