I always felt a tremendous sympathy for black cats. Just imagine how all that bad press gets to you, trying to peacefully cross a road, minding your own convoluted cat business, and some crazy person looks, well, as if they’ve seen a black cat crossing a road, running away, moving backwards, willing you to cross back, which you refuse to do, because the convoluted cat business is not that way. Supposedly because you serve the devil, supposedly because the devil is black. Black itself has bad press, when it’s such a practical (non)colour, not getting spotted by grass, coffee, egg yolk and especially chili salsa. If angels are white and devils black the choice is obvious. Whichever can go to the movies, drop the chunkiest bit of salsa on their chest during a particularly exciting villain death and resurrection, and get away with it.

So now that my parents’ garden has become the playground for such a creature, I invest him with all the mystery of fictional black cats I’ve admired, the devious Lukrécia from the Frakk cartoons, Boris Vian’s surreal jazz cat, Bulgakov’s Behemoth prowling Muscovite streets, Sailor Moon’s Luna giving wise advice or Murakami’s Otsuka, also dispensing wisdom, seems that’s something Japanese black cats are wont to do.

Our own shred of darkness is, however not on the particularly bright side of life, but what he lacks in brains, he makes up in the sort of destructive energy which lands around your ankles with sharp claws but innocent eyes. This also leads to the obvious fact that his calmer sister is also much easier to photograph, hence, in spite of all this diatribe about black cats, you’ll see more tabby action in the pictures below. Plus, some plants and flowers, which I’ve shot before, but the height of summer is such a delicate quickly, waning feeling that I always feel like grabbing to it in the hope it will last forever, cats will stay kittens forever, and we’ll be forever young too.