When Knitting Was a Manly Art

It’s Halloween evening and I’m sitting here with a black cat on my lap.

Port, the Magic Cat, is the last of her litter and is nearly pure black and is called the Magic Cat because she’s nearly invisible at night. Sitting on a window sill, only her eyes and voice give her away.

Eileen worries every Halloween about our black cats and all but Port are safe for the night in the cat room at the back of the garage. She doesn’t get along with the rest of the tribe and spends her days in hiding and her nights in the barn with an occasional visit to the house.

Another loss. We lost another of our elderly sheep this morning. Our oldest ewe, at 11, past quietly sometime after morning feeding. She was lying quietly in the barn when I fed and got up to push her nose into the pile of fresh hay, but we found her dead less than three hours later in the passage between barn and pasture. It appears to have been quick and quiet and I buried her next to the last two. This has been an exceptionaly hard year on animals with 4 losses so far in an increasingly shrinking flock. Not surprising, considering the average age, but still sad.

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