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Belated Happy New Year to you all. It's Pip of Panagia!!!! I'm back, after I have to say, a very traumatic year in the village for our human parents and their furry friends. As you may remember, Floot died and Black Pete was poisoned at the end of February last year. It took a while, but Human Mam and Dad seemed to be recovering and we'd settled down to a nice little group. Human Mam had started feeding 4 kittens in the garden, 3 queens and 1 tom. Not with the intention of keeping them she said – ha ha - but to tame them so she could rehome them.

We had some great times, me and the kittens, playing and generally wrecking the garden. But then a lady arrived to stay nearby for the summer who apparently said she hated cats and told people she would poison them all. The human parents were mortified and one day I heard human Mam arguing with her after she complained about another homeless kitten that was hanging around. It's really strange as her husband loved to help human Mam feed the kittens every day! 

By this time of course the females, Ruli, Rini and Rosie had all had kittens as well, but it just meant more fun for me. Although as the summer progressed, I started to get very jealous of the young tom, named Rudi, as he seemed to be winning over the humans.

Anyway, late one night the parents looked out of the window and saw that one of the tiny kittens was ill. They immediately knew why though, as it happens every spring. Some horrible humans put down poisonous meat in order to reduce the cat (not rat - that's our job) population! As they searched around, they found two more dead kittens and one dying.

This has happened in previous years but not on this scale for a while and remember, we were just getting over the shock of losing Pete. So, the police were called as it's illegal to put out poisoned meat. They mooched around a bit, looked at poor Jim who was still dying along with Smudge. Eventually other people came and told the Police what this lady had said. But as she had gone back to Germany there was no proof as to who had committed the crime. Anyway, things are still up in the air and, without proof, nothing can be done.

Luckily, a new home was found for Ruli, the only queen left, and the remaining kittens. Rudi was adopted by the lady who looks after the donkey sanctuary on the island. But I am warned every time I set foot outside the door not to eat anything, especially at this time of year!

It's also quite embarrassing as if I find something interesting or I'm just chilling with some of the other young cats, human Mam gets paranoid, according to human Dad, so she starts calling for me until I eventually give in and go home. I know she only has my best interests at heart though, but I love her really.

So human Mam goes back to the UK to visit her human Mam, are you keeping up? Whilst there, she decided to buy these things called collars for us to wear round our necks so that people would know we belonged to someone. She gave us all one. Mine was special as it meant, she said, that if I got it caught on anything it would easily fall off! Big mistake! I hated it even though it was a very nice colour blue. I kept it on for about an hour so they would think they had won, then went and sat outside the sitting room window made sure the human parents were watching, put my chin underneath this thing and yanked it off. Ha ha - it was so funny. Human Mam was furious. By the next morning Missi and Sara had theirs off but Freda, who likes to think she is Mam’s favourite, kept hers on. Although eventually hers was taken off too. An experiment gone wrong, I think.

So now we are all back to normal waiting for the bad weather to materialise. I've realised that when it's cold and windy it's great to stay inside where it's warm and dry, unlike before when I was younger, I would stay out in all weathers! How lucky I am that human Mam and Dad decided to keep me.

Till the next time,

Pip