Meet my cats. All three of them. A real handful...

My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
Meet my cats. All three of them. A real handful...
A few nights ago I was doing my Wuthering Heights impression, running around the garden in my pyjamas, shouting and waving my arms, screaming into the darkness as a storm blazed overhead. Cracks of thunder rumbled in the hills as lightning split the skies: everything was illuminated white and then swallowed in shadow again. I …
Continue reading Colin, come home…
Perhaps I should start by saying that the only time I sit down conventionally is when I’m writing at the computer. And that is hardly conventional sitting – my cat, Colin, is behind me on my chair, occupying three quarters of the seat, so I am perched on the end, which isn’t a bad thing …
I popped round to my friends’ house yesterday, five minutes away, just up the hill, for a cup of tea and a chat. It was a completely normal nice activity. The weather was glorious so we sat in the garden. Birds twittered and the sun filtered through branches; little clenched buds were beginning to open. …
Majick’s return home after fourteen months’ absence was an incredible surprise, and I was so happy. The wanderer had been reconnected with me via a local vet who phoned my mobile after checking his chip. He’d been brought in by a woman who’d been feeding him for a while and I suspect that she wanted …
He left fourteen months ago, about six weeks after I moved house. I kept him in for the advised few weeks and then he’d been out a few times, coming back for feeds and sleep. Majick Cat had always been a bit of a character – I’d had him for a few years, inherited from …
I love theatre. I love all different types and styles of theatre: Shakespeare, Brecht, Stanislavsky, Artaud, Grotowsky, Meyerhold, Lecoq, agitprop, avant garde, physical theatre, mime, puppetry, theatre of the absurd, naturalism, modernism, post-modernism. I can go on. I love the moment when the lights dim and then it's often a journey of the mind and …
Continue reading How theatre tells us to fear the inadequate life
I haven't given him up. He's special. He's my Majick cat. And since I moved to the wilds of Somerset, he's been the Wanderlust King. I haven't seen him for four weeks but, since he took off that Thursday morning with a gleam in his eye, I knew he had his sights set on a …
When I moved house, I took my three cats, each in a basket, in my car. On the way, I told them they were going to a lovely place where they could run amok and have fun to their hearts' content. Colin and Pushkin settled quietly. But Majick was not a happy cat. Majick is …
Tom Jones sang 'What's new, Pussycat?' in 1967. That was nearly fifty years ago and thank goodness attitudes to women have changed since then. He suggested his girlfriend: 'go and powder your cute little pussycat nose.' I'd tell him where to go! Current attitudes suggest that men and women play equal roles and make joint decisions …