Crafty Cats
On a breezy spring morning I am going into my Pottery workshop to start the day, seven pairs of reproachful eyes flash, “Shut the door!” These are my Pottery Cats a collection of sisters, aunts, sons and daughters, descendants of an original five I inherited with my old farmhouse and barn. Three sit hugging the radiator against my workbench; four surround the warm kiln, which has been firing all night. They are not indoor pets but live a life of comparative comfort with plenty to eat and a free and easy lifestyle in the countryside, well suited to a cat.
The elder sisters of the group are Candy, a clever cat of understated gold and brown beauty and Daisy a pretty affectionate tortoiseshell. Candy especially thinks of herself as the boss of the clan and is the only serious hunter of the group, which is good news for the local wildlife! Susie is a small black cat with bad eyesight who rarely leaves the workshop on cold winter days. Heather is round and chubby with lovely smokey blue fur, which reminds me of the colour of the hills above our house in autumn, hence her name; Heather is also very fond of melon, which is a strange preference for a cat.
Pansy, daughter of Heather, is a delicate extremely pretty and friendly black cat, who as a tiny kitten got her head trapped in a Wisteria branch for five hours, luckily with no lasting effects. The two toms are Simon and Ben; Simon is the eldest, a big black cat of about five years old. He is extremely soft and lazy and does not enjoy his duties of protecting his tribe from visiting toms and often has his dignity dented in the inevitable scraps. Ben is Pansy’s son and is a lively, loveable two-year-old Tabby, who is likely to relieve Simon of his irksome No 1 tom position!
I work in the Pottery most days doing a variety of tasks from throwing pots on the wheel to glazing and firing the pots. I am usually accompanied at all stages by some of the cat cast list and sometimes they can be a real nuisance! They find my working on the wheel the most boring, as it offers, at least to the sensible cat, no opportunity for audience participation. Ben, as a small kitten, tried once or twice to jump onto the spinning wheel but found it wet, messy and a danger to his nine lives.They are at their most annoying when I am working at my bench, putting on handles or decorating the pots. Cats will not do as they are told as everyone knows and they persist in snuggling under my hands to be stroked, biting the end of my tools as I try to use them and knocking over my liquid glazes or the jug of water. After a while I get fed up of this and the culprits are gently ejected, Heather has a particularly inconvenient habit of curling up in anything snug and round, which would be fine except this is often one of my freshly made bowls, still wet and collapsible. I come into the workshop next day to find flattened lumps of clay with paw marks and cat shapes pressed into them, perhaps I should fire them in the kiln and sell them as “Cat Art”.
On sunny days I lose my cat companions, as they like to sit on the warm stone wall or drape themselves in the branches of the Wisteria that climbs the walls of the house. Although work is easier without them messing about, they are fun to have around, they add a little life to the workshop. Generally they do very little damage, they walk through my shelves of finished pots with great care and delicacy and very few get broken. I am philosophical about the rare breakage as my Pottery cats are an amusing and friendly asset to my working day.
Published in Your Cat magazine