A Tale of Two Kitties…

A rather camera-shy Petronius the Arbiter

The first cat is the steepest…

I was outside Darwen rather than Damascus: however, the conversion took place just as abruptly, with only a few seconds warning. One moment I was being asked…

– How would you feel about looking after Jay for a while?

[All of my friend’s cats – and horses – were named after birds: Blackbird – ‘Blackie’ for short – a rook-coloured bruiser wearing white gloves (probably concealing knuckle-dusters); and big bullying brother to Kestrel – a beautiful, mournful tabby, with the same gleaming toes; and currently Jay – who, not being a blood relative, was beaten up by both of them almost daily, and therefore frequently went missing for days, and always came home injured. Why Kestrel didn’t also fly away – without the “coming home” bit, of course… – I shall never know for certain. Timidity is one possibility; but likely also some warped form of sibling loyalty.]

Up Hill and Down Dale; or There and Back Again…

It was always ‘The Hill’ – or even ‘My Hill’ – never given its given name. Not that such mattered. When I was trialling my resurrected skill of perambulation, it was my habituation – requiring a destination that stretched and tautened my ill-used muscles frequently, as a baker will confront his callow dough. And not just those slack sinews of leg and arm; but a locus which tantalized my cognitive tendons, too – for, if the place bore no intrigue, it bore no reward.

It was only My Hill because my excursions were timed for those hours when the dog-walkers, kite-fliers, and recalcitrant children would likely be elsewhere: awarding me a selfish kingdom of solitude; but one where I could practice my eccentricities without fear of shame or chagrin; where I could talk to those whose names were fixed, in memoriam, to benches; or to the grazing, scrubbing cattle… – or simply myself. It was only The Hill because it was the only hill: a quarry-shocked crag; a two-hundred-and-eight-metre climb above the grey flatness of urbanity to the Cotswold Way – a deterrent, a border almost, most effective to the majority of those level-pegged inhabitants of uniformity.