A night, like any other

The stars seem very far apart this night. The bright moon castes deep shadows and is circled by a halo of ice and light. The grass rustles like paper, frosted and dry as it is. There is a warm smell of wood smoke hanging in the stillness of the air. Tonight the foxes will skitter and skit across the frozen ponds to the cold and sleeping ducks and snatch them from their dreams. Tonight the owl's wings will haunt the hedges, but mice will huddle safe in clusters, close together for safety and warmth. In holes in the wall, in hedges and trees wrens will form feather balls, packed in tight. They will sleep soundly in the safety of numbers, quiet as quiet, so that the stalking weasel will not hear.
And we will sleep draped over arm chairs and fire and bed, warm in the house where the dragon fire slumbers, while She dreams and reads and the dogs snore and remember in their moonlit slumber a dim and distant past when they were wolves.

Various positions

Today I am making a study of the science of sleep.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell which end is which.

And Rosie has been taking some sleeping lessons, tired out from searching for some sunshine.

One cat's week

This week I have been dreaming cat dreams to make into a necklace for Her for Her birthday and trying to find some sunshine. It seems as if the world is wrapped in damp cotton wool. It is cold and it whispers of autumn when it should be summer.

Curiosity 2

At first we thought it was a chain of fire dragon eggs, but on closer inspection

we could see that it was

the dreams of ginger cats, caught in sunlight, made into beads.

Some dark dreams, some warm and happy dreams, all caught together in a beautiful necklace, all waiting to be dreamt again.

Kiffer the sleeper

If there is one thing that Kiffer knows how to do it is sleep. But what do Kiffers dream of?

Resting in colour

For along time now we have been resting, saving our energy for a walk in the sunshine. The wind blew hard for a while and then it was still, but it had been hungry and first it ate the phone line and not satisfied with that it ate the electricity.

So we waited, curled in warm places that made us look beautiful as we like to be aesthetically pleasing when we are dreaming.

Elmo stretched on the beanbag with his toes curled and a hook in his tail. His whiskers twitched as he dreamed of trees.

Pixie curled on the red cushion that shows her fur at its finest. Later Her and Robin watched a film with singing and we hid behind him and played at being big ginger rabbit ears to make him look silly. I don't think he saw us.
We have a phone line again now so we can blog, and electricity, for now anyway.

My dog

Sometimes I curl up next to Floss on the purple blanket. Both curled ammonite tight, we share our dreams of the high hills, blue sky and buzzards.

Elmo mousing

I am hiding in the land of Green ginger, beneath the thorn trees where mice and shrew and stoat, weasel and rat live. Where birds flit and lizard tails flick, enough musing, time for mousing.

Elmo musing.

Sometimes, when the night falls and the whisker-thin cat claw moon rides the sky I sit in the branches of the ash tree, look up and think.
Dark, and the sky looks like a drum-skin of silk pulled tight across the world. Cats have danced across it and their claws made holes through which you can see the light beyond. Patterns of light across the silk of night.
Today She said to Hannah that She wished She was made of money sometimes and Hannah said "be careful what you wish for, for if you were made of money people would snap off your fingers to pay for things and then you would not be able to paint." Hannah is a wise one.
I look up at all the stars in heaven and the bridge of light that runs across the sky and sometimes a star falls leaving behind a trail of light like a cat's tail. I make a wish. And I am careful what I wish for.
I wonder what lives in the light beyond?

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.

Growing up

In a house on a hill near Manchester, England, a kitten sleeps and dreams, of learning to levitate.

Elmo dreaming

All night I hunted and it was dark so only a cat with golden eyes could see.
Now I dream, and I am the ship's cat as Fitzcarraldo takes his steamship through the jungles to bring opera to Peru. Up rivers filled with sharp toothed caimen and through the rainforrest where howler monkeys chase, we struggle with the steamboat palace, mad man with his dreams and me in my dreams.