I want to write a book this year – an e-book perhaps – called “Talking To Animals,” or perhaps “Listening To Animals,” and I want to recount my experience paying attention to how animals communicate with us, once we stop telling them (and everybody else) what they are thinking. During the early days of Flo’s conquest of the farm – she had been hiding under the porch and in the woodshed for months before she would come near us, I noticed she began the process of courting me, it seemed like flirting with me. She was telling me I could get close, that she had accepted me, she was breaking through a life-long wariness of cats, they always seemed incomprehensible to me, where dogs always seemed quite comprehensible.

Both of these ideas were projections, I know, issues of my own from my own life. I lay down on the ground across from Flo and showed her my camera, something I do with all of the animals here. You have to work to get animals comfortable around glass and metal up close. She was showing vulnerability and acceptance, offering me affection and trust. I accepted the offer.