In the beginning (1)

Chorley Bucket was born in a small town ‘up north’ with a lot of roundabouts.

On the day that he was born, Chorley’s mother was going about her daily business – guarding the bins in the yard, trying to sneak in through other cat’s cat flaps to steal their food, supervising the gardening on the allotments – when all of a sudden she felt a bit funny.

In the end, her kittens were born very quickly. There wasn’t time to find anywhere warm, or dark, or quiet. The only place to hand was a rusty old bucket, which just had to do. Chorley and his brothers didn’t want to be born in a bucket, but that’s just how things turned out that day!

Chorley’s two brothers quickly found new homes. For some reason, people seemed to like the ginger kitten and the tabby kitten, much more than the gangly black kitten with a white chin and a loud purr. The grown-ups in the house where Chorley lived with his mother thought that they were going to be stuck with him forever.

It was dark and raining when Alison and Tristan pulled up outside the row of terraced houses in the small town ‘up north’ with a lot of roundabouts, where Chorley and his mother and his grown-ups lived. They walked quickly across the cobbles and knocked on the red front door.

After chatting for a little while Chorley was bought through into the front room. He was eight weeks old and just about fitted into Alison’s hand. Chorley wasn’t really scared of anything. When you’ve been born in a bucket, there isn’t really much to top that. So he yawned, said ‘Harrow’ in a weedy high pitched mew and then rolled over onto his back. He stretched his head and showed off his little white chin and waited to be tickled.

 ‘We’re going to take him aren’t we’ smiled Alison. Tristan nodded and before Chorley could say ‘pilchards and prunes’ he was being driven round the roundabouts, and down the motorway to a new life in a new place with exciting adventures around every corner!