The idea for these socks came from watching my cat, Seamus, playing and leaping after moths and other creatures when I walk him at night. Several of the silhouettes I’m using are adapted from pictures I have taken of him. I created a peerie pattern on the soles which sort of looks like cat paw prints (if you use your imagination!). The socks are also partly inspired by Yeats’ poem, The Cat and the Moon.

I originally tried to put cats all up the legs, but I am intensely practical when it comes to my socks, and I require them to stay up. That means plain ribbing on the legs - stranded just isn’t quite stretchy enough. But it makes a nice cushy sole on the foot.

Each sock is completely different from the other (which eliminates that pesky second sock syndrome). There are 10 different leaping, playing cats on the two socks. These were kind of fun to knit.

And although I have a cat who frequently sticks his nose or paws or tail or whiskers in many of my knitting pictures, it took coercion, bribes and trickery before I was finally able to get him to pose for these pictures. Cats!

The Cat and the Moon
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
-- William Butler Yeats