Stardust was Kiwi’s son, a grey kitten, bonded with his grey sister Ariel (who was sadly frail and was only with us for a few months).

Ariel’s wish was to spend time with her mother, following her round the fields, learning from watching, while Stardust, being male, was naturally more independent, staying in the path or drive on his own (probably guarding them from all comers as only a fierce kitten can), and then proudly protecting his mother and sister when they returned.

But Stardust was one of those cats who was prone to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and on three occasions he had to be rescued.

To set the scene for the first rescue, inside the front gate were four steps, so the level of the path was higher than the road, and the front fence and troughs in front of the house were correspondingly higher than the pavement. As you can see from the photo of Kiwi and Stardust above, the fence was a wooden lattice fence through which a small cat could squeeze, with deep, raised troughs in front containing plastic plant troughs which were propped on a brick at each end. And it was under one of these plastic troughs that Stardust found himself stuck one day. He had run to hide when a stranger had come through the gate, and, having squeezed himself through the lattice fence and under the plant trough, found he couldn’t get out. His wailing alerted the humans at teatime and we managed to lift the troughs so Stardust could slide out.

The second incident was when Stardust got caught in the fields in a storm. Luckily, there were places to shelter; there were crevices in the dry stone walls with enough room for a small cat, and there were hedgerows to hide under. But a full day after the storm, there was still no sign of Stardust. When we went to shout his name over the fields, we realised that he had never answered to his name so shouting ‘Stardust’ was not going to help him find his way home. Then I remembered that his favourite game was what we called ‘rough-and-tumble’, and when I changed it around and shouted ‘Tuffyrumbles!’ repeatedly over the fields, Stardust appeared. He may have lost some patches of fur, but he had gained a nickname.

And the third incident was again in the front path when, in the height of the summer, Stardust crammed himself behind a stack of large limestone troughs in an effort to find some shade in the afternoon. He had obviously grown since the last time he had sheltered there, and soon he was not only stuck but getting very hot as the sun moved round. The troughs were too heavy to move and the humans eventually had to resort to crowbars to lever them forward an inch or two so Stardust could escape.

There are no photographs of these events as we were too busy rescuing Stardust, but suffice to say we introduced him to the Garden Family soon after, as the garden was a safer environment for an accident-prone youngster like Stardust.

Stardust thrived in the garden; feeling the loss of his sister deeply, he turned into the snuggler of the garden, dispensing love and cuddles to any of the Garden Family who might need it. Tuffy had finally found his vocation.