Oh lo, how we shall remember these days. Days when those perfectly trained cats did strike out on their own, did shuck off the shackles of loving repression, and hiss in the face of tyranny. In short: they ran away from my brother.

Mom and Dad are in London for a fancy-schmancy programmers conference. Right before they left, we took in another barn cat by the name of Tiki. While she learned where she lived we couldn’t let any of the cats out of the barn. But after a week, it was deemed safe to open the barn doors once again. 

Tiki bravely exited the barn via the alpacas’ paddock and encountered Merlin, who has been on a kill-all-small-animals rampage ever since he met my dog Derby. Tiki quickly decided she’d had enough of the outdoors for one day and went back inside to lounge on hay bales.

Such was not the case for the other three “trained” cats. When my brother tried to call them in for the evening, using dinner as the usual incentive, Squeaky decided to explore the backyard, trying to find a way into the house. Zip crawled up into the chassis of the truck and refused to come out. And Whisper, that trouble maker, led Jare on a merry chase. He ran across the arena and to the back yard, down to the lower barn, through the alpaca turn out and all the way up to the manure pile. Then, he turned around and ran back down the driveway and into the garage.

This is the view from the manure pile. Whisper covered pretty much all the ground in this picture, and then some.

Eventually Jare intimidated Zip out of the chassis and into the barn. Whisper he pulled from the cabinets in the garage, and Squeaky decided it was his idea to go back (the others were getting to eat). Jare is a remarkably good sport about the whole incident. But I don’t anticipate the cats will be let on his watch, ever again.