Last night I got ready for bed, watched about five minutes of crap t.v., propped up the pillows, zapped the telly off, and fell asleep with a wee prayer on my breath. Something along the lines of 'Thanks for a giving me a life worth living, beyond my wildest dreams, keeping my clean, and planting me in such a great place, with so many cool people in my life...', before drifting off...

    I was awoken by the sound of someone/thing coming in the window, and the sound of and animal squealing; I thought it was the highly vociferous foxes that we sometimes get on the Charis grounds here in the East End.  After a few moments sitting bolt upright in the pitch black, like some character in an Edgar Allen Poe novel, I heard the cheeky 'meeeiowww', punctuated by the padded paw intonations on the carpet.  By this time, I'm smiling as I get out of bed, heading for the light socket, knowing it to be our neighbours cat, Basil.

    Basil is truly the coolest cat on the planet.  He's been in the local papers more that Pete Doherty.  He rides on the local buses, takes the tube, and has even been retrieved home from a pub in Bethnal Green.  When I first arrived at Charis last summer, Basil became my 'present moment tutor'.   I used to watch Basil, struck in awe at his ability to attend fully to the present moment in an enriched way.  I remember on one occasion the whole complex was cast over in shadow, except for one little patch about a foot square, which was blanketed in sunlight.  Basil had managed to locate that bit in the middle of the drive, and was writhing and stretching gloriously in that wee bit of sun.  He was definately making the most of it.  Wow..., how that cat has taught me so much about how to live as I attempt to find the wee patch of sunlight on those over cast days in my life...

    Any way, we all love a rogue and a scoundrel, and sure enough I couldn't put him out when he had so trustingly come to visit me, Me, yeah he choose to come see me, and as I went back to my bed, I felt substantially honoured to have had a visit from such a notorious cat as Whitechapel Baz, a direct descendant of Puss 'n' Boots...