A Dream, A Figment Of My Imagination Or Reality?

I inherited my parents farm land when they both passed away last year in a car accident. Although I’ve lived my entire life in this house and worked this land, alongside my parents, I am not at all ready to take on the full responsibility on my own. I’m sixteen years old, for Pete’s sake, not old enough to have this all land on my shoulders.

I keep saying my new mantra over and over in my head, “one day at a time, one day at a time.”

I awaken to the sound of my alarm clock, rudely letting me know it is 4am. I peel back my eyelids, against my will, to see that it’s still dark outside. How is it I need to get up before the sun even rises?

Oh that’s right, only the thousand chores that need completing before I can lay my weary head back down on my pillow tonight.

I slowly climb out of bed and pull on my work clothes. Long pants, long sleeve shirt and boots. Thankfully it’s a little nippy this morning as these clothes can make hot work of the chores but better hot than badly sunburnt.

I head out to the barn to milk the cows, which I can hear calling me. On opening the doors, I am surprised to find a stray cat has somehow entered the locked barn and bunked down in the hay bales to keep warm. I lean over to pat her, when I notice the four baby kittens snuffling around her trying to get a feed. Oh, how precious is the circle of life?

I leave Mother cat and kittens be and head over to the cows that need milking. My first set of chores for the day.

After attending to the cows, I head out to the paddocks to feed the horses and check the fence lines are still secure. This takes me most of the day and I start to head back to the house just on dusk.

As I see the barn come into view, I notice the barn doors are open and silently berate myself for not closing them. I best check on the barn animals and close the doors for the night.

As I enter the barn, I notice a large python lazing around near the hay bales that housed the cat and her babies this morning. Oh no, by leaving the barn doors open I have put the cats in danger.

I rush over to the hay bales to see that the cats are gone. I do hope the python has not made a meal of them. I’ve tears running down my face in devastation.

I catch the python and remove it safely in a burlap bag. I jump in the truck with the bag and drive approximately ten kilometres to the back of the property and safely release the python.

As I am driving back to the barn I am adamant I will search for the cats before I allow myself to rest for the day.

I pull up at the barn and once inside I start my search, hoping and praying the cats have survived. I search that barn from top to toe but there are no signs of the mother cat and her kittens.

What I did find, however, was a gorgeous brown barn owl sitting up in the rafters. I have never seen this owl before. I jokingly start talking to it and ask if it knows where the cat and kittens are. I must be loosing my marbles because I swear that barn owl understood what I was saying. Once I stop talking, it responds with a cute, “whoo whoo.”

With a fluttering of its wings, it launches off the rafters and flies out of the barn to land on top of the open barn door. “Whoo whoo,” it calls back at me. I swear it wants me to follow.

I’m thankful I live alone as who talks to a barn owl and insists it understands?

I move towards the door the owl is perched on and wait to see what it will do next. Once I was close the owl takes flight and flies over to the trees, that are the beginning of the bush land, we have left uncleared for the native animals to survive.

“Whoo whoo,” the owl calls to me so I did what any insane person would do and followed it. As I get close, the owl flits to another tree within my line of sight. Never going too far ahead of me that I may loose it.

For the next hour and a half, I follow the numerous, “whoo whoo” the owl is throwing my way. Finally we come across a clearing. Laying across this clearing is a tree that has recently fallen.

The barn owl lands on this fallen tree, looks at me with its signature, “whoo whoo” and hops along the tree trunk, until it stops at a large hole in the tree.

I carefully move closer to the owl, hoping not to scare it away, when I hear mewling sounds coming from the hole in the tree. As I get close enough to look inside, the owl takes flight and flies out of my sight. I guess it figures its job is complete.

Inside the fallen tree was the mother cat and her four kittens, warm, cozy and as alive as can be. I was over the moon and I take off my long sleeve shirt, which I use to carry the cats back to my homestead. I place them in a crate in front of the fire and find some food for Mum to eat.

As for the barn owl. Well I am forever grateful to this bird as I would not have found the cats on my own.

I finish my chores, eat some dinner and climb into bed. When I wake in the morning I remember the chain of events from yesterday and begin to question if that barn owl was really real or just a figment of my imagination.

Maybe it was all a dream!

As I climb out of bed, I hear the mewling of the kittens. Well that is real enough— but was the barn owl also real?

I never saw that barn owl again for as long as I lived and worked that land. As the years have passed by, I began to believe more and more that the barn owl was nothing more than something my subconscious mind had dreamt up but Mother Cat and kittens continued to live with me on the farm for the rest of their days.

They were certainly more than a dream or figment of my imagination.

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