St. Stephen's Day

Dear friends -

Within 24 hours we have gone from celebrating Our Lord's birth into this world with joy and gladness, to remembering a very brave man called Stephen, who we can read about in Acts 6. Faith (our human friend) tells us that her vicar (Francis) mentioned this strange leap in his sermon today: with the birth of Jesus, angels descended to herald the Messiah's presence in the world; and the (liturgical) day after the same angels took Stephen home to be with God in the Heavenly Kingdom, bringing us hope for our faith, and justification in the Lord we worship.

Stephen was a very special man. He was commissioned by the disciples and the early church to serve those in need so that the disciples themselves could continue to teach the word of God. He became known as a man full of power and grace, performing many great and wonderful signs among the people in God's name.

Some people, however, were unhappy when they saw the work that St. Stephen was undertaking and so they tried to argue with him, but Stephen (who was blessed with the Spirit) could not be overcome by their words, and so they incited other men to lie and report Stephen to the authorities for being blasphemous. Stephen was stoned for his words. As he was being stoned, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who were putting him to death, and then died.

St. Stephen means a lot to the Caerphillian Mice. Here in Ambert, we have just found peace with the cats who, in ages past, persecuted us. It is so hard to be forgiving and loving to people who have hurt us, hated us, and made us suffer, yet forgiveness ushers in God's glory. As we see later in Acts, Barnabas goes to great lengths to welcome Saul into the Church - despite Saul approving Stephen's killing - and Saul goes on to become the great St. Paul, whose letters we continue to read today. By welcoming cats into our communities today, we hope we continue on in the spirit of Stephen, Barnabas, and the early church, because we forgive those who have persecuted us, and welcome them into our earthly family of God. Nowadays cats don't pick mice up by their tails to hurt them, but instead, they hold mouse tails down, whilst the baby mice bungee jump down tall chairs! God came to the world to make a divine and holy love open to every mouse, cat, human or donkey, so that in His Heavenly Kingdom, we can be one with the Father. How much happier is life in forgiveness!

May you continue your journey in peace this Christmas!

God bless you and squeek you,

Love,
Ella xxx

Merry Christmas!

Dear Micefriends,

We hope you are having a wonderful Christmas, and that Christ is born into your hearts today. We are all resting in the love of Christ this evening, having been working very hard to get this book to you today. I hope that you enjoy it. (The book can be found by clicking the icon below):

With lots of love,

Ella and all the mice at Ambert xxx

Twas the night before Christmas...

Twas the night before Christmas,
When all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring...
... except maybe a mouse!

Dear friends,

How great it is to be so close to ushering in the Prince of Peace! We can scarcely contain ourselves! Faith and I will be off to midnight mass shortly, whilst the mice, the cats, the dogs and the sheep are sleeping soundly dreaming of the day to come! Baby Belle has been very excited, and has already been taking a mischevious peek in her gifts, and Buttons is much more in the Spirit of the Season now then she had been, thanks to our suprise breakfast for her!

We are looking forward to giving our Christmas gift to you all tomorrow, and we will be working harder than santa's elves making the finishing touches tonight, but we leave you tonight with a little prayer to welcome in the Christ Child.

Little Jesus, come softly, to our sleeping world,
and wake our eyes gently to your glorious grace.
Messiah, and saviour, crowned prince of peace,
we're awaiting for your birth, for the whole earth's release.

God bless you and squeek you,
Ella xxx

Faith Writes - Thank you!

Hi there,

I've taken over the keyboard today both so that I can send you all a quick message, and give Ella McCheddar a well earnt rest! I can hardly believe that we have had 500 pageviews in less than our first month of being active on this blog - for little old me, that is quite amazing, because I didn't imagine I'd get much interest from these posts.

THANK YOU!!!

As you may have read elsewhere on this blog, I am the human friend of Ella McCheddar... and feel like I am just as busy as these Caerphilly Mice! Despite this, though, we have a special gift which we hope to bring to you on Christmas Day, to thank you for your readership. (I'd love to tell you what that is, but Old Mother Sally might tell me off for ruining the suprise if I do). In the meantime, then, please excuse our brief, if not absent posts... we only really began planning this gift this week, so there is lots of work to get done to get it online in time... especially inbetween my essays!

Before I sign out for the night, however, I wanted to encourage you to please find some way of letting me know what you think of this blog, or simply let me know you've visited. If you have your own blogger/google account you can 'follow' me directly on this page. With Twitter you can do the same, but you could also follow our Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/EllaMcCheddar which will always be updated when there is a new post. We are still busy getting our facebook page off the ground, but if you want to be one of the first people to see us there then please click this link to our facebook page. Don't forget to squeek about us to your friends too... we rely upon you to help us to meet more people.

I hope you are all blessed with a wonderful Christmas!

With love,

Faith xxx

Missing you!

Dear friends...!

Oh how much work there is to do in Ambert...
I am tired just from making the lists! We have been so busy baking cakes, dispatching cheese parcels, and helping some of our animal friends that we have fallen terribly behind on our work here. Advent disappears in a heartbeat, and yet we feel we often miss out terribly on the wait for Jesus. Our human friend, Faith, has also been busy, and so she has not been around as much to motivate our little mouse world. We do apologise we have so much left to do...

Sadly, due to the bad weather, our nativity has been postponed, which means whilst we will still be sending friends out in the world over Christmas, most of them won't be sporting Mother Sally's home made nativity costumes... instead you will find pictures of general winter fun, such as snowballing cats, excitable dogs, and a lot of Baby Belle's mischevious fun! And of course, these cards will still help vulnerable children by giving a donation to The Frank Buttle Trust which we predict will total approximately £100. We also have stories from our Great British Tea Party to come shortly.

Thankfully, we are able to keep at least some people distracted over this busy time... Baby Belle is in her element at this time of year; she loves the colours, but most of all... the sweet treats! Until we are able to post again, we feel that a good way to end this post is to leave you all a little picture of her.

With love,

Ella xxx

The Cat that got the Cream

A few days ago we mentioned a conversation we had with a lady called Pheasie on Twitter, who replied to us when we asked what charitable deeds the mouse community in Ambert should undertake in the next few months. Pheasie's (very wonderful) answer was to:

"Buy a bunch of flowers for someone who looks sad and see the surprise and happiness on their face".

We thought this was a wonderful idea, as we knew some cats that did seem to be in need of some smiles, and now we can tell you how our mission went.

Everybody knows that it is very difficult to make a cat smile... you have to work hard for their love! For Caerphillian Mice, however, it is exceptionally difficult because for many years cats and mice have been enemies. We are now much more friendly, but cats still err on the side of caution with us, being much more ready to pounce than to purr.

Our plan began very early in the morning: Samuel Pittance was sent to the dairy to choose our finest cream and bring it home to Old Mother Sally and Baby Belle and her teacher Miss. Jervaulx went into the fields to handpick the flowers whilst Mother Sally and I rolled up our sleeves and to cook fresh fish for our cat friends.

We knew that Buttons would probably visit us quite early today, along with Smarties and Crunchie (her sisters) because they had got a job in the local farm chasing birds (which we prefer a lot more than them being employed to eat mice). Unfortunately, cats can't fit into Old Mother Sally's house, so we set up the dining table in the Church instead and decided to meet our cat-friends there.

As we set up the table, Baby Belle and Miss. Jervaulx arrived home with some massive bouquets of flowers for the three cats. Miss. Jervaulx hadn't realised how hard it would be for a mouse to find flowers in winter, but thankfully Scamp the dog was able to help her collect some that his keeper had been growing in the greenhouse. Miss. Jervaulx was quite suprised, as she knows that not many dogs want to help to make a cat smile; but as Scamp rightly pointed out, not many mice do either!

Not long after Miss. Jervaulx and Baby Belle had arrived home, Samuel scurried into the Church with two of his friends from the dairy. "Quick", he shouted "they're coming!" (He had heard the jingling of the cat bells approaching). We ran underneath the pew, as Mother Sally poured the cream into her saucers... the last of the cream had only just splashed onto the fine china when we heard a "miaow" at the door.

"Come in, Buttons!" said Old Mother Sally calmly, "we were just waiting for you..."

Buttons, Crunchie and Smarties delicately hooked their little white paws around the dark oak door, so that they could slip through the gap, and the candlelight illuminated their large green eyes.

"SUPRISE" we yelled, as we jumped out from underneath the pew.

Oh, how suprised those tall moggies looked as they purred, smiled and licked us all with thanks... they truly appeared as happy as the cat that got the cream!!!

"We did not realise how kind you mice could be" exlaimed Buttons, "we are so sorry for being your enemies for so long. Thank you for being our purr-fect friends."

Today, the Caerphillian mice feel like we have found very special friends too, since it was only because of our cat friends (and the help of Pheasie) that we learnt just how special it is to share happiness and love. We may not be able to give our cat-friends posh toys, collars or scratch posts... but by giving what we can afford with generous hearts, even the littlest mouse can make a difference!

God bless you and squeek you,

Ella xxx

Walking in a Winter Wonderland...

Sleighbells ring, are you listening???

Hello micelovers, cheeselovers, and Jesus lovers...

Today the 'sleighbells' are not Santa's emerging, but they are the sounds of the bells on the collars of Buttons, Smarties and Crunchie (the cats) who are playing out in the snow, enjoying snowball fights with Scamp the dog, whilst we mice enjoy the sight!

Our decorations are all done, although we've not done the pictures yet to post, but Mother Sally and I are struggling to get the cats excited about Christmas, whilst keeping Scamp and Baby Belle calm!

We decided to go for a walk this afternoon through Ambert, and some of the surrounding Yorkshire villages, and were quite surprised by how many different things we saw: sad faces, happy faces, worried faces, tired faces... all of these things in this time that is meant to be the peaceful, expectant wait of Advent. Are our friends just under pressure because of the approach for Christmas - or are they like this all the time, and we just notice it more now? I don't really know... but when talking to the micefolk, we wanted to remind you all that the big lunch, presents and festivities should not be at the cost of the sanity of busy mothers or the happiness of families... it goes against their meaning. Caerphilly mice do enjoy celebrations... but they are rarely perfect. We don't mind that Baby Belle's stocking has been patched up and passed down for generations, because she simply enjoys the magical idea that something special is coming to fruition: the gifts at the end of the bed are so insignificant when compared to the gifts that await us in the Kingdom of God; and our most carefully prepared Christmas lunch cannot compare to the Lord's banquet feast!

We know that we all, like you, will get so busy over the next few days... but take time to remember the good things, and find peace in the arms of God.

With love,

Ella xxx