We are very conscious that this is a time of acute ups and downs. Everyone we know is surfing the waves of this pandemic: soldiering on one day, feeling a bit defeated the next.
We had our own rollercoaster at HorseBack this week. The down was a horrible one. Our dear little Fluffy, the HorseBack kitten, went missing. She completely disappeared and we had no clue where she might have gone. We didn’t even know where to start looking.
And then, just as we were losing hope, we got a call from the indomitable Liz Robinson of Deeside Cats Protection Scotland Protection. Had we lost a cat? YES, WE HAD!!!
It turned out that Fluffy is a dauntless adventurer. She had hopped into a delivery truck, got a lift to Tarland, and gone to visit a rather surprised lady there, who almost fell over our little fluffball.
Liz was able to reunite us with the wanderer because she was micro-chipped. This means our story had a happy ending. We thank Liz so much. She seems never to sleep, spending all her hours helping the cats of Deeside with untiring devotion. It’s people like her who really make a difference to local communities the length and breadth of the country.
We took a couple of lessons from this little tale. First of all, even when the downs come, there will always be an up to balance them. And secondly, it really is a good idea to micro-chip your pets. Because you never know when a tempting delivery truck will be passing by!

P.S. We wondered whether any of you had your own epic cat stories. We’d love to hear them! We should mention that this is not Fluffy’s first adventure. She’d already managed to hitch a ride to the Co-Op in the village with two of our mentors. They were, as you may imagine, quite startled to see her gazing at them in the rear-view mirror as they headed off to buy groceries.