I went into town today and had this odd sense that people were laughing at me, not in a cruel way, but as if there was a private joke going around that I was not a part of. I am a strong-willed person, I live in my own head and because some people think of me as a celebrity (I don’t ever think of me in that way), they might not tell me what they were thinking. Connie Brooks of Battenkill Books knows me too well to be impressed by me, and she always tells me what she is thinking. “Everyone in town is laughing about you,” she said, “we all know that Minnie is not going outside to be barn cat again, but from reading your blog, you don’t know it yet.”

Connie said many people in my town have been reading about Minnie and getting a good chuckle out of my repeated statements here that Minnie would be returning to her life as a barn cat. “There is no way,” said Connie, “that that cat is going outside again permanently.” I had to laugh, too, it is always interested to have the bubble you live in popped sometimes.

I take Connie’s point. As I write this, Minnie is sprawled out on a dog bed in the living room, Flo is outside in the cold barn. I still think she will return to her life as a barn cat, although I will be the first to acknowledge that the things I think will happen and the things that happen are often distant cousins. Maria thinks Minnie will go outside again also, and we both think that is what she wants to do. Connie just chuckles when I say this, and the cashier at Stewart’s, a local convenience store, just laughed when I said that, she said I was “cute.” And the clerk at the Food Co-Op said she put $ 5 on Minnie retiring as a barn cat and moving into the house, at least for nights. Connie was right, the town is having a good laugh over this.

I think barn cats love their lives, I have never had a barn cat – not once in 15 years – want to come inside, or get inside. But true, when I think of Minnie and Maria snuggled up on the couch each night and remember Minnie, still crippled, blithely taking over the bed of Frieda, a cat and rabbit and raccoon eating hunter, then perhaps I am not really paying attention to what I am seeing.

In all good faith, as I write this, I will tell you Minnie will be returned to her life as a barn cat, I believe it is what she wants and what we want. I also believe it is the best thing for her, the healthiest and most natural thing. But when you are in the middle of something, I know it is quite possible that you just can’t see what everybody else can see. I suppose we’ll know in a week or two whether or not the joke’s on me.