Arena Tracks: Simon the Traveling Cat
I will never deny that I am a cat lover and a lover of a good cat story. My life has been filled with some fine felines, but none more adventurous than my cat Simon.
Simon came to this world in the middle of a busy alley of a horse breeding and training barn. His ne’er-do-well mother simply lay down in the middle of chaos and popped out a few kittens then wandered off, leaving the squirmy little creatures to fend for themselves right in the path traveled by 25+ horses a day. That’s 100 hard and heavy hooves that could have squashed the little family. Perhaps that was her plan all along. Wild as a deer, the fact we even SAW her that day was miraculous, so I gathered up the three little lives, put them in a box and stuck them in the corner of the tack room. I don’t remember much about the other two kittens as they streaked across the barn every now and again, but Simon was born to socialize.
Simon inserted himself into all kinds of daily activities. He might be sitting on the dividing wall by the breeding stocks while the mares were ultrasounded, or perched on the secretary’s desk during a barrel race. My favorite spot I found Simon was wandering the pasture a couple miles from home as he nonchalantly meowed his way up to me as if we both were perfectly suited to be in that place at that time. Simon would climb fences to rub up against your head, and risk his life playing with horses’ tails but his favorite thing to do was sleep. Whether on tractor seats, hay bales or saddles, Simon could always find a nice place to curl up and catch some zzzz’s.
A few years back, a Horse Fair was held in the spring at the Sioux Empire Fairgrounds in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It involved vendors and a variety of horse events, including a barrel race and SDRA Rodeo. Patty Jons, a friend of ours, stopped by our place on her way to the barrel race. We had a nice chat, she rode her horses in the barn and then headed off to Sioux Falls. We weren’t entered in the barrel race, but were going up a couple days later for the SDRA Rodeo slack.
We left for slack before daylight and once in Sioux Falls, I settled in on the top row to video the folks from my trailer. Here came this adorable little girl with curly blonde hair and the sweetest smile. She was dragging (and I do mean DRAGGING) a gray and white cat with her. Loving cats as I do, I smiled as his back legs thumped against the bleacher steps when she climbed them, one hand in her mother’s and the other…”Oh my God! That’s MY CAT.” It was Simon. He was completely and totally content with the strangle-hold that Raelynn Sackett had around his neck and one upper leg. She sat on the bleachers and petted him and he was perfectly happy to be in the middle of the chaos, as long as that sweet little girl was petting him. I made my way to Raelynn to fully confirm it was Simon. I explained the situation to her mother and then retrieved him to take him to my trailer. He didn’t fuss, just let me carry him through the contestants on our way. That’s when the stories started. “That’s the cat they had to chase off the chutes before the rodeo last night.” “That’s the cat that was hunting pigeons in the south arena.” “That’s the cat that was asleep on the tractor seat.” As I walked by Brenda Dieters she said he was too nice of a cat to leave at the Fairgrounds and would have taken him to her house if no one claimed him. Well, I claimed him. Or maybe he claimed me. We can never really be sure.
Later that day I ran into Patty Jons who said she saw something in her manger, but wasn’t completely sure what it was as it was dark when she arrived. Near as we can tell, Simon had taken a nap in the soft hay in the sunshine and just gone along for the ride. He would do the same thing TWO more times. Once ending up in Minnesota and another northwest of Davis. Each time, the kind folks laughed about his hitchhiking skills and met us to retrieve our cat. We wised up a little and started locking him in the mudroom whenever folks were around. Maybe that was Simon’s plan all along. To get in enough trouble OUTSIDE that he ended up INSIDE. Who ever said cats were dumb? Not me.
