Emer's Sometimes Cat

Emer Drumwiddy liked cats, and besides, the sight told her a red cat would herald a great change in her life. She'd have to wait eight years for the change, but at least the cat showed up. He was a red kitten, and he moved into Emer's cottage. However, he also lived somewhere else, and it was a good while before she found out where.

Emer put on her shawl and went about her business for the day.

At midday, she returned to the cottage with some beeswax to pound with herbs to make more slave, and found the kitten purring on her bed.

Emer put down her basket, surprised and amused at how pleased she was to see him. She lifted him into her lap and they spent an hour in friendly contact before she began to compound her ingredients.

The kitten stayed until evening closed in, settled by the stove and, as before, was gone in the morning.

       Emer shrugged and accepted him as her sometimes cat.

 The red kitten, whom Emer called Red, isn't the only unusual cat to prowl through my fantasy romance series. There's Mistress Calico, a self-possessed little cat that follows Kris Peckerdale home by stowing away in a van in Calico Calypso, Mistress Tapestry, a tortoiseshell who lives with a friend of Foss Chancery in Betony Buys Adventure, and Ink, the roman nosed black tom who lays claim to Pen Swan in Pen and Ink. Then there's Rasputin, who rules Raph's Sydney cottage in Christmas Eve, and another tom, deceptively named Millie after Brendan Miller, from whom LeeLee Grene obtained him in The Kissing Ring. Millie had an uncomfortable habit of settling on the stairs in the guesthouse and staring at the guests. His descendant, Magpie, is hanging about the guesthouse in later stories.