“Shield your eyes”.

Patrick’s voice came through the rich darkness that enveloped our bedroom. I pulled the navy blue sheet up past my forehead and waited for the glare of the overhead light to come through, though I didn’t know why. Wasp in the sheets? He’d have been a bit more, um, colorful with his words had that been the case. But when I heard the familiar fallumph of eight little paws landing on the uncarpeted floor from about bed-height, and the grating of the doorknob connecting with its doorframe hardware after that, I filled in the rest of the story while Patrick finished ushering the kittens downstairs and out the front door. Apparently, they’d snuck upstairs and climbed in with us, ensconced themselves in the lap of supreme luxury while we dozed unawares. Bed-sharing with the felines doesn’t happen in our house. They know it, and must have felt like they’d pulled off the ultimate midnight indulgence.

We’re outnumbered, four to two, by these soft-footed and cunning additions to the family, and still scratch our heads as to how such a circumstance came to pass, given that neither of us had pets growing up or any urgent affinity for cats in particular. When we bought the farm, we barely imagined a humble flock of chickens, and that took some coaxing from a friend wanting to cull his own Golden Comets, along with ample reassurance that they would not claw at our bare legs in the summer when we arrived at the coop with a scoop of grain to scatter. Eventually our city/suburban-bred ignorance gave way to informed sensibility, and within two years, we needed a larger basket to collect the daily bounty as we added Americaunas, Buckeyes, Silver Laced Wyandottes and Austrolorps to our collection.

There were barn cats on the property when we first moved in, and they’d pretty much expanded their definition of “barn” by finding their way into the crawl space beneath the house through a dug-out gap in the foundation’s cinder blocks. But once we claimed this little tottering bungalow as our own, they slowly retreated back to the barns and the meadow and eventually all points west. We were cat-free for two months until a friend asked if we’d be interested in “watching” her tuxedo female, Sunshine, for the summer.

(Important historical context: in the early days, as our city friends and acquaintances learned we’d acquired some land, we found ourselves on the receiving end of a steady stream of “will you take my _________?”, or “I caught the groundhog that was burrowing under my house. Can I release him at your place?” requests that took us well into autumn that first year. People we barely knew would ask to “come out and see the place, bring the kids?”, and in our snarkier moods, we were tempted to reciprocate, asking if we could come over to their house to watch the game on their big screen tv or take a long dip in their hot tub. We declined them all, and gently took hold of the teachable moments each ask presented. This was our home, not a nature preserve, wildlife rescue operation, chicken petting zoo or KOA campground. Relationship defined the possibility of an invitation, not simply the novelty of contrast between our respective living arrangements. Over time, such requests disappeared like the original barn cats).

And speaking of cats, back to our friend and what sounded like a temporary offer of summer Sunshine. She was a dear little thing, and we wanted to be helpful, so agreed to take in a four-legged housemate. On the day of the handoff, as our friend headed back down the long gravel driveway and across the bridge, the words “oh, by the way, she’s pregnant” rang through the air and sealed our fate for the next eighteen years. That was the last time we saw our friend, and Sunshine delivered three separate litters that summer. The first two met untimely ends at the hungry mouths of whatever predators found them in the middle of the night. The last batch of three were born wisely under the rotting floor of the potting shed out back, and I’d probably not have noticed if, at two weeks, they hadn’t poked their tiny heads out from where the floor met the bottom plank of wood on the north-facing wall of the shed. Sunshine tended to them for another week and then disappeared, and who could blame her? Enough of this Fertile Crescent, she probably muttered to herself, and for all we knew, made the long trip back to Coshocton some 55 miles away.

The result of our innocence and hospitality was the tuxedo runt of her last litter, named Scout after the character in To Kill A Mockingbird. He had us charmed and captivated for seventeen years until cancer claimed him. He was the last one with bedroom sleeping privileges, and now rests his bones beneath the shade of the mulberry sapling that grows up through center of the an old dead apple tree trunk situated seven feet from the front porch.

In our twenty years here, stray dogs have crisscrossed the fields looking for permanent residence, but we’re just not dog people (friends, believe me, we’ve tried), and the local no-kill shelter insisted they’d find homes with plenty of room to rabbit-chase their little hearts out. The night we found a Rottweiler and a golden Labrador parked comfortably on the welcome mat, we put the shelter warden’s phone number on speed dial. She’d come and collect another seven dogs in as many years before the traffic across the land settled down.

We’ve grown to understand that such events are literally part of the landscape that has welcomed us. Wild lives and not-so-wild ones live as they do side by side, feeding off of each other and pulling our curiosity onto the porch in the middle of the night, straining our ears to follow unknown sounds making their way across the sky or through the creek bed. We’ve humbly found our place among them, wondering if our shared desire to move so far from a sidewalk-and-postage-stamp-lawn existence was really the RSVP to a much bigger Invitation. I’m glad we accepted, eyes wide open and unshielded for the last twenty years.

May we please stay at least another twenty?