I recently received payment for my helljob from June.

I guess helljobs are like giving birth…  The event is awful, but after some time passes, you forget because of the good thing you are holding in your hand.  In my case, that good thing is a paycheck…

Anyway, since I had my paycheck, many things that had gone undone, had to get done, if you know what I mean.

So, I hired the yearly weedwacker guy to come and fight the brown knee-high forest, I bought more supplements than I could ever use (time to stock up) and ordered my winter hay.  Yay!  I love to hoard feeding items.

As Hubby always says, “You may not like to cook but you LOVE to feed!”

He’s right, I do like to feed.

THE HAY ANGEL

The Hay Devil lives in my house.

Actually, he doesn’t live there all the time, just when I ask a particular someone to help with stacking the new hay.  For some reason, that request unleashes the Hay Devil.

Do you have one?

You can recognize them by the heavy sigh that comes after the initial request.  Then, there is no actual answer.  After about 10 minutes of paper shuffling, the Hay Devil rises and brushes past without making eye contact.  You might hear a door slam.

To assuage a Hay Devil, you offer any kind of bribe available.  Extra food, special desserts, car washing, back rubs, foot massages… you name it.  Generally, the bribes are never enough as the payback is constantly regurgitated.  “Remember when I moved your hay…”.  Uh Huh.  I do.

Yup.

Or, if you just don’t want to conjure the ugly beast, go find a Hay Angel and pay them for their service.  Cleaner.  Cheaper in the long run.

 

MY PERSONAL HAY ANGEL

OK, well, he isn’t my personal Hay Angel but I like to think of him that way.  I mean, no one else is around when he comes to stack my hay.  So, I feel like he has come to help me and me alone – for a small fee.  In this case, my Hay Angel made 85 cents per bale.  Now, this sounds like a lot, and it is.  However, you get what you pay for in the Hay Angel category…

No moaning, no fuss, no mess – in fact, the barn is spotless, no aching backs, no ‘cat in the hat’ teetering stacks and no ‘kicked no longer strung’ bales, no tools/knives/hooks buried until Spring, no hay shreds all over the house and above all, no endless bribe remittance.

The Hay Angel is a gift from the Hay gods.

 

 

TOO BAD THE HAY ANGEL HAS NO SUPER POWERS

Unfortunately for the Hay Angel, the Hay Angel has to drive here in a big truck stacked with hay made for a squeeze which doesn’t work in my barn.  I have no loft.  So, he has to dump all the bales into a Lego-like hay mountain of jumbled pieces.

Then, he Pick-Up Sticks the bales until he can move them all, one by one, without tumbling the entire stack.

I’ve watched him.  He makes a hay bale path and rolls the subsequent bales on top of his bale pathway then hefts them all into the stall and up on top of whichever bale came before.

But, the beauty of the Hay Angel is that he actually knows how to stack hay.  Ahem.  I won’t say any more about that…  except, if any of you have ever had hay stacked incorrectly, you and your ankles know EXACTLY what I mean.

And the best part?  He cleans up.  After leaving a very tidy hay stack in the stall, he raked up all the hay tendrils and fallouts into a neat pile that I can scoop into a wheelbarrow and feed to my charges.

Ahhhhhh.

THE BARN KITTY FAIRY

The Barn Kitty Fairy also arrived today!

She email me (yes, the Fairy has email…) and told me that the local shelter was overwhelmed with cats and would I be interested in adopting some unadoptable cats for my barn.

Hmmm.  I did not need any more barn cats.  I have two.  One I only see on the third Tuesday of the month and occasionally on a Saturday (I’m kidding but she is very scarce) and the other has earned the Kitty Gold Medal of Hunting.  I’m actually embarrassed by his skill.  He’s too good.

Just this week, he upped the ante and brought home a rabbit.  Oy.

I’ve seen him jump up from a crouched position and snag a flying jaybird out of the sky.

He is incredible.  He doesn’t need any help or there will be no more woodland creatures left in the neighborhood.

But, I couldn’t say NO.

OK.  Alright.  I’ll take the undesirables.

ME:  “What is wrong with them?”

Angel:  “Well, they are teenagers and have never been handled.”

Me:  “So they are wild.”

Angel:  “Kinda”

Me:  “Can I pet them?”

Angel:  “No but they will come to the front of the cage!”

Me:  “Great!  Bring the misfits right over so they can hate me, too!”

And so she did.

 

KITTENS THAT HISS!

So, now amongst the newly stacked hay, I have a borrowed cage that is set-up better than my guest room.

The Kitty Angel loves her adopted out cats…  She has set them up nicely.  They have a bedroom and a sitting room (with a window).  They have a scratching post, a litter, a water bowl, dry food bowl and wet food bowl as well as assorted toys and hay bale strings dangling from their protective, HUGE, cage.

They hiss at me constantly.

But, I keep singsonging to them and feeding them tiny bits of wet food – which they love.  So, I hope to win their hissy little hearts via Friskies Pate.

In the meantime, Nomar seems to feel the need to bark back at their hissy selves.  He stands outside the stall, legs quaking, staring at them until they dare hiss.  Then, he barks back.  They hiss, he barks, they hunch their backs and spit – Nomar runs away.

Oy.  Now the Barn kitties think they are all that!

Until the next excerpt of As the Kitties Hiss… I leave you with me spat upon but happy with a barn full of fresh FEED and some new cat-ankerous kitties in my barn!

Life is good…

 

 

 HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!

 

 

 

 

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