For most of my homesteading life, I have always had a bit of an animal entourage that accompanies me throughout my on the homestead work flow. Up here on the ranch that situation has taken on a wild element to it, as I am currently able to see a massive amount of wildlife with just a turn of my head. There's currently a whitetail in the woodshed, a ruby throated humming bird on the chain link fence staring at me with judgment through the window as the feeder is a bit low, several cow birds out the other window yacking at each other, a four point buck under the tree out the other window, and a plethora of does, fawns, geese, and goslings all around my house.
There is, however, only one Jojo.
I swear, I have had a lot of amazing and interesting and even some absolutely crazy cats, but Jojo, she's on another level. When I go on my walks, she goes with me, when I climb on something, she climbs up it too. When I am digging, she is digging, heck, if I run, she runs too.
She's also a very vocal and really, judgmental supervisor. Like, apparently I wasn't spreading the sawdust mulch to her very exacting standards, so she proceeded to flop in front of me, stretch out, bat the sawdust about a bit, and then rolled vigrously.
When I was trying to reorganize the wood shed, she was up in the stacks with me looking at me with a look of both adoration and disdain, a face state that I am reasonably sure that only cats can hold on their faces.
Jojo is almost as big as the corg, and they have a very cordial relationship, with one exception being who gets to lie by me on the bed. That can lead to consternation and talking between the two, but overall they both are very close.
However, the corg is just happy to be everywhere with me. I feel like Jojo is evaluating me. With prejudice. It's a little disconcerting sometimes.
As we were nearing the end of shoveling out the first trailer load of shavings, a thunderstorm hit, and I swear to you the cat jumped up in one of the garden boxes, yowled at me to look at her, and then just stared into my eyes in the most insolent manner.
Of course, me being me, I got down on her level and made Jojo noises in return. I love me a good debate. I told her it wasn't a bad storm, wasn't over us, yet, and we had a bit of time despite the huge rain drops splatting us to get the job done.
My supervisor didn't agree and hopped down and rolled in between my ankles in affectionate distress.
Fine. You shouldn't argue with your supervisors, at least not in a hostile manner, so I reached down, plucked Jojo's insistent floof off the sawdust, and stalked to the house.
The purring loaf on my lap after I got a cup of tea and sat down much approved of my decision.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still amazed it didn't fall into the hands of Sasquatch whilst being toted around the wilderness iPhone.
