I know the pun is terrible, but I couldn’t help thinking it to myself!

The long rye cover-crop in the garden is the perfect place for the kitty to hide.  In fact, she seems to revert to an ancient feline ancestor that hunted large game while she is immersed in it.   It’s cool, even when the afternoon sun is hot, and she disappears into it and naps without Clothilde picking her up around the middle or petting her the wrong way.  There is also a healthy population of field mice that provides a decent pastime.

Cloudy, our now 6-month-old Great Pyrenees puppy, is also finding the rye field a lot of fun.  She will sniff around, listening carefully to something scratching around under the dense forage cover, and suddenly leap and land with all four feet, presumably chasing a bothered field mouse back to its burrow.

I was in the milking area the other day, having come for a scoop of kelp for the goats, and stood looking out over the pretty green rye, rippling so beautifully in the wind beneath the blue spring sky.  Cloudy was in the garden, ears cocked forward, pouncing on rustling noises.  She pounced here, then there, and then suddenly there was a horrible yelping noise, and Cloudy was sent backwards in a comical rewind of the leap she had just taken.

The kitty, ears flattened in annoyance and bearing a strong resemblance to Oscar the Grouch, poked her head up out of the rye and glared spitefully.  She was NOT amused to be mistaken for a field mouse!

Cloudy grovelled appropriately, and slunk out of the garden.  Teasel burrowed back into the rye, and finished her nap.