cats – thestationhousenotebook

Sheep, Chaos and Eleven Days

It has been a full day at the old police station and I am going to tell you about all of it.

First, the writing update, because some of us are allegedly professional: the monthly blog posts for Tara and K.S. Buckley are done, Bella has a new post in the world, and there are eleven days until Isolated hits the market. Eleven. I am choosing to feel good about this rather than spiral, and I am succeeding approximately sixty percent of the time, which I consider a passing grade under the circumstances.

Now. The weather.

Today’s rain was not yesterday’s rain. Yesterday’s rain had conviction. Yesterday’s rain knew what it was doing and committed to it, offensively and without apology. Today’s rain was something altogether more Tasmanian — that particular coastal mist that means well, genuinely means well, but cannot find it within itself to either stop or be real rain. It is not enough to justify staying inside. It is not enough to require an umbrella. It is exactly enough to ensure that anyone who ventures outdoors comes back damp in that slow, creeping way that takes you a while to notice and longer to fix.

It is also, as I discovered during my outside adventures, exactly enough to render certain shoes entirely decorative.

I spent most of the afternoon feeling like I was on roller skates. Well-lubed roller skates. The kind with no brakes and an opinion about where you’re going regardless of your own preference on the matter. I remained upright for most of it through a combination of core strength and dignity I didn’t know I had. The mud had other ideas on at least one occasion and I will leave it at that.

And then there are the sheep.

We have seven of them at present, using our yard as what I can only describe as a bed and breakfast. Temporary guests. Passing through. Absolutely delighted with the accommodations, or so I assumed right up until this afternoon when they let themselves through one of the gates — by themselves, without assistance, apparently having worked out the latch through a combination of curiosity and structural disrespect — and went on an adventure of their own devising.

We chased them around for a bit. On the aforementioned well-lubed roller skates. I will not go into further detail. What matters is that order has been restored and the gate situation has been reconsidered.

The poultry watched the entire event with what I can only describe as tremendous satisfaction. They have been cooped up and fenced in and generally managed for weeks and watching someone else get chased around the property for a change clearly brought them great joy. I have no notes. I would have done the same.

And then there is braincell number two.

Big. Floofy. Ginger. Magnificently, implausibly fluffy in the way that suggests he may be approximately forty percent more cat than is strictly necessary. He has discovered the sheep and is processing this information in real time — oscillating between complete fascination and barely contained terror with the frequency of someone who cannot commit to either response but refuses to leave the situation. He cannot look away. He also cannot go any closer. He is simply there, enormous and fluffy and vibrating with conflicting feelings about hoofed things.

And then one of the sheep bleated.

I want to be precise about what happened next because it deserves accurate documentation. He did not simply startle. He did not flinch or skitter or perform the standard surprised cat retreat. What he did was something that can only be described as an almost-backflip — a full-body reversal of opinion executed at considerable speed, all four limbs briefly expressing different views about which direction to go, his magnificent floof temporarily achieving a volume I did not know was possible. He was, for one glorious moment, a ginger explosion of secondhand thoughts about sheep.

He recovered his dignity. Eventually. He would like you to know he was never frightened. He was simply reassessing.

The sheep were unbothered.

I find all of this extremely relatable.

Eleven days.

🖤 🏒

Frightful Weather, Small Consolations, and Amazon Being a Dragon

The weather today was, in a word, awful.

In more words: the rain was insistent and relentless and entirely without charm, the kind of rain that doesn’t have the decency to be dramatic about it and just settles in with its bags unpacked and its feet up, prepared to stay indefinitely. There was nothing delightful about any of it and I say that as someone who does not, in principle, object to rain. This was not rain you could enjoy from a window with a cup of tea. This was rain that was making a point.

I had to go to town anyway because groceries do not materialise simply because the weather is demoralising, and the drive was exactly as hairy as the sky promised it would be. I made it there. I made it back. The house was rewarded for this act of meteorological bravery with Subway for dinner, which is not nothing. Some days the consolation prize is genuinely consoling.

The cross stitch subscription box arrived, which is exciting and being treated accordingly — which is to say it’s sitting there looking full of potential while I decide the right moment to open it properly. These things deserve the right moment. I’ll know it when I find it.

In the meantime I have been making a colouring book.

This is for the Meandering Book Nook — the wandering bookshop project, for those just joining us — and I’m not entirely sure yet whether it will become a regular fixture or whether it will remain an occasional thing. My instinct says occasional themed colouring books are probably going to be a permanent feature of the Nook’s life, because they feel right in a way that is difficult to articulate but easy to act on. We’ll see how the first one lands and go from there.

And then there is the other thing.

I would like to report that Isolated is out in the world and Bella Bruce’s author page is live and everything is proceeding beautifully on the hockey romance front. I would very much like to report that. Unfortunately what I am actually reporting is that Amazon has decided to be an absolute bitch about the whole thing and is currently sitting on both the book approval and the author page like a very bureaucratic dragon on a very unhelpful pile of gold.

I don’t have details beyond that. There are no details beyond that. There is just the waiting and the refreshing and the particular helpless frustration of having done everything right and then handed the whole thing to a platform that operates on its own timeline and its own logic and does not particularly care about your release schedule or your nerves or the fifteen years you have been carrying these characters around in your heart.

Bella is stalled. Her boys are waiting. There is nothing to do about it right now except wait.

So I am doing what writers do when one door slams shut on them: I am wandering through the other rooms. There are other projects. There are always other projects when you have three pen names and approximately a hundred books in various states of completion, and right now that particular abundance is genuinely a comfort. Something is always moving forward even when something else is stuck.

It is not the forward motion I wanted today.

But it is forward motion, and I am choosing to count it. Amazon will sort itself out. Or it won’t and I’ll have to go a few rounds with it, which is a battle I will fight when I get there. For now — other projects, more tea, a colouring book taking shape on the table, and a cross stitch box waiting for its moment.

And the cats, who are blissfully unbothered by publishing platforms and have, as ever, the right idea.

🖤 🏒

Small Steps Forward

The house is still sad. There’s no other way to put it — Miss Mu left a Mumu-shaped hole that we’re all navigating around in our own ways, human and feline alike. Some days that’s fine. Some days you turn around expecting to see her and the missing her lands fresh all over again.

But life, as it tends to, has been happening anyway.

First, the practical: our internet has been absolutely abysmal, which has made everything approximately three times harder than it needed to be and my patience approximately three times thinner. Luke is back tomorrow, and I am choosing to believe with my whole heart that this will be remedied. I’m sure Luke is a perfectly lovely person in all other respects but right now I am thinking of him primarily as the man who is going to fix my internet, and I will not apologise for that.

Now. The Pusheen situation.

For those playing along at home, there is a Pusheen in this house that is apparently up for grabs, and we have reached a diplomatic resolution of sorts. Our two littlest girls — Hopalong and Pretty — are going to share it. I use the word share loosely. What appears to be happening is that Pretty has decided this is happening and Hopalong is coming to terms with that reality on her own timeline.

Hopalong’s participation, I suspect, is reluctant at best. She has the energy of someone who has been voluntarily annexed and is still working out whether to file a formal objection. Pretty, meanwhile, has apparently decided that the answer to everything is overwhelming affection, and is pursuing this strategy with considerable commitment.

It makes a certain kind of sense. Pretty was Mu’s little wingman — always nearby, always orbiting. She knew her role and she was good at it, and now there’s a Mu-shaped gap where that role used to live. It seems she’s decided Hopalong is the logical candidate to redirect all that devotion toward. Hopalong may not have been consulted on this decision.

In other diplomatic news, Hopalong appears to be slowly, cautiously, with great dignity and absolutely zero acknowledgement that anything has changed, warming to her similarly sized adversary. No formal statement has been issued. Progress is being made.

And then there is the weekend’s great reshuffling of the flock.

Six of our geese are heading off on Saturday to a truffle farm belonging to friends of ours, which is honestly a retirement story befitting their personalities. I wish them well and I suspect the truffles do not yet know what is coming. In their place — because this is how things work around here, nature abhors a vacuum and apparently so do we — we are welcoming two Sebastapol geese, which will bring the goose flock to a very respectable four.

And also arriving at the same time, because why do one thing when you can do several simultaneously, is the foundation of our Cochin flock. One hen, one rooster. The rooster is Columbian variant. The pullet is Partridge variant. They are, by all accounts, extraordinarily fluffy and I am choosing to lead with optimism on the subject of how the existing residents will receive them.

We are, in our own chaotic way, finding our feet again. The farm turns over, the cats negotiate their new arrangements, and somewhere in all of it there is something that feels, cautiously, like forward motion.

🖤 🏒

Gone Too Soon — For Mumu

I had a whole different post planned for today. Something cheerful, probably involving a chicken doing something ridiculous or an update on the renovation plans that have been sitting with council long enough to have developed their own ecosystem. But life had other ideas, as it tends to do around here, and instead I find myself sitting down to write the kind of post I hate writing.

We lost our girl Mumu yesterday.

Friday night we found a lump on her neck — not a tick, not obviously a scratch, just there, suddenly, the way alarming things have a habit of appearing without so much as a warning knock. My cousin, who is an actual doctor and therefore infinitely more qualified than the rest of us googling at midnight, thought it might be a blocked salivary gland. Manageable, we told ourselves. Something to sort out first thing Monday.

She never made it to Monday.

Sunday morning she was struggling to breathe, and then, gently, in her mum’s arms, she just… stopped.

Today she went to the pet crematorium. She’ll come home to us in a little urn, which is both comforting and absolutely devastating at the same time, and if you’ve ever lost a pet you’ll know exactly what I mean by that.

The house has been off-kilter ever since. The other cats know — they always know — and they’ve been restless and strange, doing that unsettled prowling thing that cats do when the world has shifted slightly on its axis. We’ve all been sad and grumpy and not particularly useful to anyone, which I think is probably the correct response.

There’s not much else to report from here. The farm ticked along because farms don’t pause for grief, and the guinea fowl continued their ongoing project of being extremely loud about nothing, and I drank more tea than was strictly necessary. That’s about the sum of it.

I hope your last couple of days have been considerably kinder than ours.

Sleep well, sweet girl. 🖤

A Day of Small Wins and Smaller Disasters

Today has been a day.

Not a catastrophic day. Not a triumphant day. Just… a day. The weather has committed fully to this assessment by refusing to commit to anything else — it has been hovering somewhere between put a cardigan on and take the cardigan off since approximately seven this morning, and I have given up trying to predict which direction it’s heading next. The sky is doing what it wants. I have made my peace with this.

The bigger concern today is one of our girls, who is not herself. We think she has a blocked salivary duct — poor love — which means tomorrow morning I’ll be on the phone first thing trying to get her an emergency appointment, and Monday we make the trip to the vet. She is being very stoic about the whole business, as cats tend to be when they are unwell, wearing their discomfort with a quiet dignity that makes you feel simultaneously heartbroken for them and slightly judged by them. We are keeping a close eye on MuMu tonight. Fingers crossed.

On the more chaotic end of the animal household updates: the ducks have entered their nesting phase, and they are taking the mission very seriously. Two of them have decided that the catio roof is the ideal location to survey their options, which means we currently have ducks on the roof and cats underneath watching them through the wire with expressions ranging from baffled to professionally offended. I cannot tell you this is not my life every single day, because it absolutely is.

Inside, the hierarchy has been firmly established. Mumma has taken over the Pusheen bed with the air of someone who has always owned it and simply allowed others to use it until now. And Hopalong — my little broken sunshine — has had the fire going since eleven this morning and is, by all observable measures, in a state of complete bliss. She has barely moved. I respect this. If I could spend the day in a pink fluffy bed in front of a warm fire, I would not move either.

On the productivity front — well. It was going to be the day I finally taught myself Reels and Instagram Shows. Or whatever they’re called. I had a whole plan. The plan required the printer. The printer, as it has been doing with grim consistency, refused to cooperate. And without the printed notes I’d prepared, I found myself staring at the platform with the particular blank energy of someone who knows there is a system here and cannot locate the entry point without their cheat sheet.

So that’s an agenda item that lives to fight another day. These things happen.

What did happen — and I am claiming this victory fully — is that I got my emails sorted into an actual email client. Everything in its place, properly organised, no longer living in the chaotic wilderness of a browser tab I was afraid to close. It is a small thing. It is also genuinely satisfying in the way that only administrative tasks you’ve been quietly avoiding for longer than you’d like to admit can be.

One tick. I’ll take it.

So that’s today. A sick kitty to worry about, ducks on the roof, a printer that owes me an apology, and one small organisational win that I am holding onto with both hands. Hopalong has the fire. Mumma has the Pusheen. The weather remains undecided.

Tomorrow we call the vet. Tonight we count cats and make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be.

That’s enough for a Saturday.

🖤🏒

In Which The Cat Holds Nocturnal Bootcamp And Sunday Does Its Worst

Arse crack o’thirty this morning, my cat, Chooky, my bedroom cat, began doing laps.

Not quiet, contemplative laps. Urgent, something-has-breached-the-perimeter laps. Frantic circuits of her sky-level sanctuary with the energy of a small furry soldier who has detected an incursion and is not prepared to let anyone sleep through it. I became aware of the situation in the most direct way possible — specifically, she ran across my head, and then, in what I can only describe as an inspired tactical decision, straight down one bare leg and onto the sky bridge to continue her patrol. Repeatedly. At Pace.

There was nothing for it. I climbed down from the loft bed, conducted a full visual inspection of the room, confirmed that whatever had committed the incursion had either retreated or was very good at hiding, and returned to bed. Before doing so I secured the drawbridge under the watchful supervision of Colonel Chooky. The cat, satisfied that her human had attended to the situation with appropriate seriousness, eventually settled. Her visage deserves a second blog visit for her security determination.

I returned to the sleep of genuinely delightful dreams.

When I woke again it was 10.30, which I am choosing to frame as halfway between naughty-sleeping-Suzy and my 7.30 alarm, which seems entirely reasonable given that I had been conscripted into nocturnal bootcamp at arse crack o’thirty through no fault of my own. I stand by this. The maths works out.

The day, unfortunately, did not reward the effort of waking up for it. It was ugly when I opened the curtains and proceeded to get uglier as the hours went by, in that committed way that a Tasmanian winter day has when it has decided to make a point.

I spent it restructuring my filing system, finishing the graphics, and learning how to make TikTok slideshows.

Fun was had by all.

I have not yet located the sarcasm font and I hope, my faithful readers, that you understood that sentence in the spirit in which it was intended. Learning TikTok slideshows is exactly as delightful as it sounds and I say that with every ounce of sincerity I can muster, which is to say none.

Early to bed tonight. Early appointments in the morning. The day is done and I am releasing it without ceremony.

I hope your Sunday was everything a Sunday should be. 🖤

Day Three of the Pusheen Bed Situation: Evidence

A brief recap for those just joining us: a Pusheen cat bed was purchased for the two small cats. The small cats have not used it. This is their story now.

Today, the small cats made alternative arrangements. Our tiniest girl took to her tower, seen here conducting surveillance from altitude.

Hopalong retreated to one of the large cave beds. They had both, wisely, decided this was someone else’s problem.

Except that it wasn’t quite that simple, because we have just received new information.

The tiniest girl did, in fact, attempt the Pusheen bed. She climbed in while Mumma was already in residence. This tells us two things: first, that our smallest cat is considerably braver than previously assessed, and second, that she is also, ultimately, sensible — because comfort could not be achieved, and she retreated. One does not argue with Mumma, and one does not, apparently, successfully nap beside her either. Mumma takes up a certain amount of physical and psychological space that does not leave much room for a small cat seeking a comfortable afternoon.

And Mumma herself. Fifteen years old. In a house where other cats growl and posture, Mumma simply looks at whoever has displeased her — a slow, baleful, ancient stare — and they retreat. Every time. Without exception. She settled into the Pusheen at lunchtime as though it had always been hers, because as far as she was concerned, it had.

Then the dinner bell rang.

Mumma has never once been late for a meal.

And into the vacancy slipped V1 — V2’s thinner, considerably smarter sister (if they were dogs V2 would be a labrador, V1 would be a doberman), who had been watching this entire situation unfold and quietly doing the maths. While V2, the original coveter, the cat who has spent three days glaring at and lying in front of and dramatically sulking beside the Pusheen bed, was presumably looking the other way — her sister simply got in.

V2 remains foiled.

The small cats remain bedless, despite one valiant attempt.

The Pusheen bed has now been: worn as a decorative millinery by V2, blocked by V2, attempted by the tiniest girl (with Mumma present, which was ambitious), napped in extensively by Mumma, and successfully occupied by V1. It has been ignored entirely by Hopalong, who made a sensible decision early and is sleeping peacefully in a cave bed.

Everyone is winning except V2, who is having a very bad week, and the people who bought the bed. 🖤

A Day of New Beginnings (and One Very Determined Cat)

Well, today was one of those days that reminds you why you do this mad, wonderful job.

We finally met Paul — the artist who is going to bring the worlds of Bella Bruce, Avery Beckett, Tara Benson Boyd and KS Buckley to life on the page. All four series, all four very different universes, one very talented human. And I am delighted to tell you that he is an absolute gem. We met the whole family today and they are just lovely — the kind of people you feel like you’ve known for years after an afternoon together. I had one of those moments where everything just… clicks. This is going to be the right fit for a long time. I can feel it.

We workshopped a mountain of ideas — particularly around Of Fables and Fantasies and where she goes next — and I have thoughts. Many thoughts. Possibly too many thoughts, in the way that only happens when you’re sitting across from someone who actually gets what you’re trying to do. I’ll untangle those for you in a separate post when my brain has had a chance to settle.

For now though, I am just sitting in the very happy glow of a creative partnership that feels like it’s going to be something special.

In entirely unrelated news: I purchased a cat bed today. A very nice cat bed. Specifically purchased for our two smallest residents, who are currently being supervised by fourteen others and deserve a space of their own.

Reader, I did not anticipate that our largest child would take one look at this bed and simply decide that it belonged to her. Only her head fits in it. Just her head. She is aware of this. She has made her peace with it. She is, in fact, aggressively comfortable with just her head in a cat bed that was designed for an animal approximately one fifth of her size.

I present to you: V2 alias FattyPuff. The Pusheen bed is on her head. The entire rest of her is somewhere behind it, living its best life on my window seat. The little pink cat cushion in the background is witnessing this and has opinions. Fattypuff has none. Fattypuff has only vibes.

The small cats, for whom the bed was purchased, remain bedless.

She is magnificent and she knows it. 🖤Photographic evidence below, because some things need to be seen to be believed.

It’s fine. Everything is fine.

It was still a really good day. 🐾

Rainy Days and The Clan

You’ve heard about the cats. Fifteen of them, because apparently at some point in my life I made a decision and then kept making it. You’ve heard about the chickens too, though they had considerably less to say for themselves today given the state of the weather.

What I haven’t told you much about is the rest of the household. There are, in fact, humans here as well.

The first is my sister Jo. She’s six years younger than me, which she has never once let me forget, and we have been each other’s people for our entire lives. Every single person we know — and I mean every one, without exception — calls us co-dependent, and I’d love to tell you they’re wrong. I can’t quite manage it. What I can tell you is that it’s not the dramatic, dysfunctional kind. It’s more that we’ve spent so long operating as a unit, us against the world in the most cheerful possible way, that we’re genuinely just better together. We fall to pieces a little when we’re apart for too long. Not really fall to pieces. But a bit.

The second human is our cousin, whose house this actually is, and who is therefore tolerating the rest of us with what I can only describe as extraordinary grace.

Together, we are the clan. Cats, chickens, cousin, sister, me.

We live on the edge of the Western Tiers — and one day, I promise, I’ll take you exploring out there with me. They deserve their own post, their own proper introduction. For now, just know that we measure our weather by them. On the good days you can see crisp white snow sitting on the peaks, clean and sharp against whatever the sky is doing. On the medium days they’re still there, softer, grey-green and present. And then there are days like today, when they’ve simply gone. Vanished entirely. Today was a you-can-barely-see-four-houses-across-the-street day, the rain so heavy and so thoroughly annoyed about something that the mountains might as well not exist.

So, the clan was indoors. All of us. The garden will have to wait. The chickens managed, as chickens do, with great indignation and very little dignity.

One of these days I’ll tell you about what we’re actually building here — the plans, the ideas, the things that have us excited about what this place is going to become. Today is not that day. Today was a kettle-on, don’t-look-out-the-window kind of day, and I think that’s allowed sometimes.

The Morning After the Night Before (I Wasn’t Even Invited)

I woke up this morning to what can only be described as a crime scene.

Toys scattered the length of the hallway. Blankets dragged from the tables. Cat beds flipped upside down. Feed bowls — every single one — upended, with kibble spread across the floor in that particular pattern that I can only compare to stepping on Lego in bare feet at two in the morning, except instead of Lego it’s biscuits, and instead of your child’s bedroom it’s your entire kitchen, and instead of one small architect of chaos there are fifteen.

Fifteen.

I have fifteen cats. Not one of them looked remotely sorry.

They had, by all available evidence, thrown themselves an absolute rave while I slept. I don’t know what the occasion was. I don’t know who DJ’d. I wasn’t invited, which I think is a little rude given that I pay for the kibble that was now distributed evenly across every inch of flooring, but apparently that’s not the kind of detail that concerns them.

They looked, if anything, rather pleased with themselves.

I, on the other hand, woke up with a headache and a toothache and approximately zero capacity for dealing with any of this. So I cleaned up the kibble — because what else do you do — and then I did what any sensible person does on a day like that. I slacked off. Properly, deliberately, without apology.

I watched lawnmowing videos. If you’ve never fallen into the lawnmowing video corner of the internet, I can’t fully explain it to you, but there is something profoundly soothing about watching someone else tame an overgrown lawn when your own head is doing what mine was doing today. I recommend it highly.

I also pottered around the edges of the bookish things I need to finish — nothing strenuous, nothing demanding, just the gentle kind of work that lets you feel like you’re still moving without having to actually push.

Some days are like that. You don’t fight them. You clean up the kibble, you make the tea, you let the cats sleep off whatever that was, and you keep going gently until tomorrow arrives with a bit more grace.

Tomorrow will be better. It usually is.

(The cats are already eyeing the cat beds again. I’m choosing not to think about it.)