A heartbreaking farewell to Archie.

My beautiful, sweet, black, shiny affectionate boy is gone - he ran straight under a car this morning and we lost him instantly, so very, very young. I'm still in denial and such shock, it seems a never-ending time of losses, you pick yourself up after each one but it gets harder each time and you do wonder sometimes how many more you can cope with. He was such an immense comfort at the end of each day, after struggling through endless clearing and dust and mess and emotionally drained after a day at my mum's house he was always such good company and I so needed him to stay with me. There is something so tragic about a life cut so short, he had such a lovely nature and was supposed to share life with us for many years.

He was so loved and was so very happy, jumping about chasing after butterflies and bees yesterday in the garden - on our side of the road are about 50 interesting gardens to explore and an enormous field with great edges to find small creatures in, no reason at all ever to go across the road. There are many, many cats in our area, all happily trotting across, it's got speed bumps and a low speed limit and I really thought it was a very low risk road indeed, Newton and our other cat scooted across many times a day for years without so much as losing a whisker, we hardly ever hear of any cats being lost. I guess perhaps some cats have road-sense and others just don't. I know many of you, especially overseas, keep your cats in but it just wasn't an option here, much as I wanted to.

So I'm not sure how life will go on, it's hard to imagine life without a cat but I'm not sure I can go through losing any more, we'll have to take a day at a time, perhaps the only thing to do will be to find another furry companion, we'll see. Having lost one at 8 and now this, I keep looking at other people around who have cats that are older, who live to twelve or fifteen or beyond, (and at those who trot about from one side of our road to the other) and thinking 'When is it my turn?' I seem to have lost my own life and feel like I'm living in someone else's bad dream a bit, but we're making slow progress with my mum's house and one day I guess we'll move forward again. I haven't forgotten about any of my friends here in blog-land, and I'll try and catch up with what you're doing as much as I can.
Any of you with cats please give them an extra stroke from me, I know many of you will empathise.

A time to mourn.

I have been away a long time, because after many weeks of illness, my mum declined very rapidly over Christmas, and then passed away at the beginning of January. Although we knew she was ill doctors had given no indication that her condition could be fatal until just a few days before we lost her, and was a shock in the end to see such a rapid deterioration. She had not been in her right mind since the illness began and wasn't herself at all, but in the last days she slipped into unconsciousness and they just couldn't do anything for her as the infection had taken hold and she wasn't able to fight it. I am finding it unbearably sad to lose her, except of course that we do have to bear it and carry on as best we can, a day at a time.

The reason I have a photo of daffodils is that she loved them, I always bought them for her birthday on January 22nd, and so chose them for her funeral flowers - a lovely cheerful yellow on an otherwise quite wintery day. Such a shame she couldn't be at her own funeral - she'd have loved chatting to friends and family afterwards.

She had a really fascinating life, very far from ordinary, daughter of a very well respected GP who had the title of Honorary Surgeon to the King (and Queen - we have a coronation stool somewhere!), she became an actress, spent some years with travelling theatre companies in the 1950s and then became the first woman to read the news (she's not famous because it was only for the West Country region rather than the whole country). More minor acting roles followed and one film until she married in 1962 and had me, then she cared for me, later her mum and sadly later still my dad as they both developed Alzheimers.

She had an immense zeal for life and all the beauty around us. She sometimes drove us to distraction with endless conversations - about theatre, about history, about long-lost distant relatives, about people she'd just met who she'd found out all about, just because they were people and she was interested in everything about everybody, really genuinely interested.

She used to go for walks in the local woods and then draw us maps of where the very best bluebells were, just so she could share her enjoyment of them, and has left money in her Will specifically for snowdrops to be planted in public places so that others can enjoy them year after year, that just about sums her up perfectly I think.

We lost my dad a long time ago but she kept his ashes till she could join him - so earlier this week we buried them both together, just as they would have wished. Very hard, and so final somehow to see the casket in the ground with both their names on, but they are just where she wanted to be in the churchyard right next to the house they loved and lived in for many years.

It's not a great time of year is it for anyone, still cold and grey, and I'm looking forward to spring coming as I'm sure we all are. In the meantime I seem to have masses to do, and am unfortunately the reluctant nearly-owner of a Grade II listed 16th Century cottage in need of very extensive clearing out and rather extensive renovation too - perhaps more of that in another post! So felting and blogging sadly will largely have to stop or be very infrequent for the time being, hopefully when things settle a bit I'll be able to carry on, and the house is certainly fascinating even if terrifyingly full of stuff. In the meantime here is another photo of the flowers, last week we found in the house this silver rose bowl which I never knew existed - a present from my mum's father to her mother on their wedding day in the 1920s, and a lovely discovery which I'll polish and use as much as I can, how nice to have such a connection to the past.

Remembering Newton

Now it's getting a bit warmer I've been going out into the garden more and hanging the washing on the line - and that takes me right next to the place where we buried Newton.

I had such a terrible dilemma about what to do with him - cremation is now a very plausible option for a beloved pet, and we have an excellent crematorium nearby which came highly recommended by a friend. Of course the decision is an immensely personal one, and I think if there had just been me to consider I would have taken this option, because I didn't want to leave Newton behind if and when we ever move house and I felt I needed more time with him close by. But son no. 2 was particularly distressed at the thought of cremation, and we do have two of our other cats buried here. So as we were running out of time we took the decision to bury Newton too.
This we had to do in the dark and in the snow late one evening the week he died, as it needed to be a private family event and we had my in-laws coming to stay the next day. In fact the stillness of the evening and the blanket of snow made it perhaps a more special time. He is buried in his favourite outdoor place - he used to curl up and sleep there in the summer, flattening the long grass into a perfect circle in our wild-flower patch.

I had his name inscribed on a large pebble,

and this I found really helpful as it can stay on his grave for as long as we are here, but if we do move I can take the pebble with me as a memorial for him in our new home. I'm hoping to get similar ones inscribed for our previous cats too so we can do the same with theirs. It came from a place called Letterfest which I'd found a while ago, they found me a larger pebble specially.

This week I moved some of my snowdrops and crocuses to just around the pebble - the lovely clear bright white and purple catches the light, I can see them from the kitchen even though it's a long garden, and they'll come up every year. I'll try to find some other bulbs to plant too, perhaps something that flowers in the summer and autumn too. They'd need to be taller to be seen in the longer grass and be able to cope with being a bit dry - if any of you have any ideas of what might be suitable I'd be grateful to hear them!

A cold, sad day.

We lost Newton in the night.

He stopped purring yesterday evening so I knew it was time, and I'm very grateful that he died at home and didn't have to be taken to the vets.

We will miss him so much, but he brought us so much happiness while we had him and we have lots to be thankful for.