Athena

Help! Who am I!

Not a cat person here. I like them, but I will never be a crazy cat lady or anything. (Well, crazy maybe....).

However, I do like them, and in the way of families when the young folks move away, all the kitties that they brought home over the years have become my responsibility. I spend my extra coins on cat food and get up early to distribute same.

The very day after the Sunday Stills Cats challenge something murdered poor Sinopa and her idiot son Justin Bieber. They were not big favorites, but still they were threads in the life of the barnyard, the butt of many jokes about white cat syndrome (not that they were white), and just there..... I don't know how to explain how it is with your barn animals. They are not like the cozy creatures that share hearth and home, but more like partners in enterprise. They work for and with you and in return you see to their needs. Part of farm life that goes unsung, but not unnoticed.

Justin wasn't smart enough to come to the house for food, but he got milk and table scraps in the barn, and spent his free time thinking up diabolical ways to trip us or run under a cow's belly with his tail upright so we could get kicked. We still liked his silly self and the boss spent years trying to pet him. He would have none of that.

Whatever got them wrecked them. Both were too wild to catch when they came home to say goodbye. We found Sinopa later; Justin is just gone. The barn floor is bare without them.

Then Athena vanished. Athena is different. She is an independent little spotted brown tabby that belonged to children before she came here. They filled her up with love and she hasn't run out yet. 

She is of the liquid cat genre. You can pick her up in any manner and she will flow into your arms and melt around your neck and purr til the foundation shakes. In the winter Alan tucks her into the hood of his sweatshirt and she rides there all sleepy and proud, peeping out every now and then to see what's up. We have come very, very close to buying a conversion kit and turning her into a house cat.

She is timid over porch food and hides under the car until Simon and Chain Saw are done, but she does come in in the morning to eat. I always give her a little extra.

She didn't show her face for three days. Sorrow reigned. Just a cat. Just a barn cat at that, but there is much fondness beamed in her direction.

You can imagine my joy when she was tucked under the big sink on the porch this morning awaiting her turn at the bowl.

We have got to get to the bottom of this killing thing. We have had coyotes for about twenty years, a fisher for two, foxes forever, ditto owls, although not so much any more. And raccoons. However, savvy cats like these know how to avoid those creatures or they wouldn't have lived as long as they have.

I am leaning toward the fisher, because the last time it came through it took Justin's sister, another cat wise in the way of the wild. 

There was something big and fast right in the house yard when we came home from the fair the other night. I miss the days when everyone hunted and varmints kept their distance.

***If any of you bird stars could identify the little warbler type critter above I would be wildly grateful.