And today, before we move on from our celebration of the olive tree, please enjoy a gallery of photos of cats in the olive tree.

From the garden, they could scale the trunk, or jump up into the first fork of the tree directly from the top of the water tank or from some plastic crates we placed at the foot of the tree to make the jump easier. From the fork, the cats would then go up through the tree and either over the cross-wall (jumping down onto the wall between the drive and the field), or along the wall (which took them via a jump up through the balustrade, to the first floor terrace).

To start, here is Raven on one of the cross-branches. From here he could see over the fields to the side.

And here’s The Cat’s grand-daughter, Pippin, probably looking up at her younger sister Swift who was napping higher up the tree.

And here is Swift…

…and her brother Checkers, who was also happy napping in the tree.

For Sherpa, the olive tree meant adventure and exploring. He was still young and everything was enormously exciting.

This particular branch excreted a particular sap which some of the cats found irresistible. Funnily enough, it was Dawn’s mother Twilight who first discovered it, but Dawn and Twilight’s grandson Tumbleweed were also attracted to it.

Traffic jam in the tree with Sundown, Muffin and Tumbleweed refusing to give way to each other. Tumbleweed and Muffin are also featured in the header photo.

Moonstruck managed to look surprised quite a lot, so this was quite a standard expression for her.

And no, of course cats didn’t only go up the tree, they naturally came down as well as The Cat’s son Blackfur was demonstrating here.

For most of the cats, the olive tree was a route from A to B, but for a few, as you can see, it was more than that – it was somewhere safe where they could relax.