The story of the cat and the mouse at two in the morning..

Clearly, Harley cat is feeling better....because I have just woken up to a nightmare scenario (at least for one of the parties, a mouse) where Harley cat was encouraging his new friend to do acrobatics for his Mummy on her bed.  I woke up thinking...ugh...is Harley feeling better then?  Only to have this confirmed by his having caught me a live present and bringing it to me to play with.   Sadly, by the time I had gained control of the situation, I had a dead mouse and a still very very excited cat.   Dealt with the mouse, spoke to the cat, reminded him I am a vegetarian, changed the bed, hoovered the carpet - lots of groaning from the other occupants of the house, explained the severity of the situation.  Nodded.  Quite normal.  Back to bed.

Fighting With...

I cannot belive such a long time has gone by since my last post, especially as I began the year practically blogging every day!!  Sometimes there's loads to report on, and other times not so much, though this quiet period in my blog has mostly been caused by health issues - my Rheumatoid Arthritis has raised its ugly head once more and I just haven't had the energy to blog recently, and hey, who wants to hear about this bone hurting more than that one?  I sure don't and I'm pretty sure you don't either.  I've just been doing quite a lot of burrowing into my pillows and bed, reading and not a lot else, though I did manage to sneak off to my favourite health spa, Ragdale Hall last week for some much needed TLC.   It was lovely as always and I felt a lot better mentally if not physically for having had a bit of pampering.

I had thought I'd get away with sneaking off without anyone noticing, only to be updated by Mark that I had an avalanche of orders stacking up...this made me feel really guilty for being away, but he managed it and I want to thank everyone who was willing to wait a few days whilst I was away.  Usually I put a big message at the front of the site, and to be honest I forgot.  Apologies.  In any case, the avalanche is dealt with now, and I'm clear of outstanding orders so my conscience is salved.

I've been doing loads of cooking in the past several weeks, I suddenly got the bug for it and its nice to do other creative stuff, and I do think of cooking as creative.   I made the most AMAZING chocolate cake for Father's Day and had Mum and Dad over for dinner - alas I forgot to take any photos, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I love to cook....eventually we plan to knock a wall out to the side of the kitchen and make a much larger one but that's all in the pipeline under 'Manyana' because I have a horror of home construction projects as its a strong childhood memory that my parents must have been the original property developers; we moved a lot, and every house we lived in, my Dad was always knocking down walls, building extensions and putting new roofs on....its not at all that it was awful, its just anytime I think of all that dust and mess I start gibbering.

Well, we've adopted ANOTHER new pussycat; we had a bit of a tragedy as you know when lovely Blue died a while back and we adopted Harley who is lovely and cute but he immediately bonded to me rather than to Mark; so Mark was on the look-out for another cat and we've adopted Bailey, previously 'Ghost' who needed rehoming as the little boy to whom he belonged was allergic to him in a major way - Bailey is a Tiffanie cat (no, we'd never heard of the breed either) and as you can see from the pics, he is beyond beautiful.  Apparently Mark is a cat snob, because all the other three are mogs - the three have all bonded to me of course, and Mark is working on Bailey to get him to bond to him.  Bailey isn't actually living with us as yet because it turned out he had some sort of cat virus which we didn't fancy giving to our other cats so at present he is at Mark's Mum's on quarantine until we get the all-clear which shouldn't be too long away now.

The one thing I do know about my cats and Merlin my horse is they all instinctively sense when I am not well and do their own thing to try and look after me.   Harley likes to lie right against me and purr very very hard into me; it does make me feel better, because that sort of unconditional love is very very special.

So, its four cats now, and that is absolutely the limit - its a nice number and certainly the three we have in the house now make it feel full, like a home, as there's always something going on, and they bring warmth and happiness to the house.

I have been doing some new work and although I can't make promises as to when it will go on the site, where it does there will be lots of new pieces to look at - I've also got lots of fresh vintage stuff as well, but of course the progress of all that is health dependent.


I hope you'll forgive the total silence, and hopefully I can make up for it soon.


Love, Stephanie x

How Does My Garden Grow...

This is my pretty boy Harry, enjoying his garden...he has this funny habit of sitting in a planter (the bulbs have long since given up trying to make it up towards sunlight...) - this is his favourite place in the garden right now...and some lovely plants currently gracing the garden....

Goodbye Pussycat

We had an awful day today, our sweet pussycat Blue died whilst we were taking him to the vets - he died from his asthma which we had managed to control for the past few years but this morning he just couldn't breathe any more and he died whilst Mark was holding him.  He was only six. We are just heartbroken; because we don't have children, our cats are our closest family and this has broken our hearts.  We wish we had done so many things so differently, but it doesn't change the fact that lovely Blue has died.  We buried him in the garden.
I guess there is not much else I can say about this, I can only hope we can eventually look back with happiness on his short life.   There will never be another Blue.  Goodnight Pussycat, Sweet Dreams in Pussycat Heaven x

More Cats...

I think from this Blog you'll have noticed how much I love cats, (and horses) so I just about fell around laughing when I saw this - if you've not seen it so far, even if you're not that into cats (and if you're not into cats, what is up with you?) then I still think you'll find this funny.  X