Derek Tangye and his wife Jeannie dropped their hectic London lifestyle and moved to a small crofters cottage called Minack that clung to the cliffs over the ocean in Cornwall. They grew flowers and vegetables to be sold in at Coventry Garden. They had many tenuous years trying to make ends meet, but once Derek Tangye started writing memoirs describing their life, their financial problems were over. All of his books feature the animals that shared their life from donkeys to ducks but most especially the few cats that ruled the roost. At first they had Monty, bringing him from London but when he passed away at 16 years, Lama came into their life.

Derek had vowed no more cats after Monty, with the exception being if a black cat showed up at the door during a storm and, sure enough, Lama arrived in that exact fashion. She won both their hearts and was to be Queen of the place for many years. She received her name from the 1959 newspaper headlines about the Dali Lama escaping into India to get away from the Chinese.

The writing is light and breezy, you feel much like you are reading the letters of a favorite uncle as he relates his stories of Cornish weather, the struggles of relying on growing things and the delight of being close to nature. The time that these books take place is during the 1950’s and 1960’s which adds to the feeling of being in a time capsule. This book, with it’s focus on a little wild cat as she adapts to domestic living is captivating. ( )

A delightful diary of life with a cat, two people as dotty as me about their feline friend. Ageless, funny and above all entertaining... ( )