No one around the farm can exactly remember when or how Blackstone came to the barn. He is a big black and white cat, very gentle, fixed and a traveling man. He disappeared about 3 or 4 years ago and I had found he had taken up residence down at Rosy Andrews, aged 92.  The Andrews farm used to milk 52 cows a day when her brother Jim was a young man but they stopped farming in the 1960s. Recently Rosy moved to the Fountains an assisted living facility about 5 miles away and Blackstone was left without someone to take care of him.

I went down to the farm and found him waiting on the porch for Rosy, so I picked him up and brought him home. He and Gerlinda started hissing at each other but they seem to have signed a non aggression pact and Blackstone a superb mouser is back at work, eating and prowling like he used to.

There are no guarantees he’ll stick  around but we haven’t seen the last of Blackstone, that I can assure you.