This stray kitten came into my life for just two days, but made a huge impact. Read about Sweetie, how she was rescued and all that I learnt from my time with her.

On 14 December I took part in an Arts and Humanities roundtable on thylacine de-extinction, organised by Sarah Bezan from the University of York. One of the images of a thylacine I talked about was made by the Yaburara people of the Dampier Archipelago in Western Australia. Is this a good resurrection?

"It was pouring with rain as we toured the abandoned zoo – as if tears were falling from every animal ever confined there" Read my article, with Brendan Lennard, about the animals in the zoo that stood on Hobart's Domain from 1923 to 1937.

The Ragged Garden now has a sign and an area of plants native to Tasmania. The native plants acknowledge the muwinina people who lived on this land for thousands of years before the Ragged School was built. The sign says ‘This garden was planted in memory of the children of Wapping’, but now it also remembers the people who cared for this landscape before colonisation . . . .

How much do you know about seagulls? For a start, seagulls are not one species but many and they do not necessarily live by the sea. I knew very little about their lives until I researched the silver gulls of Hobart for a conference presentation.

Here is another photo of the garden I made at the back of our townhouse complex. I call it the Ragged Garden because it’s on the site of the former Lower Collins Street Ragged School that operated there from 1858-1914.

Hobart street artist and muralist, Jamin, has just finished two works on walls near the new University of Tasmania city accommodation building in Melville Street. They show a girl looking through a hole at an Eastern quoll. It’s great to see them emerge as we walk up a lane a few steps from Elizabeth Street.

This photo was taken the Kindred Spirits Conference in Bloomington, Indiana in 2006. It shows Annie Potts, myself, Carol Adams and Carol Gigliotti. Kindred Spirits was one of the very early Animal Studies conferences and a milestone in my involvement in this new and rewarding cross-disciplinary field.

This photo was taken on Christmas Day 2017 at Sandford near Hobart, Tasmania. Sixteen-year-old Sen has received a drone for Christmas . . . . see the pictures of the lagoon and surrounding countryside that he took that day.

This photo was taken last summer in the garden I made on a formerly neglected space at the back of our townhouse complex. New shoots from the seeds that fell from these flowers are just starting to break through the ground and soon the birds will come back.