Kitsune

My lovely 14 year old cat, Schwa, died last year, about two weeks before my brother, so I haven't felt ready to take on the responsibility or, quite honestly, the love of another pet.  Until now.  This past year has been the first time I’ve been without a cat since I was about 12 years old, so given that I’ve got all these new beginnings going on, I thought I should start to look at re-homing a needy feline.

Meet Kitsune - Kitsu for short.  (He came to me named Paddy, but I’ve renamed him, as he's only just a year old, I think he'll cope!)

'Kitsune' means fox in Japanese - also in folklore a mischievous fox spirit - and as he's half persian with a magnificent twitchy ‘brush’ and an incredibly mischievous nature, it seems perfect.  'Kitsu' was an old Japanese word for the sound of a fox bark.

I re-homed Kitsu for a lovely couple who are moving to London to work and whose landord won't let them take a cat.  I went to meet him (and them) yesterday to see if we would get on.  He hissed and bit me, so it was a done deal!

He was dropped off this morning with a wonderful assortment of toys and food and an amazing plug in cat aromatherapy thing to calm him down (it works!  boy, it works, I’ve been chilled all day!) It was an emotional handover. 

I made him a little Echino mouse stuffed with catnip as a welcome present.  He has spent most of the day alternating between batting the mouse around my sitting room and hiding behind the sofa.

I know how he feels.

the serendipity of foraging in random forests …

When you go for a walk in a forest the first thing you probably notice is that there are a lot of trees.

As you walk a bit longer you might start to breathe in the smell of fresh or dry leaves, turned earth, of grass, of mushrooms.  Then you start to notice particular trees, they might be imperious; tall; short; teenage and sapling; arthritic and dying; proud; weedy or just plain misfits in the scheme of things.  You soon realise that the path you started to follow has long since disappeared.  You have been navigating by sensory instinct rather than compass.

I find the same thing happens when I have the time to go on a little web wandering …  I will often follow a link from a comment, which leads me to link upon link upon link until I find something that gets my solar plexus and I have to stop a while to catch my breath.

This is what happened when I discovered Leeds based designer-maker, Mr Finch. The first thing I read was this post back in November about a 19th Century Miner's canary, so I started to follow.







I’d been reading his blog in lurk mode for quite a while until he posted this about inspiration, and then I just had to de-lurk.

Then I saw these sleeping foxes and I fell hook line and sinker!




So I asked if he could make a smaller one - and look at this!



… trouble was, I’d already bought this beautiful moth from Mr Finch's Etsy store so it will have to wait until next month now …

they are so delicately made and look just fantastic on the wall …

Finch is making a lot of moths at the moment!

but he also makes wolves and moons and birds - these are his latest:

weeping trophy heads:

.... and he loves a bit of moss!





So, I urge you to go for a wonderful walk in the forest with Mr Finch. It can be a little dark and a bit frightening in fairy story kind of way, but it’s one of those blogs you want to start from the very beginning and read through to the present day … Enjoy!

If after that you want to buy a little something to mark the day, do visit his Etsy store …

all pictures (except the single moths) from Mr Finch's blog page