I first met Eddie the cat in the summer of 2009. Eddie lived with my friend Sheila in an English village called Burnham-on-Sea. Burnham is described as a “seaside town” although strictly speaking it isn’t on the sea, it is along part of the Bristol Channel in Somerset. It's a tidal space, the water comes in and out daily and when it goes out, there's a wide expanse of beach. There is even an old Victorian style pier pavilion that sells ice creams and has an arcade. You do have to be careful of the beach at low tide, however, as it becomes very muddy and cars have been known to sink in the mud, necessitating a rescue. Sheila had grown up close to Burnham and after she retired from her work in Reading and her husband died, she decided to return to the area. She bought a Victorian row house in a narrow street off one of the three main roads in Burnham and settled into a fairly quiet life of fixing up the house, working on genealogy and walking her two King Charles spaniels, Daisy