The Hallowmas Cat

Bleu at 20

The Hallowmas Cat

Bleu was born 20 years ago on October 26, 1995, just prior to Hallowe‘en. Although the kitten inherited her sleek physique, aristocratic features and remarkable vocal skills from her Siamese mother, she acquired her unique blue-grey fur from another mysterious source.

It was love at first sight when we spotted her at the Humane Society two months later. We brought the feisty young feline home that very day, little realizing that we had opened our lives to years of cat trickery and pranks.

She set the tone on her first day home by climbing to the top of our high kitchen cupboards and running back and forth screeching. When we “rescued” her, she promptly returned to her lofty perch to taunt us.

Bleu has always knocked items from table tops and shelves whenever she feels annoyed or ignored – although advancing age now requires her to substitute short leaps for Olympic vaulting to reach her destination.

At bedtime she snuggles beside me waiting to play her cat games which I foolishly installed on my iPad. Later, she wakens me from sleep with loud purring, face licking or psychic staring. And should I dare expose a foot from beneath the covers, she pounces on it to lick and sometimes nip.

It may not surprise you to learn that she loves assisting me as I write, nudging the laptop and walking across the keyboard.

You would enjoy meeting Bleu in the pages of The Bells of Prosper Station and Black Springs Abbey, where a blue-hued cat mysteriously arrives in Prosper during Hallowmas. In this two-volume historical fantasy, Bleu’s namesake has a similar knack for the unpredictable, unexpected and scarcely imaginable. (Admittedly, the talents of the storybook cat may be somewhat enhanced for literary effect.)

In The Bells of Prosper Station, Azur Moonstorey and her companions exit Prosper Library to board a midnight ghost train which will transport them to nineteenth-century Prosper Station as well as to the eerie dimension of Vapourlea. Their mission: to rescue Azur’s sister, Hilma, from the psychic vampire, Vek.

Five years after returning from captivity in Vapourlea, Hilma Moonstorey is still beset by anxieties and insecurities. Encouraged to take a position at a dilapidated abbey by young police constable, Garth Mayfield, she soon discovers that life at Black Springs Abbey can be as unsettling as she feared.