While Hardinge’s book and the film are distinct projects, in conversation they consider how one woman used her creativity to navigate and narrate a life of adventure, loss, and hardship; and how another, her daughter, used her own artistic vision to understand a woman she knew in some ways, while in others, not at all. Through film, collage, and printed matter, Hardinge navigates absence, narrative, and inheritance, constructing a portrait through the mediums in which her mother attempted to express herself, creating a shared language to capture what could otherwise not be said.

In Hardinge’s own words:

“I think it was 1982 when Penny first met Tony and moved into his council flat on an estate in London’s Isle of Dogs. Tony played in a metal band and back then only had 2 cats. Over the years neighbors started to bring them poorly strays. Unable to afford having them spayed or resist keeping all the cute little kittens, soon there were 31.  Originally the two bedrooms were no-go areas, but slowly the cats started to creep in and eventually there were no rules. The cats fully reigned. I dont really like cats, but my mother, Penny, obviously did. I wasn’t raised by her. I first met her in the early 1980s, when I was 12 and soon started to go up to London to stay with her, Tony and the cats. Penny passed away in 2021, while living in a small bungalow in Uckfield East Sussex, where we both grew up. While I was cleaning out her place, the last thing I found under her bed was a box of around 1,000 photos, all of her beloved cats. A document of a time, her home, and the world she created.”