That was Father’s idea of a joke, but I knew to heed the warning. When I change the soaking water, I wear gloves and remember not to touch my fingers to my lips or eyes. After I finish, I wash my hands twice with lye soap and throw the gloves in a bucket of bleach. I place a lid over the pail that holds the seeds and the fresh water, tie it fast with strong twine, and mark it POISON.

I do this even when I am alone, as I am no–one never knows when a vagrant might wander by in search of a cool drink. Even those who cannot read will know the sign for poison. If they ignore it, they do so at their peril.

Then I carry the discarded soaking water far from the cottage and drain it into a swampy, overgrown ditch. I choose one so thickly surrounded by bramble and gorse bushes that the duke’s sheep and cattle would never try to drink from it, nor any human, either.

Last week I found a dead cat by the ditch. But I think it had died of something else. Even so, when I told Father, he dug a hole and buried the body right away, and Father is no particular friend to cats.

It was a deep hole, deep enough for a man’s grave. The cat was small, with soft orange fur. I know it was soft because I petted it to say good-bye, but the body was cold and stiff and Father told me not to touch.

I said a silent prayer, too, as Father shoveled the dirt back into the hole. Soon the last glimpse of orange had disappeared; a slight depression in the muddy earth was all that marked the place. Within a fortnight that would grow over with brambles, too.

“It is a rare beast that gets such a funeral,” Father remarked, sweating and leaning on his spade. “Lucky cat.”

Personally I think the cat would have been luckier had it lived. Then again, life for a stray, unwanted thing is not always pleasant, so perhaps Father was right after all.

And of course, we have other ways of keeping the mice away from our cottage.

Father laughs when I call Hulne Abbey “our cottage.”

“It is a ruin, a wreck, a pile of weathered, mosscovered rocks,” he always corrects me. But this is the only home I have ever known, and who can feel at home in a ruin? Anyway, Father exaggerates; where we live is no mere pile of rocks, though it is centuries old. It is not large, but it has a feeling of spaciousness; even, if you ask me, of grace.