Straw Tuesday #37 LOST THEN FOUND This week we had a lesson to learn at the farm. On Monday 1/13/15 we noticed two of our beloved barn cats Red and Jonesy (both orange tabby cats) went missing. Red will sometimes stray from the barn to hunt or explore but never really more than hours to maybe a day. Jonesy never strays too far from his roost in the main barn. By Wednesday we were getting nervous. BOTH cats were missing. We looked everywhere. Called everywhere. No sign of them. By Friday starting to feel sick about it. By Sunday in the cold freezing rain, all day long began to feel doom. Jonesy belongs to Deborah Ash the trainer at the farm. She was beside herself. Red was rescued out of the top of the old barn silo when he was young with his brother Foxy and made Foxx Creek his home ever since. Foxy and Red really dont get along well, so they had different barns and territories to rule. Red took to hanging out a lot in the SRoL side barn and co-founder CC became very close and attached to him. Our Appaloosa Spring is a cat horse, he has had many cat friends over the years - once when he was in the hospital his kitty friend (Bonnie) sat vigil in his stall until he returned 5 days later. She barely ate and did not leave his stall. They slept together and were very close. Back in the 90s when Spring lived in NYC he had an orange tabby friend named Pumpkin whom he would lick clean to the point of being wet. Red and Spring made fast friends. Shortly after moving o Foxx Creek in April we noticed that Red seemed to be a sort of Horse Nurse or medicine cat. When a horse was sick or in some kind of trouble he would go to them and perform his version of medicine. We never saw a cat do this before. On the morning that Straw made her journey she was thrashing in her stall trying to get up, the vet was on the way and we needed her to be calm. Red marched into her stall and very matter-of-factly climbed up onto her neck and just stayed there. Straw gave a look like uhm, there is a cat on my neck...but she laid very still for the next 30 minutes until the vet arrived. When Spring was having some serious issues with gas colic in Oct/Nov of this year, Red would come into his stall and climb up on his back to kneed him, he stayed there until Spring got up (or maybe it was the long releases of gas that enticed his exit). Needless to say as the thoughts set in that both of these cats were just simply gone, the reality of how much they would be missed set in. Your mind begins to prepare you to accept the permanence of that absence. You begin to realize what you might have taken for granted. That each life in your life is precious and can disappear without warning or closure. You appreciate, you learn. So, today - we found both cats. They had been locked in a horse trailer behind the barn. We thought we had looked everywhere. BOY were we all glad to see them!!! They were thinner and thirsty, but otherwise in good shape. What a relief! When you reunite with something or someone that you thought was gone, when you FIND something that was LOST...what goes on then. Gratitude. Change of attitude. Promises to remember you cannot say not now kitty my hands are full - - - A second chance. Another chance to remember that NOW is what matters because LATER may not happen. This applies to anything or anyone in life. Hold anyone you love close, cherish it. Do not take it for granted. It matters NOW. Love Always - from Straw and Spring Reins of Life (and the Cats). #StrawTuesday
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 02:15:29 +0000
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