Cat with pearls and ornamental swirls

The cat has taken to Mother's pearls. You will laugh, but I found her on the washstand last Tuesday with the necklace looped over her head like a bishop's stole, one white paw resting on the lace runner as though she meant to give a sermon. Mrs Pryce from the post boat says it is bad luck for a cat to wear anything that has been near a grave, but Mother was never buried with them. They came to me in the tin with the blue ribbon, and I had kept the tin on the shelf above the range where the damp could not reach it.

The boat has not come for three weeks. The wind has been out of the north-west so long that the gulls sit on the chapel roof and won't go anywhere else. Our cat, who we still call Sunday because she arrived on one, has grown fat on the eggs she steals from the cliffs and the rabbits she leaves on the step like receipts. When she walks across the flagstones the pearls clink, and I hear her before I see her, which is how I know she is about to be vain.

Yesterday I came in from the drying lines and found the pendant had slid down onto the windowsill. She had hooked it with one claw and set it where the glass caught the light, and she sat beside it watching the mainland as if it owed her an apology. I did not move it. Some things are better left where they have been put, especially by someone with more patience than me.

If the boat comes on Thursday I will bring the pearls back to the tin, I promise. If it does not, I suppose Sunday will keep them. Tell Father I said he may stop worrying about the cat's manners, since she has none, and that she has better taste in jewellery than either of us.