Cat Island

The most popular place on the island was the fish shop, which was owned by a big fat ginger cat called Rusty and his wife Amber, a very friendly ginger and white tabby, who liked nothing better than a good gossip – if anyone wanted to know the latest news on the island, they always went to see Amber.

Rusty and Amber had four kittens – three ginger ones with bright green eyes, and to everyone’s surprise a black one with yellow eyes, who Amber declared to be the spitting image of her Grandfather, and no one ever dared to challenge her!

As there were many kittens on the island there was also a school for them, run by a very intelligent cross-eyed Siamese cat called Tee-Cha. No one is very sure whether she got the job because of her intelligence or because with a name like hers what else could she be?

Apart from the fish shop, there was also The Milk Bar, which was a favourite meeting place to go to in the evenings to socialise with friends and neighbours. As there were no cows on the island the milk came from coconuts and this was a real specialty.

The Milk Bar belonged to Flash, a very slim agile black cat who, before moving to the island, had lived in a country where black cats were considered unlucky and had spent most of his early life running up trees to avoid the bullies who threw stones at him, making him an excellent tree climber! He would climb right to the very top of the trees where the coconuts grew and push them down with such force that they crashed to the ground and split open immediately. Waiting at the bottom of the tree was Flash’s wife Molly who collected the coconut milk into large empty turtle shells that were occasionally washed onto the beach by the waves.