The Author
Born in Montréal, Lorrie Bell Hawkins has spent most of the past forty years in rural New Brunswick, where she has expressed her love of nature and animals in a variety of creative forms. A skilled weaver and silversmith, in more recent years she has turned her talents to writing and illustration.
For JoAnne the move meant she could finally get a cat. Lorne, who staunchly maintained that he could never bear the creatures, grudgingly agreed. For Lorrie, that decision launched a life-long series of feline friendships that continues to this day.
With the arrival of two feisty kittens, Alice and Lucy, a new era dawned: the era of the Jolicure cats.
Over the ensuing years many cats and kittens - smug ones, aloof ones, affectionate ones and wild ones - cats of many colours and cats with many toes – came and went. But a few, the ones that even Lorne came to love, stood out from the rest. Jolicure Cats tells their stories.
There was Louie, who slept in a frying pan and willingly wore little horn-rimmed glasses; Elsie who disappeared one day, was gone for several months, and returned home never to roam again; Tigger who, when caught in a snare, telepathically communicated to Lorrie her desperate need for rescue; Molly who thought she was a bird and spent most of her time in the porch vines; Smudge who became a widely-travelled kitty, spending winter ski vacations at Sugarloaf in Maine and demonstrating impeccable behaviour as a guest of inns and B&B's across the Maritimes and northern New England.
Jolicure Cats is at once a deeply personal memoir and a realistic tribute to the emotional journey experienced by those are chosen by cats to be their companions and who accept that choice without reservation. Accompanied by realistic portraits, these twelve stories are mini-biographies of real cats, told with love, humour, tenderness and sometimes heartbreaking sorrow.
It will appeal to animal-lovers of all ages.
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The Illustrator
Dwight Kirkland runs Black Leaf Studio, LLC, where for decades he has created thousands of original hand-painted illustrations like the ones commissioned especially for Jolicure Cats. His art graces the pages of many magazines, books and business publications.
His mural and art gallery can be viewed at: www.blackleafstudio.com.
