Graveyards are feline parks.

Thank the God of cats for cemeteries. For cats who live in urban areas, graveyards and cemeteries are parks - green spaces in a wilderness of brick and concrete. We can wander in these spaces without the fear of harassment from angry gardeners.

Of course, they are not entirely animal or wildlife sanctuaries, due to human obsessive neatness. They will mow the lawn down to the roots. They also persist in leaving trashy plastic flowers instead of the real thing. Poor ignorant beings.

But for cats, if not for other wildlife, there are trees and short grass and the flatter old tombstones make a nice resting place. I prefer the older tombs, myself, as there is less human disturbance in the older areas.

There is almost always a church nearby - a place where there is shelter from the rain if only in a porch. I myself have attended the occasional funeral, to the amazement and delight of the mourners.

My friend, Jake, used to haunt a church in the hope that a friendly human would adopt him. Finally, as he lay almost dying just outside the porch under the yew tree, a kindly lady picked him up and took him home.

For the graveyard - as some those humans whose tombs I use also believed -- was the start of a happier life.

 

• She's written a book ....  She'd like me to keep putting this on the blog. But I tell her she can only have smaller text!! There are limits to her purrsistence desire for publicity.