Meet Barney the Barn Cat.

Barney is special. For one thing, he’s self-domesticating. While all the other barn cats are feral and eye you suspiciously even if you’re putting down scraps of food for them, Barney has taken it upon himself to befriend anyone who wanders through the barnyard. In this picture, he’s preparing to leap onto my shoulder so that he can coil himself around my neck while I feed the sheep. Barney also snuggles with the dog, walks along the fence line and rubs against the horses’ faces, and I caught him and one of the ewes, Nosy, pressing their faces together through the bottom slats of the fence, eyes half closed in contentment.

Amy and Max, the family pets, enjoying the warmest spot in the house (a sunbeam AND a fire–heaven!).

Amy is the resident sheep dog who believes she’s also a lap dog. She’s not a purebred border collie like our last (also beloved) sheep dog, but her instincts are still strong. Because of the lighting in this picture, it’s hard to see Amy’s biggest fan, Max, who’s all white. Max loves to snuggle up to Amy, to the point where she feels harassed. It’s quite cute when that happens. (And, yes, those are teddy bears in tiny wicker chairs arranged on the hearth for decoration. They’re actually old teddies of mine and my brother’s. I’m not entirely sure where or how my parents managed to find teddy-sized wicker chairs, but it’s sweetly sentimental, isn’t it?)A closeup of Max’s unmitigated cuteness.

You can’t see in this picture, but Max has a rosy pink nose and pink ears. Max is the great-grandson of one of my old pets, Rose, who was also all white with pink tips. When Max was born several generations later looking just like my Rose, it was unquestioned whether he leave behind his siblings in the barn to become an “inside cat.”

At the beautiful Friends of the Malaekahana campground:

Big Agnes in Kahana State Park, Oahu:

Facing Future:

After the Airport Saga in 10 Parts and my last post, I thought I’d stick in some filler. You know, like TV shows do. Maybe next post will be a pre-Christmas hiatus cliff hanger so that you’re sure to tune in in January. Anyhoo, so remember back in August and September when I was talking about posting pictures of our camping trip and rescuing a cat? And how I was going to make a new category for Big Agnes? Yeahhhhhh. Well, I’m finally getting around to doing that stuff. (This is, by the way, my pattern. I plan on doing stuff, it gets put off, and then I follow through long after most people would have just let it go.)

The Big Agnes category is already up. In case y’all forgot, Big Agnes is my joke that only I think is funny. So, really, she’s like all my jokes. I’m taking pictures of Big Agnes on all our travelling adventures, just like the folks who take pictures of their garden gnomes all over the world. Only Big Agnes is not a garden gnome, she’s a tent. Named Big Agnes. A TENT NAME BIG AGNES. It still amuses me. Also amusing? Titles like “Big Agnes in Paris.” (And OhMyGod, now I want to go to Paris.)

The next installment in Stuff That Happened Two Months Ago is our camping pictures. I debated whether it was still worth posting them, but it was one of the best camping trips we’ve ever had. The memory of it can still soften the edges of my day. I find myself staring out of my office window over a bleak horizon of snow-dusted buildings and savouring the memory of the sound of the Ram River rushing past our tent, the mist that rose from the river in the morning, the Northern Lights that swelled and sparkled over the tree studded mountains at night. And then, working in a stuffy office is not nearly so claustrophobic because there will be another summer, another adventure, the secrets of another river revealed.

Road Trip

The Ram River

Hiking

Inukshuk

Biking

Chillin’

September 2006

September 2006