letting go

 

Rocket is so glad he can let go of January. He had decided to go with the flow and have a dry January.

What exactly have you given up? I asked him. Well cocktails of course. I've had to give up my Singa - paw - sling and just  stick to water. (Rocket thinks he belongs to a gentleman's club so this must have been particularly hard for him. No Alabama slammers either for a whole month.)

Nancy said Rocket had persuaded her to do dry January too and had given up drinking Whisker Sours. I told them both that indeed letting go of things can be very hard. When I broke my hip and leg a while ago - knocked over by one of the big Irish wolfhounds I knew I had to let her go as I was unable to look after her properly. I took succour from a poem by Mary Oliver who says that to live in the world you must be able to do three things; to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it; and when the time comes to let it go. to let it go.

When I sadly knew I'd have to let her go I printed this poem out and pinned it to the wall above her bed. This is a dog who had eaten most of the cushions, my phone, my shoes, my prescription sun glasses, my address book and quite a few meals not meant for her. She ate the poem.

Ghost Pocket appears through the wall.

When I let go of what I am I become what I might be. when I let go of what I have, I receive what I need. He said rolling onto his back and kicking his heels.

Lao Tzu said that I told him he's up there with you too is he?

Yes we go back a long way. He was a legendary Chinese philosopher and a central figure in Chinese culture. Ghost Pocket glares at me before twitching his whiskers. He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.

Ah .... I begin but the Ghost Pocket has wandered off before saying to me over his shoulder. 

You're not permanent.

Jackdaw doesn't seem to have anything to give up but has decided to take things up instead - like helping out in the polytunnel. He really hasn't been much help as for every seed I put in he takes one out when I'm looking the other way. 

He wants to take up with the four jackdaws living on our chimney where every year they bring up more jackdaws but they haven't accepted him yet. Of course like Mrs Magpie who turned out to be Mr Magpie Jack may well be Jacqueline .....

Just calling him Jackdaw seems the safest bet and anyway I don't want to impose a name on him/her he doesn't like. I've only named two birds - the first rook I ever rescued I called Caw-nelia(see what I did there) and the second one Quigley because I love that name.

And Geoffrey has let go of possibly being a duck or a hen and struts around now

as a cock - crowing contentedly - sometimes before anyone can deny anyone three times (check out Jesus's speech to Paul - see the Bible Matthew 26.34)

let it go

e.e.cummings

let it go - the

smashed word broken

open vow or

the oath cracked length

wise- let it go

was sworn to

        go

let them go - the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers - you must let them go they

were born

    to go 

let all go - the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things - let all go 

       dear

so comes love

prayer for a hare

Happy New Year dear Readers from the menagerie here.

Jackdaw has been helping out in the poly tunnel. He is very affectionate and loves to have his head stroked. He has made himself a clever entry and departure route in the shade tunnel where he sometimes lives with the crow with white feathers. I really do think that if man had wings and bore black feathers few of them would be clever enough to be crows.(or any of the corvids), He may indeed be wondering about me, though I think apart from being his saviour he may see me as a favourite aunt.

 So Geoffrey the bantam chick bought to keep the lone duckling company has lived up to his name and is not a hen after all but a cockerel. He has been practicing little doodle doos in the morning and has taken to pecking at my shoes when I put the ducks away at night. No eggs from him then.

We did all have a lovely Christmas though - especially Rocket who had his new friend Lenny the rescue greyhound round to stay. They certainly know their own tribe.

There is no love of life without despair of life purred The Ghost Pocket from behind the christmas stockings.

You know Albert Camus do you? I said. Albert was a moralist and leaned towards anarchic syndicalism. Pocket answered as he examined the contents of the stockings. 

His views contributed to the rise of philosophy known as absurdism.We share similar views. 

You've certainly met a lot of interesting people I suggest to him.

 He shut his eyes and purred. Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched. 

Cevantes? I queried. 

Indeed - he was widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. And may I suggest if you feel you have to get another cat - though of course you'd not be able to replace me - you call him Quixote. 

I was about to ask him if he understood Spanish now but he'd already disappeared with the tangerine at the bottom of the stocking.

Rocket said he was exhausted with entertaining Lenny and that he was a bit put out by the fact Lenny could run faster than him. Also that Lenny had his own Instagram site and why didn't he have one? I told him that I had once created CogsDogsBlog but that he hadn't offered up any interesting stories 

He asked if anyone knew Pocket had blinded him in one eye when he was thirteen weeks old (Rocket that is not Pocket) and I suggested he wrote about that and how amazing it was that if he only had the sight in one eye that he could see a deer on the horizon and go for it. 

 I said he could entitle it Of Course and write about how lurchers like him were used in hare coursing which has been happening up here on the farm sometimes at night by people in four wheel drives and lurchers. It's the most despicable crime - killing hares just to gamble on how many they could kill in a night. I suggested he should start wearing an eye patch incase anyone stole him to do that very heinous crime.

We found one of the long nosed dogs, thin, covered in fleas and wearing a shoelace round her neck. A neighbour took her to the vets and later the dog protection league who put her photo on their site. A man from Bournemouth (a good forty miles from here) claimed her as his, said she'd escaped from his garden and he'd only had her for four days. Not chipped of course. Someone found a photo of her with him four years previously and he was surrounded by dead hares, unintentionally laid out in the shape of a flower.

I was rather pleased to find that the most annoying phrase and saying that British Transport keep using - See it, Say it, Sorted -sounds so much more pleasing in Latin. 

Vide, Dic, Rectum.

So the sweet peas have become seedlings and are full of promise for the summer.

Prayer for a Hare

Run when you see them

the long nosed dogs

flee through the corn

and race down the tracks

rush when you hear

the barking at night

and dash when you see

the dazzling light.

Bolt from these dogs

and don't wait to fight

in this ripping pursuit

they take part in at night.

They'll chase to exhaustion

the long nosed dogs

excited by extinction

and the smell of your fear

whilst the balaclava men

will shout and cheer

and video you lying with your

ripped up fur.

Linda Coggin Jan 2006

 I also found this poem written in the 17th century by John Dryden.

Some Fearful Hare
 So I have seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tir’d before the dog she lay;
Who, stretch behind her, pants upon her plain,
Past pow’r to kill, as she to get away:
With his loll’d tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows he flix up as she lies;
She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away,
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes
 John Dryden

small talk

 

So we have published my poetry book - Small Talk - a collection of over hundred poems almost all written over a lifetime but not quite. 

The poems are sometimes like very short stories written to understand the vagaries of the world or inspired by headlines in the newspapers. On the whole I write about nature, dogs, spiders, dust and death.

Available on amazon.

My thanks go to my daughter Chloe who designed the cover and the drawings inside apart from encouraging me to do it and sorting it all out.

Dear Jackdaw is still with us in spite of the encounter with the buzzard in the last post. He still likes sitting on my shoulder and landing on my head which if I'm not wearing a hat is like one of those wired head massage gadgets as his claws slip on my hair. It's rather nice but not so nice if he lands on my nose.

So the flock of ducks still potter around and I hope when Spring comes the dynamics don't change too much. There are four males to three females which is not ideal. Male ducks can be most insistent when the mating season is around. However in the meantime one of the females has been laying the odd egg.

Here they are in one of my hand thrown bowls. This bowl is an improvement on the ones that turn out to be ashtrays. Although I still wish I had a horse in my stable a potter's wheel is possibly the next best thing.

So Ghost Pocket likes to snuggle up with Rocket once in a while and you can see how uncomfortable this makes Rocket. Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way Ghost Pocket says purring in his ear. You hanging out with Kafka? I ask Yes and he was widely regarded as a major figure in twentieth century literature, his work fusing elements of realism and fantastique.

You must be very busy and learned up there mingling with all these famous people I tell him. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. He replies. Ah Confucius I say is he your new pal but the Ghost Pocket has disappeared back through the wall.

I always forget how quickly the paperwhites bloom - as usual too late for Christmas but they do bring early festive cheer. Waiting in the wings are hyacinths which are not at all quick to bloom and maybe in flower for the following Christmas. But sweet pea seeds are hiding in the propagator about to push their heads up to flower sometime next year. Forward thinking!

So as this is a December post dear Readers I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and I hope unlike Ghost Pocket you are not visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. This year Mrs/MrMagpie will not be delivering the holly as hopefully he is too busy bringing up the kids.

                                            

                                             meanwhile ......

Suppose God came  back from wherever it is he's been and asked us smilingly if we'd figured it out yet. Suppose, he wanted to know, if it had finally occurred to us to ask the whale. And then he sort of looked around and he said "By the way - where are the whales?" this is a piece by Cormac Mc Carthy and it seemed appropriate to choose my poem Ambition from the poetry book to follow.

Ambition

As I float in the Caribbean Trash Vortex

caught in the reams of carnage,

thirty carrier bags, two stretches of hose pipe

five flower pots, a flip flop-

 in all fifty nine different 

pieces of plastic - lodged in my gut

I dream of breaching out to sea

whacking my vast tail on the surface tension

of the blue ocean

leaping out of the waves and crashing back

scattering spray on the way

which catches and glistens

in the early morning rays of sunlight

under the wide sky.

Being a host to a myriad of smaller 

organisms who as devoted followers

nibble and clean and scurry and hurry by my side.

That would be my ambition

as my airways clog with polystyrene beads

like mermaid's tears

and I can no longer move with

my necklace of plastic detritus

tethering me to the sea bed.

A small ambition for one

so very large.

Linda Coggin

from Small Talk.

a near miss

 

I don't belief in an almighty figure dictating what happens to us but is fate the same thing? The number of potentially awful things that don't happen because of fortuitous timing or other things happening to stop you being somewhere which  could have been disastrous.

This happened the other day with the lovely jackdaw. By chance I decided to go round to the poly tunnel at an unusual time for going there when I heard a dreadful screaming by the gate. There on the ground was an enormous buzzard on top of jackdaw in the throes of killing him. A second or two later it would have succeeded. They both flew away when I shouted, jackdaw to return to my shoulder moments later all puffed up and shaking but with no visible injuries. I took him into the safety of the shade tunnel where he had grown up and whose door I have to keep shut as there is a crow in there with some white feathers who as yet is unable to fly.

I thought he might die of shock, he was very subdued and hunched up and I was over the moon to find him chirpy in the morning still alive. He likes going for a walk with me, sitting on my shoulder and for the first time he stood staring up at the sky. He had learnt that death can come through the clouds. He must like me even more now I saved his life and immediately comes if he sees me. He's found a way to get back into the shade tunnel too, I've no idea how but that is where he feels safe so I'm glad. There must be a kind of smeuse somewhere - a gap made by the regular passage of a small animal. The rest of the time I guess he's flying around the trees and keeping a low profile. The sad thing is that gangs of jackdaws tend to mob raptors but he is not part of a gang and so singled out for behaving in a friendly manner.

Here he is trying to be part of the duck gang and paling up with Geoffrey the hen.

I found a photo of Rocket as a puppy before he became a neurotic dog that barks at every other dog and human walking out on the track.

And Pocket as a kitten ....

and the ducks just after they'd hatched.....

Rocket is here out in the field where he tells me that Pocket has never been and is therefore unlikely to surprise him in his new Ghost Form. (Though he is wondering what will happen at  Halloween?)

Below to continue the young animal pictures is a mother hedgehog and her five hoglets. I've watched them over the months grow from teeny weeny munchkins into credible hedgepigs.

There are no pictures of Nancy as a kitten as we rescued her when she was about two years old. We aren't sure how old she is - older than Pocket and perhaps because Nancy is so old now she is often completely unaware that Ghost Pocket sometimes stands close by. Do less but better I hear him murmur.

Marcus Aurelius said that I confer. Yes Marcus and I often share similar thoughts. He became famous for his collection of thoughts, Stoic beliefs and notes on his life. Pocket smirks and looks over his shoulder as he saunters off. Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go. Oh you've palled up with Oscar Wilde too have you? I want to know. Pocket clearly cannot be bothered to share his friendship with Oscar and instead looks sternly at me. I'll give you a gardyloo he says we have to understand that nobody's going to save us from ourselves. Yes I reply -Carl Sagan's words. He grew up in poverty in South Korea - back when tiger's smoked. Pocket tells me. What? I query. Yes we don't say once upon a time any more if you look at Korean tales. Perhaps you should start your stories off like that. I wanted to thank him for his good advice but then wondered if instead it was a gardyloo ........

So back when tiger's smoked a little black kitten was born ........

RIP the wonderful poet Brian Patten who I met in the Assembly room bar during the Edinburgh fringe festival many many moons ago - infact probably when Tigers smoked. He stood alone and said to me that the trouble with being famous is that people daren't come and talk to you. I thought it a poignant but true by- product of the culture of fame.

Garden Lore

by Brian Patten.

Who will look after the garden while I’m gone?

‘I will,’ said January.
‘I will anchor it to the earth with snowdrops.
I will give it my stone, the garnet.’

‘It is mine,’ said February.
‘I will feed it the memory of all that grows.
I will welcome it with my stone the amethyst and with primrose.’

‘I will coax it with bloodstone and daffodil,’ said March,
Like a boxer battered by winter
I will lift myself from the frosty canvas of the earth to welcome it.’
‘With diamond and daisy I will seduce it.

“I will soak it in shower after shower,’ said April.
‘In the yawny earth its seeds will riot.’
‘I will make it dizzy with emeralds
And the fumes of the hawthorn,’ said May.
‘It will know of nothing but play.’

‘And I will adorn it with necklaces of honeysuckle and ruby,’ said June.
‘Their clasps will be made out of the honeybees wings.’
It will dance to my languid tune.’

‘I will contain it,’ said July.
‘I will handcuff it with briar and chrysolite,
Drug it with the scent of roses.’

August spoke from the garden’s still centre.
‘I will weep layer upon layer of sardonyx.
I will teach it the brevity of poppies.’

‘When its bones begin to creak
I will cure it with aster and opal,’
Promised September

I will guide it towards sleep with the cold light of sapphires.
For its lullaby I will provide the swan-song of dahilias,’
Said October.

‘Under the dead weight of chrysanthemums I will bury it,’
Said November.

‘I will give it a headstone of topaz, a rosary of berries.’
‘And I will guard its sleep,’ said December.
‘On a pillow of moonstone
It will dream of holly and the coming snowdrop.’

black magic

I have always had a penchant for black cats. Hattie, Betty, Monkey son of Minky ....I have lost track of all their names but here is Nancy

Below is the jackdaw who I haven't named - not wanting to insult a wild bird by giving it a name it didn't like or wasn't even appropriate. After all I called the Peking bantam Geoffrey after my dad and now I see she is a hen and didn't come to her name anyway. The magpie from two years ago I just called Mrs Magpie to find out later when she met a mate she was actually Mr Magpie.
 

So jackdaw is known affectionately as Jackdaw. And oddly does come if I call his name. If I hear him summoning me from the trees I call out and he comes flying down to rest on my head or shoulder. Once he painfully tried to land on my nose.

So I suppose it's no surprise that walking around with a jackdaw on my shoulder followed by a black cat has given rise to the belief I may in fact be a witch. I think it  would be fun to be a witch and I might well be a good one - I seem to remember I was top at spelling in school. All I can say is double, double toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble. And on the wind Ghost Pocket's voice says my friend Shakespeare said that in Macbeth. Still having a raven too can't have helped.

But here he/she is now surveying the world from the top of the pink tower as the other day I opened the door to let her/him out into the world where he/she belongs. I hope they make it - there is a raven community near by and if they are a she she'll have more of a chance of being accepted. At least she stopped imprinting on me which I can't say Jackdaw has.

And here are Geoffrey and Barbara who go everywhere together as if joined at the wing. I'm not sure yet if Geoffrey thinks she's a duck or Barbara thinks he's a hen. The other ducks (who seem to be all male apart from one) sort of ignore them and although they all share the same duck house it's as if Barbara and Geoffrey are on the sofa bed whilst the others sprawl out on a kingsize.  And Oh dear I have just returned from a poultry auction that I only went to for a laugh and came back with these two sisters. At least it swells out the female contingency. It'll be interesting when they start laying eggs how many there are. I'm still hoping the ones with the curly tails(indicating male) have just discovered hairdressing tongs. Also Rocket who came to the auction with me was very well behaved and didn't bid for anything behind my back though he did tell me he was interested in a couple of  lemon cuckoo frizzle pekins that he thought would be fun to chase.

This is Rocket's Sunday morning face when just once in a while I return to bed with a cup of coffee and the Saturday papers. He likes the lifestyle section and looks out for nice jackets or a less embarrassing collar.

Obviously he never goes upstairs but here he is looking suitably anxious to tell me that Ghost Pocket is now on the bed and what should he do?

Ghost Pocket who can re-appear anywhere and at any time then poked his head out from behind the curtain. Life is nothing more than a tale told by an idiot he said rolling onto his back. You've been talking to Shakespeare again I query - that comes from Macbeth. He looks smug - yes we go back a long way. And here is my advice - It is not death that a man should fear but he should fear never beginning to live. That's Marcus Aurelius's advice I tell him, you've been hanging out with him as well? Yes and he made a collection of philosophical thoughts and reflections as he sought clarity, resilience and patience while ruling Rome's mighty Empire.

For once I was struck dumb. Are you for real Pocket? I cackle. He stretches out on the carpet, examines his paws and before disappearing though the wall informs me

that the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. So you're just a memory I ask and you are obviously chums with Cicero now aren't you? You told me this before though I'm sure you know I could hardly forget you. And as far as I could remember with a flick of his tail he was gone.

Nancy who had been watching all this and really didn't want to remember Pocket at all asked if next time he appeared would I ask him if he knew any good spells.

Since Pocket left this world - (and as Chief Seattle - who Pocket is probably on best buddy terms with- would say There is no death just a changing of worlds)  there is a mouse living in the house. Nancy is too infirmed to chase it and clearly it's beneath the Ghost Pocket to even bother even though it was more than likely him that brought it in in the first place. I mean I like mice - when I was a child I had a quantity of fancy mice that I kept in my Animal Hotel down in the old chicken house along with a couple of hamsters, some snails and a goldfish. Our mother who seemed to be terrified of mice was not told when my older sister first acquired a trio of mice and kept them in her bedroom. One day when she was in a particular impudent mood she popped them into her beehive(this was the hairstyle of the 1960's before Marge Simpson and Amy Winehouse)) and walked into our mother's bedroom  where she was feeling a little under the weather. Her face changed from one of a smiling greeting to one of horror as my sister's hair started to move around on her head and the three mice popped up over the top of the 'beehive'.

Anyway I don't really want this mouse in the house and Rocket tends to avoid it probably thinking it's just another animal I've encouraged to come in.

I found a poem I'd written about a witch so thought it appropriate to put it here.

Hex

They referred to her as a witch

and she did have a black cat

herbs hanging from the ceiling

a broom for sweeping leaves

propped up by the fire.

I wondered if there was no  cat

they'd still call her that?

Witch, witch cast a spell

the mushroom cheeked boys would chant

as they knocked on her door and ran away

Turn Johnboy into a toad.

She greeted us with a smile

until she saw what

we held in our arms

and laid gently by the hearth.

Linda Coggin

ghost pocket

 As Autumn approaches I have the raven, a crow and two jackdaws in my shade tunnel waiting to be released. Below is a pic of raven watching crow fly. Now I can hardly tell them apart.

Ravens are very slow at growing and I've been told by several raven experts I will have to care for it till it's at least a year and a half. Raven releases are rarely successful apparently as other ravens are predatory.

The good news is that since it's palled up with the crow it no longer comes near me. Whereas before it would willingly jump on my head and loved to be stroked it now keeps well away which is a good thing. A raven who is going to be released must not have imprinted on a human. The crow is doing a good job and I know now that when the time comes they must be released together.

This little chap however has decided it enjoys my company. I don't know why after all the jackdaws I've raised and released none of them think that home is sitting on my arm or shoulder or head but this one does. I have twice let it go and twice after a day or two I've heard it calling from the trees and when it sees me (and admittedly after I've said hello to it) its flown down and landed on my arm, then my shoulder and snuggled up by my neck clearly wanting to go 'home', where it proclaimed it was both thirsty and hungry and what had taken me so long.

So the black and the white runner ducks we hatched from the poor deceased lady ducks killed by the fox have grown into beauties - the black one is female. The two brown ones in the picture on the left which I bought from someone were also female but there they are in the picture on the right no longer brown runner ducks (mallards we suspect)and not female either! As the last sole duckling we hatched from the twelve black Indian runner eggs was white - also turns out to be male too no doubt we'll not be getting many eggs. You may well be considering that recently I've had little luck with runner ducks I only hope the female isn't too harrassed by the boys.

The tiny Peking bantam chick is growing though - she may be female - but yet too small for them both to meet the other flock. I hope they get on. When I introduced the other jackdaw into the shade tunnel the raven actually growled at it and I feared for its safety but they all seemed to have worked out how to co-exist for the time being. When it heard the growling my little jackdaw jumped on my lap and hid in my cardigan though previously had been accepted as part of the corvid clan. All is calm now though.

Nancy tells me that the Ghost Pocket has been haunting her. I don't actually believe that Ghost Pocket has been eating all her food which she assures me he has but Nancy is old now and if making up stories makes her feel better than so be it. As she has miawtzheimers or Feline Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome her yowling has got more insistent and loud - I'm not sure she's still telling us the end of the world is nigh. More than likely she has tourettes.

He doesn't even come in through the cat flap she moans I think he's coming in through the walls. 

Her complaint reminded me of a cat I once had called Arkwright. He was handed to me as a tiny kitten by a woman who knocked on the door in London and asked if he was mine. He was a black and white bruiser of a kitten with no mum. At the time I visited my sister who had a smart and elegant Siamese cat who had just given birth to six ladylike looking  kittens destined for finishing school. Arkwright muscled his way in and started feeding from the mother who miraculously accepted him as one of her own even when he grew twice the size of her precious brood and looked nothing like them.When he was older we put a cat flap in the door but he invited all the neighbouring cats into the house as well so I invested in a magnetic collar that would only let him in through the flap. Trouble was being magnetic he had a tendency to getting stuck to the fridge door and once trotted past with my dress making pins attached to his collar. I wrote a poem about it which if you persevere is at the end of this post.

The Ghost Pocket appeared on the stairs again. Are you suffering from Takotsubo Syndrome? He asked washing behind an ear. What's that ? I queried. 

Broken heart syndrome. He replied. The heart muscles change shape and weaken triggered by the loss of a loved one. He rolled over onto his back. Like me he added.

And the days are not full enough and the nights are not full enough and life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass. 

Ezra Pound said that I told him. 

He smirked I know we've had a long chat about field mice. He told me he was once considered one of the most influential and most difficult poets of the 20th century. He paused. His contribution to Modernist poetry are enormous.  

My you are mingling with interesting people I acknowledge. 

Yes and I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate.All these moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die. 

Oh I already have he added. 

Really? I question him. Are you sure you didn't just slip into the Odeon and watch Blade Runner? I think you'll find Rutger Hauer said that.

  I think you'll find that I've just met him. Interesting fella. So was Shakespeare.  

The Ghost Pocket flicked his tail and did exactly as Nancy predicted. He disappeared into the wall.

Animal Magnetism

You seem to have a fatal, metal attraction

drawn inextricably to any iron contraction

an ally of alloy.

Now with your magnetic key

dancing from your collar

you are no longer

the cat who goes forth alone.

I see you clinging like a shadow

to the bucket in the garden

or making overtures to the mower

as you plot a course North.

Not a cat to grace a lap

I saw you in hot pursuit of a toe cap

on a pair of Doc Martens.

I might have found you, your head clamped

to the Art Deco lamp in the hall

or in a clinch

with a crampon in the shed

until recently when you formed an embrace-

ment

with Mrs Lacy's hip replacement

and bonded with the handcuffs

you found under her bed.

Linda Coggin

mewsings from the grave

 

RIP the wise, clever and loving Pocket whose heart after 13 years finally gave up.

I'm glad he chose to go when he felt he was ready - when I asked the vet when he wanted to see us again and the vet replied six months I knew he knew Pocket would not last that long.

Being a quarter Bengal he was a feisty boy and extremely opinionated. Often feared both inside and outside the home. I think the news has spread as I've seen several baby rabbits in very close proximity to the house seemingly without a care in the world.

I can't remember him ever being a kitten but looking through old photos of him he was and at what stage he started to rule the roost we have no idea. In spite of blinding Rocket in one eye when Rocket was thirteen (unlucky for some) weeks old Pocket adored him and loved to snuggle up to him as closely as possible much to Rocket's discomfort.  He also loved to follow us when we went on a walk, with Rocket glancing nervously over his shoulder as we went. He will be much missed and no more so than on the pages of this blog. Or so I thought .....

So life leaves and new life appears. Only one of the black Indian runner eggs hatched and guess what? It was white! I felt so sorry for it on its own that I went to Jim the duck man and he gave me a two day old Peking bantam chick that I'm calling Geoffrey because for some reason it reminds me of my father.

It was a good move and they have become feathery pals. A week on and the duckling has almost doubled in size but Geoffrey remains tiny and is like a little bumblebee as he buzzes around their box eventually snuggling up to the duckling who may well, in his eyes, be his new mum.  

I might have to call the duckling Barbara after my own mum. He is only the size of a cotton wool ball and I think is actually crossed with a bumblebee as yesterday he flapped his miniscule wings and flew out of the box onto the table. Any of the remaining animals would have snapped him up in a moment but fortunately Raven is not in the house and Rocket and Nancy were asleep. The trouble is the duckling is so large now it needed a bigger box and I was much obliged to the man in B&M  who gave me an enormous cardboard box from out the back which had cuddly soft toys printed on the outside which seemed appropriate. The inside must seem like a large landscape to Geoffrey and he can run quite a distance now before flapping his wings and perhaps taking off again like something from Top Gun.

Raven is slowly growing in the shade tunnel along with a cheeky jackdaw who likes to jump on my head when it sees me. Raven disapproves of this so has started jumping on my head too. I think I will have to wear a hat. Raven - like Rocket - has  a particular penchant for cheese.

I didn't believe in ghosts until I saw Rocket tear down the stairs with a worried look on his face as if he was being pursued by some apex predator. When I glanced up the stairs I saw the apex predator was - the Ghost Pocket.

All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity he said as he scratched the stair carpet and looked at his forepaws to see if they were clean. Shakespeare said that I couldn't resist telling him in spite of my shock - in Hamlet I added. I know he replied I've been chatting with him - interesting fellow, been dead a long time. 

What are you doing here? I asked the Ghost Pocket who looked just the same only a little smaller. The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living he purred. That's Cicero I said - have you met him too? He ignored me and washed an ear. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it ....he stretches out - like me he added with what looked like a smirk on his face.

You must have done a lot of chatting with Shakespeare - he wrote that in Macbeth I also couldn't resist informing him.

The Ghost Pocket stared at me. A bit of advice to you before you too die - live the life you've imagined. 

I was about to ask what Henry Thoreau was really like and tentatively went to stroke him but my hand went through the air and there was noone there.

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry

Christopher Smart 1763.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in

his way.

For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with

elegant quickness.

for then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God

upon his prayer.

For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider

himself.

For this he performs in ten degrees.

for first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.

For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.

For thirdly he works it upon to stretch with the forepaws extended.

for fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.

for fifthly he washes himself.

For sixthly he rolls upon wash.

For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon

the beat.

For eightly he rubs himself against a post.

For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.