While I was away in France, in the long winter months, Tigerpuss and Lil grew up. Both are small cats, are even now, at less than a year old, still really kittens. At the farm the Big Nasty Black Farmcat has first pick of the new blood. His attentions on Tigerpuss were determined and violent. She was too young. She kept running away. Pjevs's brother, known only as Pussy, another farmcat, living on the verges of farmcat society, found her. He was the father of the 3 kittens that came from her on May 27th last.

Or rather 5 kittens. When she came to Eva, looking for help one night, Tigerpuss had already given birth to two healthy kittens. But she left them on a piece of waste ground between the farm and this house. They perished there in the night.

Meanwhile, in the garden room Eva acted as midwife and the three kittens were born. They were named The Colonel (because he had a white mustache), Kandoo, and Luciano Mundi. I saw them on skype and was captivated by them. Three more characterful kittens never existed.

All was going well in the garden room. Then, ten days later, when the kittens were nearing the time for their first solid food, Tigerpuss made the biggest mistake of her life. She moved the kittens. She took them from the safety of their basket to an unknown location on the farm. Eva saw her transporting the last kitten, but when she followed Tigerpuss into the barn the mother cat and kitten vanished.

Although Tigerpuss came to the garden room as usual every evening her kittens have never been seen again. Either they died in some way due to their mother's inexperience, or the farmer drowned them, as he normally does when he finds kittens. He was warned about them but did it anyway.

Back in France I was lighting candles for them whose guttering flames were watched obsessively by my safe happy housecat, Maud. But it was hopeless. The kittens were lost to us and to themselves.

On June 22, at deep of night, two weeks after Tigerpuss's kittens vanished, her sister Lil gave birth to 4 healthy kittens in the same basket from which the other 3 were so foolishly taken. Coco, Backwards, Trisse and Septimus Stripe are safely prancing about as I write this, or hiding from each other in a watering can. Very odd to put your hand into a watering can and find it full of squeaking pudgy furballs.....!

When I returned to Denmark I was greeted by a nervous Tigerpuss. She remembered me from our photo-sessions in her kittenhood. She wanted to lead me somewhere. I followed her to the waste ground where the first two of her 5 kittens are buried. I hoped she would take me to the hiding place of the other 3. But she scooted, leaving me alone. We repeated this ritual maybe 6 times in 3 days. Then she gave it up. The kittens were gone. Tigerpuss did not understand how or why. Some cats have no concept of death.

She comforted herself by getting involved with her sister's kittens. Her teets were still swollen with milk. So sometimes she suckled them. She licked and motherloved them. We watched her carefully in case she snatched one up and took it where it would never be seen again. But this was good therapy for a grief that had permanently changed her simple happy character to one of confused sorrow.

Tigerpuss, a touchy-feely cuddlesome cat, stopped letting anyone touch her. Only in the last two days has this changed and now she lets me stroke her. Having her picture taken also had helped bring her around. She is the centre of attention as only a mother cat can be.

Lil lets Tigerpuss play her mothering game but stops her sometimes just to show who the real mother is. Meanwhile, with Eva and myself, Tigerpuss continues to mourn those three excellent characters, whose chance at life was lost by a mistake inspired by natural instinct. The only cure for Tigerpuss may be another successful clutch of kittens. We are thinking how we can arrange this for her, perhaps in France, before she is fixed. A sad story. But at its heart is the triumph of Lil's miraculous quartet. We can not all see the promised land.