Eastbourne author pens family history through the eyes of his pets

A family history through the eyes of his pets is the premise for Kipper & Friends, the new book from Eastbourne’s Bill Ames.
Bill AmesBill Ames
Bill Ames

The book is published by kdp.amazon and available from Amazon at £5.88

Bill explains: “My wife and I had cats and dogs as pets over a period of 40 years. We often watched them and tried to work out what was going through their minds and what they might do next. We used to even bet against each other as to what the pet’s next action might be.

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“My idea was to express what I imagined were the thoughts and emotions of three of these pets so I decided to write a history of our family as seen through their eyes. The narrators are two cats and a dog. I liked the thought that the endearing and enduring memory of these pets, particularly our Siamese cats, with their different personalities would be recorded for posterity by my writing this book.

“I feel that this book will appeal to all types of readers, particularly animal lovers, because the animals are talking to them.

“I was going through some old photographs, with my wife, of our pets and reliving very pleasant memories of them. We recounted so many events which showed their love and loyalty as well as their various idiosyncrasies.

“Each pet had such a unique personality which I have tried to portray in the book. I had been retired for over fifteen years and thought I should do something creative like writing a book. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it because incidents involving our pets came flooding back as I went along. The starting point for the book was the birth of the first narrator but I went back further to the time we migrated to England from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1962, to describe the family’s experiences during the intervening period.

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“I started writing about two years ago. After retirement we moved house twice and did a fair amount of travelling.”

Bill added: “I am 83 years old and was born and grew up in Sri Lanka. I came to England with my wife in 1962 and had careers in banking, accountancy and information technology. After retirement we moved to Eastbourne in 2007.

“I am currently working on another book which describes the experiences of an immigrant family which came to England in the early 1960s.”

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