When we first offered a home to 'Griselda' from a local cat sanctuary, I had recently moved into my new basement which is part of an old Edwardian building which I thought perfect as a home for a cat.

My partner thought it would be a good idea to show our new fur baby around the different rooms of her new dwelling and let her explore. When she got to the room with the open fire place and chimney we had forgotten that the fire place had not been sealed in any way and the cat promptly jumped up it. We could hear her climbing up further and further despite us trying every way to entice her out.

Then soot started to billow out of the fireplace, I swear that chimney had not been swept since Edwardian times, it just kept cascading out, my partner and I just stood their like Laurel and Hardy (we were both soot covered too!) in total shock as the soot continued to cover my room.

Then a large black sooty creature fell out of the fireplace which was Griselda and continued to run around house and cover everything else that had been missed being blackened by the soot. Finally we managed to catch up with her and my partner spent the remainder of the day washing Griselda whom we were sorely tempted to rename 'sooty'. Fortunately she wasn't too perturbed by her messy experience.

To top it all I spent hours sweeping up soot and took buckets of it outside to put into a plastic dustbin liner, as I poured one huge bucketful into an opened bin liner I could not believe that it was one that had no seal along the bottom and so the soot went straight
through it onto the floor and billowed upwards to cover me from head to foot for a second time.

Suffice to say we have now sealed up the chimney so Griselda can't repeat the performance. Oh Happy Days.

About the Author: Rosie Weaver is a Priestess and Hierophant within the Fellowship of Isis. She is head of Lyceum of the Sacred Mother Isis. Rosie is author and illustrator of “Odes to Isis & Other Goddess Songs: A Personal Journal of Goddess Scribings“ and a pagan children’s colouring book, which is available for free, the download is available at: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fStoreID=1307282  She is a member of a wonderful online discussion group named Guild of Hypatia, which is dedicated to shrine keeping and altar building: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Guild-of-Hypatia/ and Keeper of a cyber shrine to Isis at: http://nshrine.com/shrine/Isis Rosie is co-moderator of a yahoo online discussion group called “Light of Isis” and keeps a My space Lyceum site at: http://www.myspace.com/sacredmotherisislyceum You can learn more about Rosie and her magical world of cat humour and creativity at her blogspot: http://witchcrafter.blogspot.com/

Photo of Griselda the cat, courtesy of Rosie Weaver. Used by permission. All rights reserved.