When Breakfast becomes the Bed

After raking hay from the barn floor, I place it in a tub. It'll be breakfast for Lily, the pony who believes no blade of grass should be wasted.

The barn cats, though, have another idea.

Trick and Roxie snoozing in the tub.

The tub makes a perfectly warm nest when overnight temperatures drop below freezing.

So, I let sleeping cats lie and feed Lily other hay.

Barn cats find many spots to snooze. They settle on top of the hay stack where they can overlook the horse and sheep stalls. Sometimes, they nestle in a crevice between the bales. But their favorite spot is the tub filled with hay. 

As days turn to weeks, their spots in the tub begin to resemble nests. They become deeper and deeper, and now their bodies are level with the hay.

 I no longer consider turning their bed into Lily's breakfast.

In the dead of winter, when days are short, and when pandemic and rioting fill the daily news, I take great comfort in seeing the barn cats curled up and warm in their nests, like two yolks in an egg shell.

I tell the cats they can nest there until mid-March. That's when I'll need that tub to be both bed and breakfast.