Roses for Lily

I am not where you think I am.

Behind a gray house, beneath bare rosebushes and beside a fence gone soft with age, Lily Rose watches over a small colony of feral cats.

She knows them all.

Alley, her untouchable mother, too clever for every trap and too wild to trust a human hand. Tom, the old gray tom who learned long ago that being caught can sometimes save a life. And Grace and Ellie, the two women who arrive every morning with coffee, a record book, an old towel, and the stubborn belief that every cat is worth counting.

Then Alley has five kittens.

Snip. Button. Noodle. Soldier. Stripe.

And the clock begins.

One by one, the women must trap the kittens before they grow old enough to begin the cycle again. A trap. A clinic. A small green mark in an ear. Five tiny lives given the chance for something different.

Lily watches it all. The victories, the ridiculous failures, the quiet devotion, and the heartbreak that comes with loving creatures who don't belong to anyone.

As winter loosens and the roses begin to return, Lily tells the story of what happens when ordinary people decide that unseen lives still matter.

Tender, quietly funny, and deeply hopeful, Roses for Lily is a story for the cats no one sees and for the people who choose to see them.