As we walked out of Grain something caught my eye.  I stood and stared as a pair of eyes stared back at me.  I craned my head forward and squinted.  Was it?  It couldn’t be?  But it was!

Two years ago we had passed through Grain on Stage #15 of our walk around the coast of Britain.  Towards the end of the walk we were joined by a young cat.  It walked with us for just under half a mile, before finally creeping into some riprap.  Here’s a picture from that day, as it strolls along with our daughter, Catherine:

The Friendly Cat from Grain, as we called it, was our first ever non-human Guest Walker.  We have very fond memories of that cat.

Fast-forward back to today.

The cat that now sat in front of me could have been any old tabby cat, I told myself.  Yet there was something about it and its manner that made me think otherwise.  I took a picture of it and when I got home I compared it to the pictures from two years ago.  The picture on the left is from 2012; the one on the right from 2014.

I studied the photos for quite a while.  It was the cat’s left leg that did it for me.  See how there is a broken black line which angles up, from just above a splodge, and which runs into the thick black band above?

“That’s the Friendly Cat from Grain!” I shouted out loud.  The cat and I looked at each other.  The cat had an air of indifferent curiosity about it; I on the other hand was ginning like a fool.

I eventually left it there, sitting and staring.  I got back in my car, as I had a pressing engagement with an adventure further up the coast.

What a delight to see our friend again, and looking so well!

Points on this walk (copy and paste the co-ordinates into Google Earth):

• 2012 Meeting with the Friendly Cat From Grain:  N 51° 27.562 E 000° 43.055
• 2014 Meeting with the Friendly Cat From Grain:  N 51° 27.405 E 000° 42.975
  

Walk Statistics:

• Date of Walk: 17 May 2014