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HarperElement An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published by HarperElement 2018 FIRST EDITION Text © Suzanna Crampton 2018 Photographs © Suzanna Crampton, unless otherwise specified Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Suzanna Crampton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Cover photographs © Suzanna Crampton (cat, left sheep)/Shutterstock.com (background, right sheep) A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at Source ISBN: 9780008275853 Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008275860 Version: 2018-05-21 To my parents, Julia and Richard Crampton ‘We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.’ ALDO LEOPOLD Contents
1. Egg-makers and Spring Flowers
3. Horses, Horses and More Horses
6. Lazy Days and Family Visits
11. Christmas at Black Sheep Farm
I am Bodacious, The Shepherd Cat, and this is my story. I wasn’t always called Bodacious. I must have been called something else in my kittenhood in the nearby city of Kilkenny, but it’s all a bit of a mystery to my human. As far as she’s concerned, I appeared one day and have never left. It’s a secret I plan to keep. The Shepherd told me the story of how she found me so many times and added so many embellishments that it’s almost become a fairy ‘tail’. She walked into a Kilkenny flower shop one day in search of red ribbon for a friend’s birthday present, a clear-glass handblown goblet with herbs planted in it. She described it in great detail: about the herbs being green, the soil brown, and the ribbon a deep red. (The Shepherd gets very excited about this kind of thing.) The florist goes by the romantic name of Lamber de Bie and the shop is tucked away on a narrow cobbled street near Kilkenny Castle. The lady who worked there, Jaszia, told The Shepherd that because it was just after
