Cat Walk - Hardcover

Up until this week, my favourite Jackie Morris book was Snow Leopard&. I fell in love with it about the same time as I fell in love with the coastline around St Davids. I soon found, by googling Jackie Morris, that I could get a fix of this landscape from her beautiful photos on her Cat's blog The Three Ginger Darlings. So I was not entirely sure if I needed to buy Cat Walk? I can always visit her new and old blog posts and it is her painted story books that I am a fan of after all.... It did not help that she admits to having difficulty describing what exactly this book is. It may be out of a now established habit I have of buying myself a Jackie Morris book as a birthday present, that I bought it? I purchased a volume of pure beauty and joy. The poetry that accompanies the photographs is disguised to look like paragraphs of prose but Jackie's prose is lyrical at the best of times... Strangely I keep wanting to call this book autobiography. It may not give much information in the form of dates and life events but it is a window into the landscape of Jackie Morris's heart and soul. It is the story of the loves of her life through the seasonal cycles. The photographs of ginger and leopard print cats against granite and sky, could almost be paintings. It is almost as if Jackie chose and painted her cats to fit her landscape. Seeing Lord Genji, who I was lucky enough to spend part of an afternoon with during his short life, broke my heart again. It does not help to know that part of the deal of befriending a cat is to outlive them and I thank Jackie for being so open and honest about her heart break here and in her blogging because it does help to know I am not alone in this. Snow Leopard will always have a special place in my heart and will always be my introduction to the magic of Jackie Morris's books but now Cat Walk is my favourite. --Brid Wyldearth

A beautiful exploration in photographs of the walks the author takes with her cats along their local Pembrokeshire coast

It’s about walking, but not really covering distance. The same paths are travelled, but each time the light, the season, the thoughts inside make it different. It does have something to do with the character of cats, but also to do with writing, looking, seeing, being in a place.

Author, illustrator, and photographer Jackie Morris explores her native Pembrokeshire in the company of her feline friends—or rather, they explore the countryside while she tags along taking pictures. More than 100 pictures with diary notes tell the story of many walks with many cats. Challenging perceptions and rearranging priorities, Jackie’s insightful poetry and prose allows a glimpse of a world in which cat is king and nature its subject. Ordered and regulated by season, you will find that, although the landscape of Cat Walk may be familiar, what is seen is most certainly different.