So I wrote yesterday about Flo squawking to come into the house from the cold – admittedly a total projection, she might just have been yowling for food and this prompted a flood of pleas to take her in, stories of people’s cats and some agonizing with Maria about whether we should – for the first time – bring a barn cat into the house as the temperature plunged below zero. Maria and I fussed about it – we do not wish to have more animals in our home – and then decided to bring a littler box and some food and water into our basement, lined with shelves and crawl spaces and warm. We got a litter bag, put out the food brought down some blankets.

At the afternoon feeding, we went out to get the cats. Maria would bring Minnie, I’d get my new buddy Flo. Maria had no trouble collaring Minnie and bringing her into the basement, but Flo was nowhere to be found. Not in the barn, not in her woodshed, her usual feeding places. Flo always comes out when I call her but it was clear inside of a few minutes that she was gone. I told Maria I was certain she had just gone off to find a warm place and would be home by breakfast. We’ll see, I believe she will. I love barn cats, they are always reminding me that I do not know what is best for them, that they have their own agenda, and are not interested in our arrogant human pleas or projections.

All day I had been receiving messages begging me to let the cats into the house, or thanking me when I said we would and I was reminded yet again that animals do not participate in the certainties and discussions we people have about them. We talk all around them as if we really do know what they want. Isn’t that the definition of cat? They do their own thing. In the meantime, poor Minnie is traumatized, meowing pitifully and trapped in the basement, cut off from her chickens and mice and rats, all because we are sure she feels badly about the cold.

Flo went off to find a good spot, and she is dozing comfortably there right now, I am certain. Or perhaps she has found another human to cajole and cuddle and feed her. I’ll find out soon enough. But either way, our ideas about what she wanted and needed and must have were clearly not her ideas. And good for her. Animals that manage to live their own lives admits all of the smothering and fearful human concerns for them are heroic, and deserve whatever they can find.