A hunting story....

(This is my second post for today--the other one has pictures.)

Abraham Lincoln of the Brookville Daily Photo wrote a story about one of his hunting excursions. Being the wife of a hunter and sister to hunters before that, I could identify with a lot he said. About 5:00 being the witching hour for hunters, or for my husband when he is meeting fellow hunters it is sometimes even earlier. Also, unlike rotten apples to disguise the human smell, hunters now have doe urine. I wouldn't want to mistake that for my perfume, now would I, but that is besides the point.

This is a story of one of my husband's hunting trips. A few years ago he decided to hunt out on property near the orchard where I worked. It actually belonged to the brother of my boss. A day or two before the planned hunting trip, he and his buddy went out to decide where they were going to put their tree stands, and in so doing had to hack out a path through some of the undergrowth.

On the morning of the hunt, they met here before going out there...it is at the most 10 minutes from here. They get out of the truck out there and the farm cat greets them. It is young, not even a year old. Roger pets it just a second and he and his buddy proceed down the path...they get to the 'y' in the path and his buddy goes one way while he goes they other. The cat follows my husband.

He is hunting with bow and arrows, and hunting from a climbing tree stand. So he gets to the tree he has chosen to use, and gets his tree stand situated on it and climbs up the tree. I am not familiar enough with the process to paint a good picture, but it is a tree stand that he does the physical climbing with. It has two parts....one part is the actual seat and the other is the part he stands on....THIS is a video from you tube and does show how his works.

When climbing up to a tree stand, he always ties his bow to a long rope and once he gets up as high as he is going to go, he pulls the bow up with the rope. He gets up and gets situated...he hears this meow. It is still practically dark, so he kind of looks but doesn't see anything. He sits back, and he hears it again! And he can hear it so plain...he does not have the best of hearing. So he gets his flashlight out and bends way over the tree stand while shining it all around and still doesn't see anything.

He sits back again and hears it again! And he felt something on his legs...he looks down at his feet and there sits the kitty! It had sat by his feet as he climbed up the tree. It proceeded to climb up into his arms, purring all the while, and doing the rubbing thing that cats do when they are happy to see you. He held it out at arm's length and dropped it!

Did it run for home you might ask. The answer would be no. It played around the bottom of the tree my husband was in, chasing leaves or anything else that caught it's imagination. After a while of playing, it climbed out onto a dead log and went to sleep!

This is an honest tale; I don't have the imagination to make something like this up. And this is only the tip of the iceberg--things like this continually happen to my husband, my older daughter, and my husband's cousin.

No longer kittens, but still my babies

I tried to get some new photos of the cats the other day, but needless to say they did not cooperate. I do sort of like these....they were out having fun. The collage is from when they were young, followed by Bubbie who is my daughter's cat. He is all about having fun--he likes to play tag/chase through the house. We beat his bottom and take off running and he chase after us. We try to tag him when he sees us but he takes off like a streak of lightening. And so we go till one of us is breathless.

The next in photos is my baby, Cougar, jr. I do not know why, unless it is that he reminds me of my first Cougar but he just totally owns my heart. I am not even sure what it is about him that reminds me of Cougar unless it is the fact that he likes tomatoes, and the first time or two I fixed chili or vegetable soup, he came running. My original Cougar loved anything with tomato flavor.

In the next two comes little sister, PussPuss. She and Cougar are still best of buddies. They don't sleep together as much as they used to, but I think that might be due to it being summer. My husband is still probably her favorite person.

Unlike any other cats I have ever had, these come only when I call and they think it involves food! I still have trouble getting used to this part. My original Cougar came from anywhere when I called his name...he knew the meaning of 'no' and 'get down' to name a few. These cats all look at me as if to say, 'you can't be talking to me' if they even bother to look my way.