Katherine

It's only taken some twenty-three years and more than eighty books, but there's an undeniable pair right there in so many words in canon now.

There's a hint in the third chapter of StormClaw's Folly about Galestar's former mate: "Pebblenose spent most of his time with Thrushcall now, and he seemed all the happer for it."

Three chapters and a year of story time later...

Thrushcall, Stripestar guessed. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Pebblenose, whose expression was every bit as grim as his mate's.

The Young Puffin Book of Verse compiled by Barbara Ireson is a 1973 paperback (the book first published 1970) I picked up, and will be keeping.

One poem I particularly like happens to be on the facing page to Cat by Mary Britton Miller

Country Cat by Elizabeth Coatworth

'Where are you going, Mrs Cat,
All by your lonesome lone?'
'Hunting a mouse or maybe a rat
Where the ditches are overgrown.'

'But you're very far from your house and home,
You've come a long, long way-'
'The further I wander, the longer I roam
The more I find mice at play.'

'But you're very near to the dark pinewood
And foxes go hunting too.'
'I know that a fox might find me good,
But what is a cat to do?

'I have my kittens who must be fed,
I can't have them skin and bone!
And Mrs Cat shook her brindled head
And went off by her lonesome lone.

This poem was set to music in 1980. The tempo: Slowly and menacingly

Happened across the Scottish Wildlife Trust live cameras and videos Youtube channel

Especially enjoyed the osprey video
The 'Dark Intruder' Tries to Impress NC0 with his Nest Building Skills

Having finished a couple library books from my perpetual stack, I too have started reading So You Want to Be a Wizard. It is carrying me along well so far!

Of course I liked this bit near the start:

Doubting that her pursuers could hear her either, she walked on into the children’s library, smiling slightly at the books and the bright posters.

She still loved the place. She loved any library, big or little; there was something about all that knowledge, all those facts waiting patiently to be found, that never failed to give her a shiver. When friends couldn’t be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell.

A mysterious library book is a great start to an adventure.

Wings of Fire: Tui T. Sutherland in Conversation part of the Vancouver Writers Fest is fun. It's public up on YouTube although may disappear by November.

Starts about Guide to the Dragon World then wider-ranging, with favourite types of dragons, dog names, ways of writing (and enjoying the crossword).

It's a sitting at a table "chat" with the Youth Services librarian of the West Vancouver library.

Tui said "A lot of my dragons want to be authors or librarians or sit in a cave and read all day, which is also what I want to do."

She said she writes to goalposts but those change as she writes, "which is a terrible way to write a fifteen book series with prophecies!" She is going to write more Wings of Fire...

About being an editor on Warriors, talking about how a central author would send her something:
"She would send me something with ten dead cats in it—it's a series about cats in a forest. That's too many dead cats, I can't handle this, how can we give this to an eight year old! Two? And she'd come back with five dead cats."