Remembering Kiffer

There are times when the cats move aside and let me blog. This is one such time. They are all lazy and draped over furniture, warm by the fire while outside rain hammers down.

Today I was sent a photograph of a book. It was only when I looked properly at the photo I saw that the book in the photo, 'Talk to the Tail', is dedicated to Jeanne  Francis, and Kiffer.

Beautiful Kiffer. He wasn't here with us for long. He loved Tom Cox and would happily have set off on adventures to Norfolk with Tom. I wish I had let him go.

The cats and I are very proud and pleased that he has a book dedicated to him, especialy as, if it is anywhere near as good as the last one, Under the Paw, it will be a very fine book indeed.

Sad, but lovely looking through photos of Kiff. He was a good cat.

Helping paws

Down at the mill, and even though the raffle is over signed books are still selling well, both at the mill itself and online, so we sent Her off to sign some more and also sent instructions to the mill cats, to help Her out.

 

Tired after all the hard work, Heddle rested a while and checked that the books fit in the box.

 

Cats sell books!

Down at the mill the book launch went well. The cats were very good at persauding people to buy books and kept an eye on the raffle to make sure all was done well.

 

The raffle was won by Linda McCarroll from Solva. And She says thank you to everyone who bought a book and wants us to remind people that they can still but books form the mill, online, signed. Next year we will have a raffle again because people seemed to like it.

This Morning, walking in sunshine.

Early morning and we walk out at the twisting turn of light. Earth iron, water stone, so cold.

In the half light we hunt through the leaves made bright by a soft dust of snow.

 

And then the sun come up and the world shines with light.

 

As we head for home it would seem that Elmo carries some of the sunshine with him.

 

Fireside chat

Max: Warm. Good. She should be sitting here.

Maurice: She's busy. I think She has been surprised by the amount of books She has shifted from the Woollen Mill. And She's colouring in, a sheep or something. Not enough cat pictures.

Max: There are cats at the Mill, I am told. Working cats. In the day they lounge around in boxes, but at night they prowl and stalk around the weaving looms snicking and snacking on foolish mice.
Warp, Weft and Bobbin. They are working cats.  But all day they sleep, although sometimes Bobbin sits on high beams and supervises the building work.
There is a new room being renovated to make more shop and tea room space and She is hoping there will be wall space for paintings.

Maurice: So, it's in a few days time, and there's still time for cats to get their owners to buy a book, though why they would want to win a drawing of a bear I can't imagine, and they can find links to the Mill below or here . And do you think after that She will have time to sit with us?

Max: Probably not, because She is a foolish creature too busy for Her own good.

Maurice: Can you see tigers playing in the flickering flames. 

Eavesdropping. Elmo tells Max a secret or two.

Ssshh..... come close. I will tell you some secrets in whispered cat words. 

She has been painting cheetahs and cherries again when She should have been working on something else.

 

And, sshhhh... She is having a book launch for The Ice Bear, in Solva Woollen Mill in Middlemill, Pembrokeshire on 27th November, from 5 pm. There are cats in the mill. During the evening every book that is sold will come with a raffle ticket and at the end of the evening a winning ticket will be pulled from a hat and the winner will take home the drawing below. Sadly it is only a drawing of a bear, not of a cat, but it is quite a nice drawing despite that, in pencil, on board. And to make things fair to our friends who live a long long way away any book bought from the mill's online store will also come with a raffle ticket and the buyers details will also be put into the draw on the evening of 27th. One book, one ticket. All the books at the mill are signed and the offer applies to all the titles, not just The Ice Bear.

And, this is not a secret so we can shout it loud and proud, Tell Me a Dragon has been nominated for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, and we are proud because we helped her to paint the dragons with their cat's eyes and cat's claws and elegant feline grace.

Some help with the cooking.

Maurice: No, look. It does say ' mouse cake'.

Not forgotten.

She went away and returned with a mirror, so now we can see our reflected glory. Beautiful ginger, we glow like firecats. 
This morning the ground was crisp white with a shawl that the moon had thrown down and spread across the fields. As the sun rose into the morning sky she stole away its bone white beauty and warmed the land but when evening came the cold bit again at the air.
Inside the house is warm. We melt in ginger pools across soft cushions.
The house seems a little lost still without Martha. The people sometimes stop when walking across a room and look around as if they have lost something, until they find it is only the memory of her fragile beauty that has slipped their minds for a moment.

 

Outside is windsong, cold and dark. Inside embers glow.

Looking back.

Eighteen years ago She had a big white cat, the legendary Comfrey, who walked and walked the hills with Her.

When he died, in mysterious circumstances, Arthur and Martha came to live here.

 

They were all so young, and some of us weren't even born!

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.