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The Slice: A kitten walks into a barn …
The Slice had asked about friendships involving horses and barn cats.
“Well, Maggie’s not exactly a horse,” wrote North Idaho’s Diane Newcomer. “She’s a 47-year-old mule.”
Maggie has a feline friend, a 5-year-old orange mouser named Thunderfoot.
“They have been buddies ever since Thunderfoot was a kitten,” said Newcomer, a retired librarian who lives with her surveyor husband on a ranch near Clark Fork.
They have horses, cattle, and Maggie the white mule.
And then there’s the sturdy cat that got her name from the sound she made scampering across a tin roof as a kitten.
“She joins Maggie for breakfast every day, and most evenings for dinner,” said Newcomer.
Thunderfoot gets right in the mule’s feeding tray and helps herself to some of the grub. Apparently that’s OK with her much larger friend.
“Maggie is not at all troubled by the big orange cat walking in her manger, rubbing against her chin and nibbling her food,” said Newcomer.
She said they have had the mule, who spends her days doing pretty much whatever she wants, for about 25 years. During that time, they have always had cats on the place.
But Newcomer hasn’t seen an interspecies connection like the one between Maggie and Thunderfoot.
“They really are friends,” she said.
Today’s adventure in flunking: Kristi Luttrull got an F in college calculus. But she needed the class to graduate. So she took it again and vaulted to a D-minus. She has theorized that she might not have gotten even that lowest of passing grades but for the fact that she cried in the professor’s office.
Season’s greetings: Here is Georgie Ann Weatherby’s post-Thanksgiving plan.
For saying goodbye to professionals and other acquaintances she might not see again until next year: “Happy Christmas” and “Have a happy 2012.”
For those she knows well and encounters often: “Rock on.”
Today’s Slice question: Can you watch TV or a movie without seeing scenes that remind you of some treasured object that got lost or stolen?