Horses and a Cat

Bridlewood Farm (overnight 8/3).  Beautiful, early morning light.

  This picture is of a hungry barn cat that did everything it possibly could to stow away and be rescued by us.  She was seriously undernourished and bony. When I began working on dinner, we kicked her out and closed the van doors. She promptly jumped in through the window. Put her out again and ran the windows up, leaving a gap of no more than 4 inches . She lept, but couldn't make it, and slid back down, smearing muddy feet on the glass. Her next move was to settle down on the hood and watch us through the windshield. Finally, she jumped up and was stomping around on the roof. Next thing I noticed, she was coming down from the roof, up-side-down, head-first, to squeeze through the top of the window. Marvin opened the door, grabbed her and roughly tossed her out. That frightened her, and we didn't see her again until the next morning. I fed her, of course, as we left. I wish we could have rescued her, fed her properly, but it wouldn't work....wrong time, wrong place. Regrets.

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Every day has its story.  At Meriweather Park, we were surprised to learn that our Camp Host, Ian Curlewis, was an Aussie sailor. He said he used to deliver the big schooners from the Med to the Caribbean for years.  We hadn't met before, but discovered we had mutual friends in the Virgin Islands----Manfred, the sailmaker on Water Island, and our St. John neighbors, Silvia and Augie Hollen.  Consider the odds of encountering each other in the middle of TN.  Who woulda thought it??


With his directions, we headed into the town of Holenvald in search of the "storefront" for the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary. We found the building, but it was closed. Too bad... The elephants were rescued from circuses and zoos from around the country. Ian had described a room with a series of closed-circuit video cams focused on the elephants in their retreat, resting and living out the remainder of their lives in peaceful retirement. Certainly it was an unusual and unexpected element in the TN countryside.