George and Gilbert are brothers, born on the 15th of June 2012 in Keighley, West Yorkshire. George is ginger; Gilbert is dark. They turn fourteen this summer. This blog is the second one — there was an earlier one, long gone.
Keighley, 2012 — how we found them
Our previous cat, Eric, had gone out one night and not come back. He was much missed. There are photos of him, and of the early kitten weeks, that will go up here when they surface.
His absence took us to Haworth Cat Rescue at Lower Pierce Close in Keighley — since rebranded as Yorkshire Cat Rescue — looking for one cat to take his place. A mother called Angel had seven kittens to find homes for.
On the way over, the plan had been: no white cats, on account of the moulting. George climbed up the back of my jumper, sat on top of my head, and settled that argument fairly conclusively. He was called George then; he is called George now.
That left the question of whether one cat was going to be enough. Among the seven were two dark tabbies — one of them called Mad Mo, on account of his habit of sitting on top of the hoover — and that was that. Mad Mo became Gilbert, and we came home with two.
Widdop — the bungalow years
Home with us at first was a bungalow up at Widdop, out above Hebden Bridge on the edge of the moor. They started off indoor cats — too small to put outside — and progressed to going out as they grew. The earlier blog covered most of this period; what survives is in photos, and we’ll pull a few up here.
More from this period: /widdop/
Old Town — Victorian house, garden
Then we moved down to Old Town, into an old Victorian house with a garden the cats could come and go from. Inside and out, on their own terms. Again — mostly covered by the lost blog.
More from this period: /old-town/
King Street — the river house (2016 – 2024)
From 2016 they lived in a modern, large house on King Street in Hebden Bridge. The plot sat at the confluence of the trunk road, the canal, the railway, and the River Calder — so they were indoor cats from here on. We had a wooden decking area where they could go out under supervision, and yes, they escaped from it now and then, generally with more pride than was deserved.
More from this period: /king-street/
This blog launched in December 2015 with the post below, picking up where the lost one left off. Eight years’ worth of the archive comes from King Street.
From the King Street years:
- Cats back online, December 2015 — the relaunch
- George on the hot tin roof, March 2016
- Party trick, March 2017
- Snow cats, February 2021
- Yoda — George as the small ancient sage, November 2023
- Christmas and New Year 2023–2024 — the last King Street winter
The move to Ireland (September 2024)
The move was September 2024. Two carriers, a ferry, an unfamiliar room at the other end. They went under a sofa for a week and reappeared on their own schedule, one at a time. The blog goes quiet for most of 2024 either side of it — the last post from Hebden is in January, the next from Donegal in October — and what falls in between is mostly boxes.
Donegal now
They turn fourteen in June. The house in Donegal is quieter than the one on King Street — no trunk road, no railway, no river running along the back — and they have a garden now to go in and out of, which they take seriously, in shifts. Most of what they do is exactly what they were doing in Hebden, with rather more grass.
More from this period: /donegal/
Since the move:
- Moggies in Donegal, October 2024 — first post in the new place
- Winter 2025 with the moggies
- Just cats, no AI — March 2025
- George and Gilbert through the years — a brothers retrospective
- A year of moggies, May 2025 – May 2026 — first-anniversary look-back
- George, in particulars · Gilbert, in particulars
The rest of the archive lives in George, Gilbert, Ginger cats and Brown tabby cats.