Rolly’s Tale: #2

I liked it when my family lived on a farm for awhile. I wasn’t very old when we moved there, but I was full-grown, and so was my brother Thomas. Thomas and I were allowed to go outside exploring after we moved to the farm. We had never been outside very much before, but now we could spend all day out if we wanted to. Thomas usually liked to stay close to the house. He would sit under the trees by the childrens’ swingset. I always checked farther out to make sure there were no other cats on my family’s property. After that, I might chase a mouse or a bird for awhile, or go take a nap in the barn. My human girl, Alicia, started taking care of horses, so the barn was often occupied. I didn’t mind, though, because I could climb up onto the rafters and into the hay loft over the horses’ stalls. I think it scared Alicia to see me walking on the narrow rafters and pipes way up in the air, but I never lost my balance. I liked it up there because the birds always flew around in the top of the barn and I was close enough to scare them up there. Plus, the horses couldn’t chase me out of their barn when I was up so high.

Everyday after I ate breakfast in the house, I would go outside with Alicia. We always followed the same path from the house, across the driveway, to the barn, where she fed the horses. When Alicia was in the barn, the horses were usually busy, so I could do whatever I wanted. After Alicia went back inside the house, I would usually go explore some of the other buildings on the farm. Every night when it got dark, Alicia would come outside onto the deck by the house and call for me. Thomas, if he was out too, and I would come as soon as we could, but sometimes I wanted to finish what I was playing with before I went inside, so it would take me awhile. I knew Alicia wouldn’t go to bed without me inside.

My sister, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, came back to live with our family again when we were on the farm. She used to be called Tinkerbell, but the people she lived with while she was gone named her Petunia, so we have to call her that now. She likes it on the farm much better than she did at the place she was at while she was gone. Even though I hadn’t been living there very long myself, I decided I better show her around. But Petunia wanted to figure things out on her own. She likes exploring almost as much as me, but she doesn’t like sleeping in the barn much. I guess because she’s a girl. She always goes inside when she wants to take a nap.

Petunia had been outside even less than we had. She didn’t like to be around the horses, because they were so big, but whenever Alicia was in the corral or sitting on the fence watching someone else working with the horses, Petunia would climb to the very top rail on the fence and go see her. She liked it because she was the only one of us cats that was small enough to balance on the railing.

After we’d lived on the farm for a little while, my family decided to get a dog. I’d never even seen a dog up close until the day they brought a big white Labrador home with them. The white dog didn’t seem to want to stay with us anymore than I wanted him to make the farm his home. He didn’t want to come inside the house at all, so I thought it might be all right if he just lived outside, but the dog –they named him Buddy- kept running away. I didn’t understand why he would be afraid of my family. The only thing he would take from them was cheetos. I realized that if he was that afraid of having a family, he probably wouldn’t be interested in bothering me, or my brother and sister.

The time before Buddy decided he’s a part of our family is a time I don’t like to talk about. Buddy doesn’t either like anyone to mention it to him, either. It’s hard to believe he was ever that dog that cowered away from the dad and ran off to visit the neighbor’s dog when he wasn’t supposed to. Buddy and I understand each other –he doesn’t bother me, and I don’t bother him. He’s actually quite intelligent. I think he grew up quite a bit after he came to live with my family, because back then, he got into some real trouble. It took some time to convince him his home was with us on the farm. He liked to race the horses in the pasture and sneak in the barn to pee on the hay. He would swim in the creek in the back of the family’s property and the family didn’t get mad even though he would come home smelly and wet. But he still went to visit the ugly dog named Penny down the dirt road. At the beginning of a new year, we discovered that Penny had baby puppies. One of the neighbors brought one into the barn when Alicia and I were in there and I saw that it looked exactly like Buddy does.

After that, Buddy stayed home more often. He would go to Penny’s house and bring his puppies back over with him, sometimes, or else Penny would bring the puppies to his house and leave them there for the afternoon. Buddy would play with the puppies a little, but even I could see that he got tired when he was with them. He didn’t like the rest of the family to be around them very much. I think maybe he’s jealous just like I’m jealous of Alicia and don’t like anybody else to take my time with her, but I think it’s funny that he thinks his puppies could take his place with the family, when he’s almost still a puppy himself.

Buddy knows when another animal needs his family’s help, though. Sometimes he brings home a hurt rabbit, or even a bird he found on the ground somewhere. The mother of the family always takes care of the animals if she can, but they don’t let me see them when they’re in the house because they think I’ll chase them. They’re right, too –I would chase them, because that’s what I do. It’s fun.

Once, a stray cat followed Buddy home. Buddy would never tell any of us if he told her she could get help at his house or if she just decided to follow him because she didn’t know what else to do. The cat was tiny, because she was still a baby, and she’d been abandoned out here in the country so she was all alone. My family put food outside for her, but she didn’t even seem to understand she could eat it, so I ate it instead. She wandered off again. The next day, though, I let her follow me home again. She stayed out on the deck after I went in the sliding doors, and when she stuck around the house for a couple of days after that, the family decided we were going to keep her.

She’s black and white, like me, and they named her Patches. It didn’t take long before everybody started calling her “Goobies” because she’s so weird. It’s a good thing she found a home to live in, because she doesn’t know anything about taking care of herself.

Petunia doesn’t like Patches. It’s kind of funny, because they look a lot alike. They both have a black spot on their noses, and another one on their chins, like a goatee, and they’re both small. Plus, they’re both girls! So, you’d think they would get along, but they just don’t. Mostly, they stay away from each other.

Patches is just getting used to living with us, anyway. She couldn’t believe it when she saw the horses. She sat on a tree stump staring at them for a long time, until one of them came over to see what was wrong with her. They touched noses in greeting, and then Patches finally unfroze and took off running back to the house. She went back out again later, though, because Patches doesn’t like to be afraid of anything. When something scares her, she has to go back and defeat it, no matter what it is. She seems to think she’s a lot bigger than she really is. She definitely thinks she’s bigger than Buddy, but he doesn’t agree, and that makes her mad. He’s always been very nice to her, but she says he gives her dirty looks when no one else is watching. When he makes her crazy like that, she attacks him. Once she jumped right onto his back and screamed and clawed at him. She made his ear bleed, and the family was very upset with her, but Buddy didn’t do anything to get back at her. I try to tell her that she’s making things uncomfortable for everyone, because every time she’s near Buddy now, the family has to watch her. The mother even chased her around with a broom once after she attacked Buddy. Finally, Patches had attacked him one time too many and Buddy decided to take care of it. When she jumped out at him, he grabbed her and held her down with one paw so he could bark at her. Buddy never barks. The family thought it was funny, and Patches never attacked Buddy again. After that, she seemed to respect him, because nobody else could ever make her stop doing something she wanted to do. Whenever the family has to take us all to the man with the needles and a big building full of caged animals, Patches runs to the back of the moving thing they call a van and huddles at Buddy’s feet because she knows now that he can protect her.

It also helped Patches accept Buddy as part of her family when he got hurt. He disappeared for a few days, and when he came home, he couldn’t move because one of his back legs was broken. Nobody told me at the time, but my family was told that he was either going to lose the leg or die. It seemed to me that Buddy was doing just fine, though, because the mom and Alicia carried him around everywhere on a blue blanket. He looked like some kind of Dog King. The mom played music for him all the time so that when he was sleeping, he was peaceful. The music he listened to spoke about healing, and after months and months of Buddy getting the royal treatment, he was healed. A man who was a veterinarian, who had told the family that Buddy wouldn’t survive, came to visit once in awhile. I stayed away when he was there, because I remember my visits to the vet’s, but Alicia told me that he was amazed that Buddy was back to his old self. I believed her when she said it was God, because I know nobody else has a home and a family like I have, and that’s who my family always says is in charge of their household. I know that someone will be looking for me if I don’t come home at night, I know that I will always be fed in the mornings, I know that Alicia will always let me sleep with her on her bed where it’s warm and safe. I know that I am loved, even when I bring mice and things home with me from my adventures. I even know that everybody in the house might not always get along –like Patches and Buddy, or Oreo and anybody- but we all know we’re a family and we all need to be considerate of each other and protect each other, even if we don’t say so out loud. I love my family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Rolly is continued in Rolly’s Tale #3