The Cat and the Captain

Ruth Taylor was born by the sea in Bournemouth, Dorset, setting a trend of attachment to oceans for the rest of her life. At the age of two she became a Ten Pound POM – sailing to Australia with her family on the Assisted Passage Scheme. Matthew Flinders was a familiar historical figure to Ruth living in Melbourne, where she trained as a nurse. Returning to the UK she worked on a Greek passenger liner. After studying medicine at Sheffield University she qualified as a doctor in 1978, and as an obstetrician and gynaecologist in 1983. She retrained as a GP, working on cruise ships in her holidays until 2015. Researching the role of cats on ships in the National Maritime Museum, London, she came across Flinders and Trim and decided that their story had to be told for children. She lives in London with her husband and a rescue cat, who is very like Trim.Illustrator: David Parkins was born in Brighton, but moved to Grantham, Lincolnshire at the age of five. He didn’t take up art until sixth form. He studied Wildlife Illustration at Dyfed College of Art for a year, before switching to graphic design at Lincoln College of Art, specialising in illustration. Graduating in 1979, he became a freelance illustrator. Parkins worked for the publisher D.C. Thomson on Beano and The Dandy during the 1990s and beyond. Throughout his career he has drawn cartoons for a number of papers. In 2006, he emigrated to Ontario, Canada and currently illustrates children’s books, his total standing at over fifty.