Day: October 10, 2014

The Open House begins Saturday and runs through Sunday, but on Friday, we invited the members of the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm to come to the farm in the afternoon and hang out with us. It was wonderful to meet some people I had come to know well online. We went out sheepherding in small groups, Red took the sheep out into the back pasture. It was great to go herding with a group of people. Alice the kitten popped out of that bush in front of Red, I am sorry she is leaving, but it makes good sense.

Tomorrow, breakfast at the Round House with people in town for the Open House, then the Open House begins at ll a.m. I am tired, but it is a good tired. A neighbor has given us permission to use his moved pasture for parking, we have two portable toilets on hand. Maria is swamped with requests to buy the art she has been posting on her website, she is saving it for the Open House visitors. George Forss will be her to take portraits of visitors, Scott Carrino may come by to play some music, I will be giving a talk about “Saving Simon,”  Kate Rantilla will be reading some of Mary Kellogg’s poems in her absence, she has Lyme Disease. We are ready and excited.

People can see Red herd sheep and meet the donkeys.

Alice is spending the night in a crate in Maria’s Studio, where she will spend most, if not all, of the weekend. Almost everything I thought about Alice – she is a beautiful, smart, affectionate and charismatic cat – turned to be wrong. Lisa Dingle, who found her, has found a home for her in her family. I thought Maria would want to keep her – and I guess a part of me wanted to keep her – but I was wrong.

Maria said we have enough animals, and she was also concerned that a white cat like Alice would be an easy target for hawks, owls, foxes and coyotes, who patrol the woods here and can easily spot a white animal. Alice is a charmer, and it was nothing short of miraculous the way she popped out of the bushes and announced herself as Red and the sheep thundered all around here. The cat has class and style.

I thought Maria would want her for sure, but she’s right, we do have enough animals, and Lisa has a great home in mind for her. I was determined not to fall into the gender stereotype – the woman wants the animal, the man grumps that we have enough animals.  I was on the way to tell Maria we ought to keep Alice when the door opened and Maria came in and said she was going home with Lisa. So that’s what will happen. Part of the charm and mystery of loving animals is that almost everything about them – including our own responses to them – is utterly unpredictable.

Maria is calling this cat Alice, I can’t imagine where she came from or how she got here, but I have this gut feeling she belongs here, I don’t really feel like all the back-and-forth about keeping her or not, we have too many animals, etc, I don’t want to play my gender role. She came to use for a reason, and I hope Maria agrees. I think she should be the Schoolhouse Studio cat.

On the eve of the Bedlam Farm Open House, we got an unexpected surprise, I took a group of people from the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm out into the rear pasture to watch Red herd sheep and Lisa Dingle, a member of the group and friend, said she heard a meow coming from a bush in the pasture by the deep woods. We went to explore, and a beautiful white kitten, abot four months old, came running out of the bushes. She seemed friendly, and was starving. I was hoping a member of the group – mostly animal lovers – would rush out and demand to take her home, but nobody did. “I’ll bring her to Maria,” said Lisa, and I thought, “whoops,” here’s trouble. Maria put the kitten into a crate and fed her – she was ravenous – and members of the group rushed out to buy litter, toys, food.

We aren’t sure what to do with her – we  have enough animals – but when I last looked, Maria was calling her Alice and talking to her. She is in a crate in the Schoolhouse Studio while we figure it out. Hard to imagine how she got into the woods, white cats do not last long in the woods around here, they are a ripe target for hawks, coyotes and foxes. It is a remote place for her to have been abandoned, and she showed herself right in front of Red, 30 people, and a bunch of sheep. She is affectionate, clever and active. Animals appear for a reason, and I think she is an omen of some kind. Don’t know what kind.