The Wildcats of Piran

It may seem an odd occupation for a globe-trotting, nightlife loving bachelor, but over the last few months, I’ve been writing a children’s book called The wild cats of Piran.

The Wildcats of Piran are a colony of smart and generally courageous if also sometimes rather lazy feral cats that live in a small seaside town in Slovenia. Facing out onto the Adriatic Sea, Piran is a kind of miniature ‘Slovenian Venice’. It is a serene, almost forgotten place – at least in the eyes of most humans. Every day, the wild cats work the tables of the restaurants along the seafront promenade, hunting for scraps; and the pickings are rich. There’s one nasty, cat-hating Maitre’D to contend with, but the wild cats toy with him. Life is good in Piran.

In the animal realm, and in the sphere of the supernatural, things are rather different. No one needs to know that better than Felicia, who is the Queen of the wild cat colony. She had already lived eight lives full of adventure before arriving in Piran, and taking over as leader. However, in the summer which our story begins, she is presented with a perfect storm of troubles, for there are strange forces at work in this genteel town. For one thing, Piran’s rats have become mysteriously evolved lately, and are mobilizing under their leader, the sinister ‘General Rat’. As well as the newly formed rat army, there is an Alsatian dog and worse, meddling and incompetent humans to deal with. There is a near death encounter with the local thug after which one of the gang is kidnapped. A vengeful Maitre’D with a meat cleaver is on the warpath. Even the relationship which the cats have with the town’s ghosts begins to change. In short, the life the wild cats know and cherish, and which Felicia has fought so hard to defend, is under threat from all sides.

Can Felicia hold her clan together, against all odds, or is their idyllic way of life doomed to extinction? The answers, some of them anyway, are in the first of three sets of nine tales bound to please literary cat lovers of all ages. Each of these chronicles is around 25000 words, meaning a book would typically be three chronicles and the complete series would be three sets of three – nine chronicles in total in other words.

Though set in the present day, these adventures are written with such a nostalgic tone that one can imagine both young readers and their parents enjoying them over long afternoons in a snug armchair. In these first three chapters, we meet many of the fascinating multiple characters who populate the world of The Wild Cats of Piran.  Following on from Chapter Three, you will find a summary of the events of the first chronicle, as well as some hints to the action as it unfolds in Chronicles Two and Three. Here then, is a magical and highly amusing little world within a storied old fishing village on the border of Italy and Slovenia. As Chronicle One progresses, the dark threads that are suggested by the execution of Private Rat begin to weave together more menacingly. The Wild Cats seem to sail blithely through every peril. But will their pride be their undoing, and will stubbornness and a dangerous passion be Felicia’s downfall?

A great believer in letting the work speak for itself, if you’re at all interested, I suggest you contact the author directly, here and I’ll send you the first few chapters as an attachment. Thank you for listening.