The Herd

I've come to love the herd. The herd of animals that reside at my parents that is. They have been out of town for 1 week and 2 days (not that I am counting or anything). It feels like they have been gone for half a year. I'm not sure if it is because I am retrieving their mail, or because I am making sure their horses are still in the field, or if it has anything to do with the 20 cats that approach my jeep every time I roar up on the scene. Or maybe it feels like forever because each time I let the dogs out to run, I have to go on a man hunt to find them and bring them back to their kennel (these rascals make me appreciate my girl, Roxy, even more).

All I know is that I have come to love the herd. These animals are thrilled to see me (and just so you know a thrilled horse looks about as estatic as a non-thrilled horse, you really have to have a gift to tell the difference-ha!). I would like to think it's me...I've been known to be a dog, horse, or cat whisperer at times. But, I'm pretty sure their happiness involves food. I mean that's where most of my happiness lies.

The bottom line is that I am more whole when I am amongst these animals. Scooping up dog poo, carrying barn cats around like infants (that probably are infested with fleas), and doing the limbo underneath electric fences to get to the horses water trough just does it for me.

One thing that has occurred on my watch that I will not get over is that two kittens have gone missing. Mom kept the most recent litter of three kittens in their garage for the first few months of their lives because she really wanted to give them away rather than putting them amongst the wild ones at the barn. We ended up giving one to Melissa at the salon and the other two ended up down at the barn. I loved those kitties. I have never become attached to any of the barn cats until those two. And, they've been missing since Thursday. My hope was that they were on some sort of field trip. Or maybe they got tired of the barn and walked up to a nice warm home. Either way I refuse to believe that some animal got a hold of them. I prefer to live in denial. I know that's just life on "the farm," but that is the part I'll never get used to. It's a good thing Rob doesn't like cats, that will save us from having a house full when we live there. He recently told me that he'd rather have a pet pig then a cat. So, now I am reading Charlotte's Web and dreaming about having our very own pen full of pigs. He's going to have to be more careful about what he says to me.