On lovely days like today, Maria and I like to sit on the back porch and look at the farm. Lately, we have a visitor. Zip pops up. I scratch him behind the ears, and Maria does her stroking and talking with him. He loves the attention, but not for long. He sits on the table between us, getting some loving from each of us.

In five or ten minutes, he’s spotting something out in the grass he wants to hunt. And he’s gone.

He always manages to get himself in the middle of anything we’re doing, even if it’s just for a few minutes. How fortunate we are to have a Barn Cat like this – no rats anywhere – and how lucky he is to live without being locked in a crate or treated like a helpless child.