As my husband was driving home from work one day, he saw a litter of kittens in a ditch. He stopped to check on them, for there were no close houses nearby. Unfortunately, he could only catch one kitten. He bought this kitten home to me and I immediately fell in love with her. As it turned out the timing involved in this kitten coming into my life was perfect. I named her Nala after the daring little female lion cub in The Lion King. This was who she acted like. I could almost hear her as she played with my hand as if it were her favorite toy, and as she pounced on it, saying, “Pinned ya!” “Hah!  Pinned ya again!”

I was going to the hospital soon to have surgery to fix a severe hiatle hernia. What I was hoping to be a quick recovery, turned into a longer recovery period then I had expected.

I am a very active person, and one of my favorite hobbies is riding horses. Just recently, I decided to get into the sport of cutting. This is where the rider and the horse work as a team to separate a calf out of a herd, and are judged on how well both read the movements of the separated calf as it tries to make its way back to the rest of the herd. I never tire of watching a good cutting horse in action as they cleverly separate the calf from the rest of the herd. Before the calf knows what’s going on, the horse is already studying the calf and anticipating its’ every move as the calf says, “I’m going to go there!” and the horse, says oh no your not! The calf then makes a counter offer of saying “Well then I’m going to go here!“, and again the horse says, “Oh no your not!” What a fun game of cat and mouse.

After the surgery, I couldn’t ride a horse for pleasure; leave off ride a cutting horse. I would watch shows on TV that involved horses and horse training and wish that I could at least look at my horses. Even after I was out of the hospital, I wouldn’t be able to see my horses right away because of the time it would take for my recovery to be complete.