Come Home, Cat!

July’s calendar page is a poignant painting of a back door open letting all the welcoming yellow light out into the night, calling a little black cat home.

It immediately made me remember a children’s story book a friend gave me many years ago, called Cat, You Better Come Home, by Garrison Keillor, illustrated beautifully by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher (Viking, 1995). It’s about a very self-confident cat who goes adventuring about the world. (You can have it read to you by Grandma Annii on YouTube.)

It turned out to be an omen, because my little kitty disappeared the day after my friend gave me the book! Fortunately my story had a happy ending – after a huge letterbox drop and plastering the neighbourhood with posters, my little Hero returned after a few days. Either she had been locked in someone’s garage, or someone had tried to keep her. What a joy her homecoming was!