There is a wide gulf, I think, between people who live with animals and people who live with pets. As someone who has both, I sit astride these two realities and am continuously amazed, no, mesmerized by them. Last week, we realized the barn cat we called Flo had moved into the woodshed, and had chosen to live here. She was smart – she zeroed in on Maria – figured out the dogs, got fed. Yesterday we took her to the vet for shots and exams – about $300 worth, I think – and we fixed up some cozy bedding on the roof of the dry and relatively warm woodshed behind the house. Last night we talked about what a great cat she is, and how impressive her campaign to live here was. Everyone at the vet’s wanted to take her home.

I very much admire her smarts, independence and affection.

This morning when we came out to feed her – it was bitterly cold – she was gone. Not in the woodshed where she has been for weeks and where she is already ready to be fed, not on the barn where she came to check out Minnie’s food supply. Sometime between coming home from the vet’s and this morning, something changed. She was run off by a visiting tomcat. Wandered out and into the hands of a predator. Ran out to the road? Looked for another house? Find a family she liked better? Went back to the place she came from?

We do not, of course, know. We may not ever know. She might come back this afternoon. Or in a month or two weeks. Or never. She might be asleep in a warmer shed down the road. I call it the real life of real animals, and it is my work to consider it and share their stories. Living in the country, living with barn cats, there is a completely different sensibility one acquires about animals, and this often pits one part of the animal culture against the other. Animals come and they go, they sometimes do well, they sometimes do not. It is an almost incomprehensible acceptance for people who live with dogs and cats, know where they are every minute, feed and shelter them faithfully, watch them closely. As well as we treat them, pets are, in a sense, our prisoners. They are dependent on us for everything, and have little free choice about how to live. We ask that they give up the lives of animals in exchange for our love and protection. A contract, really.

In the real world of real animals – Rocky, the Old Sheep, Fran the chicken – have free choice, and animals sometimes die. Death is a heresy in much of the companion animal world. We spent billions of dollars, build no-kill shelters, prolong lives through expensive medicines and medical technologies. Death is the maginot line, the place to never to go, the line to never be crossed. For many, death is the moral boundary when it comes to animals – if you prolong it, you are good. If you don’t you are evil.

That is, I suppose, the primary difference between people who live with animals and people who have pets. I live on both sides of the divide – one philosophy for dogs like Lenore and Red and Frieda – we have worked so hard to keep Frieda safe and alive – and another for sheep, donkeys, chickens, and barn cats.

I like Flo, she is a great cat. I hope she is nearby. I hope she returns.

I would not be surprised if she did. I would not be surprised if she did not. People will offer theories about where she is, but none of us knows. That is the mystery of animals, we cannot really enter their world. How ironic that Flo would vanish the morning after we declare our connection with her by taking her to the vet for her shots and perhaps, spaying. When you spend hundreds of dollars on an animal like that, it is a bonding ritual.

And that is the lesson of real animals living real lives of animals in the world: acceptance. Real animals do not live in a no-kill world. They cannot be protected from death or misfortune and given the choice, and given the chance to live the natural lives of animals, they move beyond our ability to control their lives or determine their fates. This is something I accept. Something they have taught me to accept.