The Wanderer Returns

It’s a few days after my last post, where we left it with the Assassin going missing on a walk with us and the dog. The Geordie Smallholder family was upset at leaving a cat behind (“Leave no living thing behind” is our motto). Despite constantly shouting on her when outside, she failed to show up for numerous dinners. So one night, I suggested Geordie Smallholder give me and Doofus a lift in the big red pickup to the main road, where GS would load the bin and bring it back, and I would walk the dog, retracing our steps when we last saw the Assassin to see if we could find her.

It was a fine night as you can see from the photo above, showing the view from the lane. We walked smartly along the lane, for once Doofus walked to heel as if he recognised the gravity of the situation. We passed the neighbour’s field and shouted for the Assassin. My neighbour’s horses looked up, snorting (horse language for “I say, this is strange behaviour from the two-legged one!”). I walked on, ignoring them. Then I realised the horses were behaving strangely: they were pointing at a white thing in the field that looked like a plastic bag. (A wee aside: my neighbour’s horses are much finer bred than ours, the Geordie Smallholder family horses come from equines originally bred for helping around farms: Cushy for pulling ploughs and Tim for riding to town and kept as the “posh” one for pulling the family cart to church on a Sunday, whereas the neighbour’s horses can trace their heritage back to three Arab horses imported to England in the 1800s to found the thoroughbred line. I describe these as finely bred but GS says they are “overbred, brainless wonders that make Tim look like an equine genius”. End of aside, back to the blog).

So “how does a horse point?”, I hear you asking yourself. Well, they go all jaggy in outline, eyes out on stocks, ears pricked and pointing in the direction of interest, tails up like flags, heads low and snaking and making some low guttural noises. And these two were doing it to the white thing. “Is that a bag or the Assassin?”, I thought to myself. There was no one watching, so I gave it a go, shouting out to the white lump in the field, “ASSAAAAAASSIN!”.

Surprisingly, the white lump gave an answering meow. It is her!”, I told Doofus. She then ran off into the woods. I thought a word which sounds like “burger”. Burger, burger, burger (and onions). She was now meowing constantly and more than a bit pitifully. “I can’t come into the woods to get you, you need to come over to us”, I shouted to her. Doofus got really excited, so I had to calm him down. I then looked up and she was coming towards us, along the fence of my neighbour’s manege (posh word for sandy training area for horse activities such as riding in circles, jumping stripy poles etc). She stopped, meowing. “I can’t come to get you in there, I’m too big to fit in that wee space,” I shouted to her, “Come on cat, you can do it!”.

At last, she ran the final few metres, running to join us on the road. I stroked her and examined her. Her coat was a bit matted, but she was unharmed. I was then in a quandary: if I pick her up to carry her back to the farm, given that she is a lightly tamed feral cat kept for vermin control, she might get more stressed than she is already and run away and we might not find her again, BUT if I don’t pick her up, can I be sure she will follow us home?

And that, dear readers, is how Geordie Smallholder found me one lovely night last week as he passed in the pickup, herding a cat and a dog over a kilometre down the lane back home. Have you ever tried to herd a cat? It should be an Olympic sport.

It was getting dark before we got home. Geordie Smallholder walked out with Tripod to help us in.

Both cats kept lying down for a rest. Then the Assassin kept going the wrong way. Even Doofus was getting frustrated. It seemed to take hours to get all of us home.

Eventually, we got to the farm and gave the Assassin some food (Tripod having scoffed the two portions we had put out earlier that evening). She seems fine, so no harm done, but a bit less independent than she was. Geordie Smallholder says she has “turned clingy like clarts”.

We’ve now reached the end of our first two-part blog. Hope you like cliffhangers. In the next blog, I will introduce newcomers to the farm and update you on how the Assassin is doing after her grand adventure out in the wild. Laters, GSW xx