Tales of Fur and Feather

By Gabriella Thomas and Ena

What really happens in the animal world when two cat brothers swap their homes and their owners? 

What really happens when two proud herons collide? 

What really happens when fur meets feather…is it fur or feathers that fly? 

What really happens when a ‘terrible creature’ confronts Gripper, the leader of a notorious gang of cats?

Read all about it in Tales of Fur and Feather.

This book is the sequel to The Cats of Butterwick Sands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398439467

Gabriella Thomas

Gabriella Thomas lives in Brixton in South London. She is sixty-seven-years-old, works full-time as a Clinical Nurse Specialist with children and families; she has worked in Nursing, mainly in the NHS for over twenty-five years. Gabriella was born in Reading in Berkshire, though of Italian origin and is married with two older children and has two young grandchildren, Mariella and Elliot. See also her website:  gabriellathomas.webador.co.uk  and her Amazon Author's Page:  amzn.to/3nKsKh4

Book preview

About the Author

Gabriella Thomas lives in Brixton in South London. She is sixty-seven-years-old, works full-time as a Clinical Nurse Specialist with children and families; she has worked in Nursing, mainly in the NHS for over twenty-five years. Gabriella was born in Reading in Berkshire, though of Italian origin and is married with two older children and has two young grandchildren, Mariella and Elliot.

See also her website:

gabriellathomas.webador.co.uk

and her Amazon Author's Page:

amzn.to/3nKsKh4

Dedication

For Mariella and Elliot, my inspirations.

Copyright Information ©

Gabriella Thomas 2021

Copyright © Ena

The right of Gabriella Thomas to be identified as author and Ena to be identified as illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398439450 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398439467 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my husband, Ivor for his endless support and to Ena, for her beautiful black and white line illustrations.

Chapter One

Holidays

Butterwick Sands is a small seaside town in the south-east of England. It is a very lively place with its own funfair, bustling shops, a brand-new pier and a busy little station. A few years ago, a man called Peabody spent lots of money to do up the old town, the pier, the funfair and the caravan park on the cliff-top. Butterwick was his old childhood home and he wanted it to be a thriving seaside town again, which now it, certainly, is.

Butterwick has always been famous for its lovely golden sands and a splendid seafront. But most of all, it is famous for its cats; cats of all breeds, shapes, sizes and colours. Cats who have lived there since kitten-hood, cats born and bred there, but most of all stray cats, who had lost their homes and owners or who had never had a home…Even cats from overseas! All would eventually arrive at Butterwick.

Why does nobody know this except maybe Hester whom we shall meet later, the oldest cat in the world. Peabody, who above all else was a shrewd business man and saw the value of putting Butterwick back on the map by advertising that it had the only cat hotel and sanctuary in the world. It was unique because the cats also shared their home with lots of other creatures and even a few humans. Nowhere else had such a variety of cats that lived on the cliff-top next to the fun fair. Therefore, cat-lovers and curious people alike flocked to Butterwick every year to see this wondrous sight.

The town has cats everywhere and each of them leads their own secret cat life. Only children can really understand this, so sometimes they will see or hear a cat doing something strange or funny like, Look, Mummy, that pussy cat has some headphones on. Mummy would then say, Oh! Don’t be silly cats don’t wear headphones, but the children and we know better, don’t we?

Now, there is a handsome Bengal tabby with emerald eyes called Percy who lives in the pub ‘The Olde Sea Dog’. Although he lives with his owners Ivor and Ella, they don’t really own him as Percy is too clever and independent to be owned by anyone. He lives with them and Bilko, a large well-meaning but rather dim dog who can never get the better of Percy and wants to be like him. Percy, Bilko and all the town cats, the strays on the cliff-top and all the other animals and humans worked together a few years ago to make Butterwick Sands the best holiday place on the coast.

They are all very proud of their unique home by the sea. Percy is a very private animal and no one except perhaps Hester, who is Old Bloom the shopkeeper’s cat, knows that every year Percy disappears for the month of July to a special place by a river. At first when Percy was a young cat and started disappearing every July. Ivor and Ella would be frantic, putting up posters on trees and going out looking for him, getting really distraught. Even Bilko would go around asking all the animals if they had seen him. Just when they all thought they would never see him again. On 1 August every year, he would trot into the garden of the pub, sit and groom himself without a care in