Category: Animals

I moved Zip’s food bowl from inside his crate onto the hay bales.  The crate is on the floor and it’s too easy for Zinnia or Fate to gobble up his food before Zip can get to it.

This is where I used to feed Minnie.

Anyway, since we let him out this morning I haven’t seen Zip in his crate except to eat.  He has been sitting guard at the barn door for most of the day.  And I imagine he’s found a new place to do his business beside the kitty litter box.

He got out some too.  Jon saw him chase on of the hens.  But when the hen stopped running he lost interest.  He came out to see the donkeys, but when Lulu stomped her foot he ran back in the barn.

At feeding time he walked right up to Zinnia and rubbed his head on Zinnia’s nose.  Zinnia just stood there. I think she’s getting used to him.

We opened the door of Zip’s crate this morning and out he came.

Then he went right back in.

It took him a moment to understand that he was allowed to walk around wherever he wanted.  As affectionate as he is, he proved himself as a barn cat almost immediately by finding a hole in the haybales and crawling into it.

I lured him out with some treats then he began exploring the barn.  We watched him for a while then left him to explore his new home.

I came back a half hour later.  He came when I called him, his head covered in dusty cobwebs.

A couple of hours later Jon and I both went to the barn but couldn’t find him.

We were just about to give up when he popped his head out of his haybale house.  But it wasn’t until he eyed the pigeon that I knew Zip had made the barn his.

The pigeon, obviously distressed at having a cat in the barn flew to the nest over the door where another brood of pigeons are getting ready to hatch.  She flew around the barn, trying to distract Zip from her nest, then up the hole in the barn ceiling that leads to the loft.

Zip hopped up on my snow tires piled under the hole in the floor, his neck extended, ears and eyes focused.  He sat watching, his black tail flicking back and forth.

Zip abandoned Jon and me without a thought when he saw the pigeon.   As much as he likes getting his ears and back scratched, his hunting instincts took over.

I imagine, like Flo, he will eventually discover the wooden ladder nailed to the barn wall that leads to the loft.  But the pigeons, even the fledglings when learning to fly, stay high off the ground.   They perch on top of the ladders and hanging chairs before graduating to the loft.

By then, Zip will be exploring the whole farm, not just the barn, and hopefully will have plenty of small rodents to hunt.

But I don’t think the pigeons will nest on the first floor of the barn next year.

I do believe the two weeks that Zip spent in the crate in the barn got him used to being here.  I’m no longer worried that he will leave.

It already feels like he’s made the barn his home.

“Look,” Jon says and points to the brown moth on the yellow kitchen wall.  It’s wings, an awkward upside-down heart.

They are there every morning these days, most have soft brown wings with blocks of darker brown.

The moths are not always easy to catch.  They flutter away before I can reach my hand around them.  Or, once in my palm, they escape through the space between my curled fingers and thumb.

“I’ll bring a chair over, ” Jon says dragging a chair from the dining room table into the kitchen.

I step up onto the chair and cup my hand around the moth.  I feel the soft patter of wings then it settles inside my hand.

“That was easy,” I say.  I think that maybe I’m getting good at this.  Maybe the moths are beginning to trust me.

I open the front door, step outside, and open my hand.  The moth flies away.

There’s one more.  This one, burnt orange like the leaves in the pasture that grow low to the ground this time of year.

The orange moth also comes easily into my hand.  Now I think that maybe they are so agreeable because they are dying.

This moth doesn’t fly when I take it outside    I get a good look at its wings, and see the pink hue, white spots and gradation of color.

I think of Suzy’s shawls.

The way the colors meld together or are separated by a textured line,  those white spots like the locks that Suzy spins into her yarn.

The moth walks to the tips of my fingers and steps onto the lip of the blue flower pot on the back porch.

I take a picture, zooming in with my iPhone to see even more of its wonder.

Last year Jon would have squished the moth with a fly swatter the way I do flies and mosquitos.

I might not find it so easy to kill these other insects if they had wings like a handspun shawl.  And for all I know they might, since I’ve never taken the time to really see them.

Zip wants out and we want him out.  It’s time for him and me.  I’m getting tired of cleaning out his crate.  He sure can make a mess.

Today he came out of the crate and wrapped himself around my legs then went over to Jon who scratched his back and ears.   I have a feeling Zip with the second cat  in Jon’s life (Flo was the first).

We’re going to spring him a day early.  Tomorrow instead of Thursday.

He’s already made friends with Zinnia and  Fate backed off as soon as Zip looked at her.  Fate was always afraid of Flo.  I think she’ll keep her distance from Zip too.

I made up a new song for Zip this morning.  It just came out and I think it might stick.  Jon took the video below.  You can see how content Zip is and how he and Zinnia get along.

We had that shed built for the sheep when we first moved to the farm.  But they rarely use it.  Sometimes the donkeys like to stomp around in it.  I hear them since the shed is just outside my studio window.

Today they spent some time in the shed getting out of the rain.

A little over a week ago, when Zip first came to the farm, it was so hot.  So hot I was glad he was in the barn where it was cooler than outside.

On Friday if was as if Fall had come overnight.  So I put one of the cat beds that Minnie and Flo used to sleep in, in Zips crate.  At first he wouldn’t go near it.  But the next morning he was snuggled down in that bed as if it was always his.

“This could do it,” I said to Jon, “that bed could be the thing that makes Zip never want to leave.”  We thought of Zip spending the first year of his life trying to find a soft warm place to sleep outside.  The bed must feel like a little miracle.