Provence je t'aime. Gordon Bitney

      Arrival

      Our home in Provence

      A banshee-like cry brought us upright and awake. It was followed by confused hissing and screeching and the sounds of chaotic scrambling at the foot of the bed. Furious scratching of claws across the tiled floor and out the open door onto the balcony had us on our feet to investigate.

      “They’re at it again,” said Marie-Hélène.

      Dawn had barely arrived, but it provided enough light for us to see Tabitha standing aggressively at the edge of the balcony with her tail thrashing, gazing fiercely down the olive tree at another cat descending rapidly to the ground. The ear-splitting shrieks were being replaced by quiet, deep growling, which suggested the row was at an end.

      “Well, at least Myrtille didn’t bring in any live mice last night,” Marie-Hélène said as we returned from the balcony to the bedroom.

      “I thought they might have learned to get along with each other by now.”

      “I think you’re still dreaming. After the fights between those two last summer?” . . .

      “I’ll make the coffee.”

      French doors in the kitchen opened onto the balcony, where Tabitha was now sitting with her tail twitching back and forth. I walked out and stood next to her at the railing. In the cool and now calm, if not peaceful, morning air, the pale blue sky was crisscrossed with contrails from jets making early morning flights. The sun broke over the hills to the east, spreading light in the valley. Aside from a cock crowing in the distance there were no sounds—so different from the constant city traffic in Vancouver.

      The previous day we had travelled from Vancouver to Lyon, a twelve-hour flight, and then driven for two hours from Lyon to our house in Nyons. We arrived at four in the afternoon, which, with the change in time zones, was then seven in the morning Vancouver time. In effect we had lost a day’s sleep. After having stopped to buy groceries en route, then carrying in the luggage, opening the shutters and letting Tabitha out of her travel cage to reacquaint herself with the place, we had had a bite to eat and gone to bed early. The weather was warm and the house needed airing, so the windows and balcony doors were left open during the night.

      Marie-Hélène pulled at the fridge door and reached inside to lift out bread, eggs and bacon. This was not going to be a typical French breakfast, but we needed food to help us adjust to the time change and to ease our travel stress. We had learned that not eating properly only made the process more difficult.

      The blue sky was glorious compared to the dull grey clouds of Vancouver in April. I walked onto the balcony and looked over the railing to see Myrtille, the neighbour’s cat, at the base of the tree looking up. Tabitha emitted another growl.

      “Myrtille wasted no time finding out that we were here,” I said, trying to make conversation out of the situation.

      “Since we made this her home two summers ago, she must feel she has property rights ahead of Tabitha.”

      That was too true. Myrtille had moved herself in, and then won us over with her affectionate ways and loud, demanding cries for food. She was a demonstrative thing. Acting at first like a lost waif, she later wouldn’t leave, and brought gifts in the form of mice and birds in the middle of the night. Unfortunately some were still alive, and they would turn up hiding behind furniture over the next few days.

      It took nearly two months to establish where Myrtille had come from. A couple came walking by one day pushing a baby carriage and asked if we had seen a cat. After listening to their description of “une petite siamoise, beaucoup de miaow-miaow,” we produced Myrtille, who had at that moment been sleeping on our sofa. Apparently she had gone missing just days after their new baby came home from the hospital. Our house was on the hillside and her owners’ villa turned out to be just at the foot of the hill.

      We would become friends with Yvette and Gilles and have apéritifs at each others’ homes from