Sideways Cat

Just one of many animal stories I have used in my Nurse Hal Among The Amish series. If I had paraskevidekatriaphobia, a word I can't pronounce, which happens on Friday the 13th during a full moon, I'd have sent Harold to shut the chickens up Friday night. Weather man says it will be 30 years before Friday the 13th and a full moon happen on the same night. So it is a circumstance so rare we rarely hear of anyone who had bad luck. I'm just glad I didn't miss the pleasant, late summer evening which reminds me how much I love living where we do. Sideways cat was waiting on the back door step as usual to escort me to the chicken house. I didn't bother to tell her I found my way there and back all last week without her when she took off on vacation. I'd wondered what she was up to and supposed she was looking for better living conditions than a barn and plenty of cat food handy. Since she's back, I suspect she found we are the only ones in the neighborhood that doesn't have dogs. Besides, the cat food buffet is open all the time in our barn. It was a cool 65 degrees and no wind at seven forty five. In the middle of June, I had to wait until nine twenty. I imagine the farmers started the saying going to bed with the chickens back in the day when they worked from dawn to dusk without the aid of headlights. At dusk, it's bedtime for chickens no matter what a clock says, and at daylight, the roosters are crowing let us out. For some reason, that night Odd Man roosted under the bench on the front porch. He may have had a narrow escape from a raccoon or possum, or he has paraskevidekatriaphobia and was just playing it safe by hiding. The peaceful quiet clued me in that I no longer heard the deafening buzz o f locusts. I'm not missing the demise of those fortune tellers of cold weather. What I did notice was the peeper frogs, that sing in a high pitch choir each spring to tell us warm weather is coming, have now moved from the pine tree grove into the hayfield. I don't know what they are trying to tell us about fall. I understand these inch and a half frogs can be heard from a mile away. I believe it, and the song is not nearly as pretty when the tiny frog is giving a distress call by our upstairs bedroom door in the middle of the night, but that's another story. Sideways cat stopped to get a drink out of the chicken trough while I shut the hen house door. Being an escort for me must be thirsty work. She watched me come toward her and went through the gate hole ahead of me, headed for the house. To the west, the sun had disappeared over the fiery horizon, and to the east, peeking over the corn field was the amber full moon that kept the night lit for all the chicken predators. We passed under the butternut tree just as a sparrow let out a loud cheep and rustled leaves as it settled down to roost. I'm thinking it was a sparrow anyway. All the pretty song birds have migrated already. Sideways cat twisted her neck, turned her head over as only she can do and stared into the tree with her tail twitching, but she kept going. Once we reached the back door, her job was done. She turned and headed back to the tree, thinking she might get a snack on her night hunt now that the sparrow was in his roosting stupor. She has learned her lesson. This is a safer hunt than the ones in the ditches or on the road. Why do I call her Sideways Cat. It's because her head, cocked sideways, is always in front of my left foot and her back end is in front of my right foot. Harold thought maybe on one of her night hunts a couple of years ago she was hit by a car. I'm never sure which direction to go around her so she doesn't trip me. It's safer to let her she lead and I follow.