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Old Tom McAllister had kept the lighthouse at Cape Wilkins for thirty-seven years, and in all that time he had never been lonely. He had Bramble. Bramble was a tabby cat the colour of weathered driftwood, with eyes like sea-glass. She had wandered up the spiral stairs one stormy night in 1987, soaked through and shivering, and had simply never left. Tom said she was the best company a man could ask for: quiet when he needed to think, warm against his leg on cold evenings, and remarkably good at predicting the weather. 'When she sits in the doorway and refuses to come in,' Tom told the supply boat captain, 'fine weather's on the way. When she crawls right under the stove, batten down the hatches — there's a storm coming.' The captain laughed, but he had learned not to argue. Bramble had been right too many times. One grey October morning, Tom climbed the seventy-two stairs to clean the great lens, as he did every Tuesday. Bramble usually came too, leaping ahead and waiting at each landing like a small striped foreman. But that morning she stayed below, curled tight beneath the stove, her ears flattened. Tom paused at the top of the stairs. The sky outside looked perfectly calm. Still, he came back down and bolted the storm shutters one by one. He brought in extra wood. He filled every lamp with oil. By nightfall the wind was howling like a wounded creature, and the waves were as tall as the lighthouse itself. Tom sat by the stove with Bramble in his lap, listening to the storm tear at the shutters, and he stroked her quietly between the ears. 'Thank you, old girl,' he said. Bramble purred.