About Purr 'n' Fur

Purr 'n' Fur developed in late 2003 from ideas my sister and I had, and it's gradually expanded since then to the extensive site it is now, with a wide variety of different sections and articles for cat lovers. We're both lifelong cat aficionados, first as a result of cats our parents had over the years, and later of course from having our own. For nearly 15 years I had two tabby girls, Maggie and Midge — to be found as 'mascots' on the Fragments and Mini Fragments pages respectively — until Midge died in February 2018. At present I have also black cat Timmie, who will be 12 this year (2019), and Felix. a tuxedo cat of indeterminate age who wandered in last summer and decided to stay! My sister had Puss, a black formerly feral female who died in 2016, but her three offspring are still thriving, born 'in the wild' sometime in the spring of 2011: little Tillie and her larger brothers Tux and Indie.

I have done the writing at Purr 'n' Fur and much of the research, while Sis has looked after producing the pages and also researched. (Although now retired, I worked for some 15 years as a professional proofreader and copy-editor, so things are checked carefully and I hope you'll find the writing to be of a good standard.)

Now, though, with advancing age and for other reasons, we feel we can't continue to develop the site further, and so it's being put into 'hibernation'. We've done our best to update a number of pages to reflect things as they stood at the end of 2018, although we haven't been able to revisit everything and realise some links will be out of date. Anyway, the site will remain hosted and available for reference purposes, at least for now. We don't rule out occasional further updates in future, but they would be irregular. We'd like to thank again all the many people who've assisted us and supplied invaluable information over the years.

We'll still be posting at Facebook, so do drop in and see us there!

Summarising what you'll find on our site: there are numerous other excellent websites devoted to cats and cat lore, so we've aimed to provide at least a few features that aren't found elsewhere. One of our most visited sections is Famous Felines, where we relate the real-life stories of cats that became better known than the average feline for one reason or another, such as Street Cat Bob and the current resident of 10 Downing Street, Larry; but arguably the most celebrated of them was Simon, ship's cat of HMS Amethyst and the only cat to date to have been awarded the prestigious Dickin Medal. This section is supplemented, in Featuring Felines, by shorter accounts of cats that aren't necessarily world-famous but are perhaps well known in their local area, or have had interesting adventures. It includes numerous cats that are, or were, to be found in churches, museums, libraries and similar establishments, as well as other cats working in hotels, on railways, in shops and the like.

We're proud of our Feline Philately pages about domestic cats on postage stamps, which have been updated regularly and are fully illustrated; and also of our gallery of UK inn signs picturing cats (in Feline Fun). It has to be said, though, that the inn-sign pages haven't been kept up to date for a while and not all the information will still be accurate — especially with so many pubs closing these days. In the Fun section also are some cat jigsaw puzzles; a collection of quotes about cats, with many pictures; a crossword puzzle and a memory game; and a gallery of photos of amusing cat situations.

Fabled Felines consists of pages about cats in fairy tales, legends and festivals, with a good collection of photos from two of the three-yearly Cat Festivals (Kattenstoet) held in Ypres, Belgium. Feline Fragments is a miscellany of mostly short 'cat stuff' we feel is worth passing on, while the Mini Fragments section covers some even shorter stories both old and more recent. Feline Folios takes a look at a wide selection of books we've enjoyed about cats, and the Fans of Felines pages give brief details of famous and well-known people from all eras who were cat lovers — as well as mentioning a few who definitely were not! Most sections have a cat picture, or 'mascot', at the top of the page to 'keep you company' throughout that section, with a brief account of them in a 'Featured Feline' paragraph at the foot of each page.

As well as our main site, there is a Purr 'n' Fur Facebook page where we will continue to post images and other items of interest to cat lovers: see the link button below.