All the Cats in all the Barns
When I was a little girl, I spent my happiest days in this barn, listening to the sounds of the cows and the milking machines, smelling the sweet hay and the molasses sweetened feed, helping to feed the calves and playing with the wild kittens that roamed freely about. These were fattened on mice and good rich Jersey milk, doing a noble job needed on every farm. We took the time, on our way home from a teaching trip in 2013, to visit the farm, (now sold) and my then retired dairy farmer uncle, Al. He was one of my favourite people in the whole world but he has since died, sadly. The barn was in a terrible state of disrepair but I took some photographs of it to remind me of better times. As I rounded a corner, I saw this cat behind the old, dirty window. She stared at me as she sat there, as though recollecting a meeting in our distant past. I managed to snap the shutter three times before she vanished. She seemed to me to represent the spirit of all the cats that have passed through all the barns in all the world.
