This past summer, my mom's cat Tigger passed away at the age of 19. He lived a good long life, and we were pretty impressed that he lived as long as he did considering how much of a dare devil outdoors cat he was, always crossing the street and getting chased by creatures that he really shouldn't bother in our backwoods. A few winters back when his health looked a little down for a bit, I decided to put together a little shelter for him underneath our porch. It was something small but cozy, so that if he ever was locked outside when we weren't home, he'd at least have a place to keep warm in until we got back. He passed away after I had already moved out, so we never took down his little hideaway.
Fast forward a bit, I got an ecstatic text from my mom just the other day, who was really happy to find an unusual guest now kinda living with them under their porch:
This little guy is apparently a young screech owl who has taken up shelter in Tigger's old hideaway under the porch for a bit due to all the snow. My mom says she's spotted the little fella around quite a bit since first discovering him under the porch, when she accidentally startled him away to a little grove of trees in the middle of the lawn. My mother has had a fixation with owls for as long as I can remember, owning all sorts of little owl ornaments and trinkets around the house. Owls are as special to her as foxes are to me. So when she found that this little screech owl had taken residence in Tigger's old shelter and was hanging around just as Tigger did to hunt down the shrews populating the area, it felt to her a bit like Tigger had come back in spirit for a while to bring a little bit of warmth in the midst of the cold winter storms.
It's always the small things that make you remember the happy times in life, isn't it?
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