Showing posts with label I heart Cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I heart Cats. Show all posts
Title | The Cat of Yule Cottage
Author | Lili Hayward
Publisher | Hodder
Pages | 208 Pages
Purchase | Amazon
A magical tale of Christmas and cats, perfect for everyone who loves A Street Cat Named Bob and Alfie the Doorstep Cat.
It's nearly Christmas, and Jessamine Pike needs a serious life overhaul.
Jess moves into Enysyule, a centuries-old cottage in Cornwall, and begins the process of renovating the rundown house by day and finishing her novel by night, planning to have both finished in time for the holidays. She's got good company: a beautiful, arrogant tomcat stalks around like he owns the place, and seems very skeptical of Jess' tenancy.
But there's magic in the air... Local legends tell of a spirit that inhabits the area, and an ancient standing stone that keeps watch over the valley. As Christmas comes closer and closer, Jess uncovers treasures from Enysyule's past, and becomes involved in a fight for its future.
For Jess has stumbled into a story that's been going on for five hundred years. A story about land, love, friendship, the Yuletide... and one remarkable cat.
Guest Post
Dear Reader,
Today I have something rather wonderful for you to kick off my December posts and festivities here at A Page of Fictional Love. I am rather fond of books, crochet and cats as many of you will know of my beautiful fur baby; Magick, which is why this post is so extra special for me today.
In celebration of the publication of; The Cat of Yule COttage (the title is simply so dreamy!), I am handing over my blog to author Lili Hayward for the day as she shares with you her rather fun post 'Cats vs. Dogs'. It brought smiles and giggles to my face as I read it, and I hope it does for you too. Enjoy!
Today I have something rather wonderful for you to kick off my December posts and festivities here at A Page of Fictional Love. I am rather fond of books, crochet and cats as many of you will know of my beautiful fur baby; Magick, which is why this post is so extra special for me today.
In celebration of the publication of; The Cat of Yule COttage (the title is simply so dreamy!), I am handing over my blog to author Lili Hayward for the day as she shares with you her rather fun post 'Cats vs. Dogs'. It brought smiles and giggles to my face as I read it, and I hope it does for you too. Enjoy!
Cats vs. Dogs
Lili Hayward
Dogs are nice and all that. They have funny faces and are
sometimes useful and good for long walks. But for me, there’s no contest. I am
a fully paid up lifetime member of the Cat Club. Here are six reasons why(and a
liberal smattering of YouTube links):
1. Cats are keen on scientific
education
They regularly offer free anatomy lessons to their owners; without
them, how would you know what a mouse kidney looked like? They're strict on
timetables as well, and will often commence your lessons first thing in the
morning, by leaving a new exhibit (bird foot, decapitated mouse head) on the
rug next to the bed.
2. They encourage philosophical
thinking
And I’m not only talking about Schrödinger... Cats present daily paradoxes and conundrums to
test their owners, such as: My Cat
Refuses the Fancy Food Yet Feasts on Half a Dead Moth: Discuss. Or:The Only Water I Like to Drink is From the
Toilet or Your Glass: true or true?
For extra feline philosophy see Derrida’s cat in his
philosophical work: The
Animal that Therefore I am.
3. They hold down important jobs
Yet still manage to do almost nothing
at the same time. Take Tama, the
calico cat who was made Super Station Master at Kishi Station in Kinokawa,
Japan. Or Tuxedo Stan, who ran for
mayor in Halifax, Canada or El Candigato
Morris in Xalapa, Mexico, whose team pledged he would “rid the city of its corrupt
political rats”, and argued that voting for him was less of a joke than the
election itself.
4. Sometimes they even work for a living
Dogs aren’t the only ones who work. All
over the world, cats occasionally deign to accept employment. Take the
famous Tibs the Great, the Post
Office’s Number One Cat, who kept the HQ free from mice for fourteen years. Or
the many famous Ship Cats, like Able
Seacat Simon and Mrs Chippy. And
as for sniffer dogs, pah! At a police checkpoint in Stavropol, two Russian
cats, Barsik and Rusik, could sniff out smuggled cargos of black-market
sturgeon and caviar with astonishing accuracy, ousting the force’s sniffer dogs.
They were so successful, that eventually, they sadly became victims of a Mafia
hit.
5. They are celebrated in art
Forget “How Much is that Doggy in the
Window”. Cats have been inspiring works of art for thousands of years. Take the 9th
Century Old Irish poem “Pangur Bán”, written by a monk to his cat.
"Pangur" translates as “fuller” (e.g. someone who pounded woolen
cloth for a living: as anyone who owns a cat and has been subject to a vigorous
kneading can testify, it's an apt name) and Bán, meaning “fair” or “white”. And
then there's my personal favourite, Jeoffry the Cat, who kept poet Christopher
Smart company when his family had him incarcerated in an asylum. Smart
dedicated a whole section of his 1762 poem Jubilate Agno to Jeoffry: “For
he is a mixture of gravity and waggery... For by stroking him I have discovered
electricity”. From illuminated manuscripts to the magnificent Japanese Edo-era ukiyo-e woodblock
prints,
artists and cats go together like claws and the bottom of the sofa.
6. They Keep Writers Happy
Every writer needs a cat. Cats have
carefully honed the art of focus training, and frequently test a writer’s
determination to keep writing by time-honoured exercises, such as Walking Across the Keyboard, Sleeping on the Laptop, or Must
Sit on the Lap Now. Sometimes, they'll encourage you to take a break and
stretch your back and neck muscles by mewing loudly and persistently for food.
Writers are often odd creatures, who –
speaking for myself –require bothhours of solitude and sudden bursts of human
interaction. Who can better understand that than a cat? Alan Ginsberg, Joyce
Carol Oates, Mark Twain, Patricia Highsmith, Tove Jansson, Ernest Hemingway,
Neil Gaiman, Doris Lessing, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allen Poe... Cat-lovers, all
of them. Over and out.
“You
belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.”
—Jorge Luis
Borges, “To a Cat”
Please consider making a donation to your local animal
rescue centre (such as Cats Protection) this Christmas!
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