Week Three: Autumn Equinox

The devil had spat on the blackberries. There was a faint chill in the air The days were growing longer and the nights shorter and the sleepy lethargy Fat Cat had felt all summer had disappeared. There was a tingling in his whiskers. An empty feeling in his tummy, a hunger, that had nothing to do with food. A feeling that he should be doing something. He just didn't know what.

All around him others were busy. Bushy tailed squirrels, gathering hazel nuts, acorns and horse chestnuts, that carpeted the grass under the trees, scuttling away to store them for the winter. Birds gathering in flocks to fly off to warmer lands. Hedgehogs guzzling slugs and snails, growing fat for their long winter sleep. And spiders busy spining the webs that glistened like a thousand tiny moons with the early morning dew.

In the old lady's kitchen, bunches of herbs hung upside down from the rafters, paper bags tied around them to collect the seeds that fell from their ripe pods. Dried out husks of peas lay on paper on the kitchen table, ready to plant in spring for the next year's crop.

Wrapped in her warm, grey cloak, the old lady chopped wood. Stacking it in neat piles inside the kitchen porch.. Pausing every now and then to watch the leaves that fell in a flurry of red and gold and orange and brown around her.

There was a new smell in the air. A hint of woodsmoke. Of newly turned soil. Freshly chopped wood. The over-sweet odour of apples rotting and the musky scent of mushrooms growing. It was a smell that said summer was over. A smell that made Fat Cat feel a bit sad. Because although it was a familiar smell, there were familiar notes missing. A dash of tarmac. Of ozone and frying onions mixed together. The scent of Tash's perfume. The smoke that always clung to Ollie's jumper and the smell of new leather, clean cotton and un-opened books that always signalled Maia's return to school. Smells that belonged to a different time. A different world. A world Fat Cat could no longer return to.

This time Fat Cat knew there was no going back. The old lady had given him a choice and he'd made his decision. He'd known then that he would miss Tash and Ollie and Maia and all his other friends in the other world but he'd known too there was no place there for him anymore. He'd changed too much. Learned too much. He'd become a different kind of cat. A cat, he'd thought, no longer content to spend his days eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating - and yet that was exactly what he'd spent the last few months doing.

And now, as he realised this, Fat Cat also realised what it was he was supposed to be doing. For all around him, the others were preparing for the long, dark, winter months that stretched ahead. All summer, like the old lady, they'd been busy. Now the harvesting and preparations were almost finished. The seeds curled in their dark shells and the small creatures curled in their warm burrows would wait for the returning light to burst into new life. Well, that was what he would do too.

He'd sit with the old lady by the side of the fire and he'd learn all it was she had to teach him. And by the time the sun returned, he'd be ready to become a new kind of cat. A proper fairy tale kind of cat. A cat ready for the new adventures that we was sure were waiting for him.