Free Paw Prints in the Moonlight by Denis O'Connor

I must say that on the few occasions that I had to leave him I missed him too since I liked to think that the weekend was a time when both of us would enjoy being together.
    Whenever I was able I would take him with me in the car on weekdays when my work entailed visiting schools to supervise students or when I was delivering cheques to landladies where students were billeted on special practice. On these occasions I would prepare a picnic for us to share and we had some memorable times picnicking in wild and picturesque rural settings of the Scottish Border towns from Duns to Lauder to Selkirk and beyond.
    On one occasion I had parked alongside a row of old trees by a river bank. The car door was open for us to breathe the sweet clean air. Toby set off on a little prowl around. Generally, I still kept Toby on a lead when we went out on our jaunts, but I thought that he wouldn’t venture far. Suddenly I heard sounds of a skirmish and spied a red squirrel’s bushy tail in full flight, with Toby Jug in hot pursuit. The squirrel raced up a tall Scots pine and from a high branch set about scolding not only Toby but me as well. I retrieved my cat, just as he was contemplating a climb up the tree when I got the distinct impression that, far from having murderous intentions, he simply wanted to play as cats do when they chase each other backwards and
forwards. However, I doubt whether the squirrel shared this view as it remained safely in the treetops until we resumed our journey.
    Toby Jug’s naivety was quite ingenuous. I thought that eventually he would mature into a killer cat, although yet again I had my doubts; he had probably become imprinted with too many human sentiments from living so closely with me and not having contact with his mother long enough to learn cat ways and cat lore.
    On one warm spring morning in late May, Toby Jug and I were walking along a hillside path near the rural hamlet of Kirknewton when I stopped to gaze at some horses grazing in the valley below. After a while we continued with our walk. Toby Jug suddenly started pulling hard on his lead. In fact, he pulled so hard that he hurt his throat and we had to stop whilst he endured a fit of coughing. Looking around I saw what had excited his attention. Further along the path there was a grassy green meadow and it was full of rabbits feeding. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘let him have some fun. He’ll soon find out how fast rabbits can run.’
    I slipped his head loose and off he went in a rapid stalking stealthy crawl with much tail swishing and wriggling of his behind. Of course, the rabbits had already spotted him and they fled to their respective burrows long before he got anywhere near them. However, it was then that I realized the mistake I’d made in letting him go because, far from
giving up the chase, Toby Jug kept on going and disappeared down one of the rabbit holes. I raced over to the spot where he’d vanished and, crouching down as low as I could get to the rabbit hole, I began urgently calling him. To no avail.
    Nothing stirred inside the burrow as far as I could tell and I was beginning to feel increasingly alarmed. What if the rabbits ganged up on him? Rabbits could kick and bite, as I knew from experience as a child who had kept one. I wasn’t aware of just how long I spent with my face pressed to that sandy tunnel desperately calling his name when I suddenly became aware of voices above and behind me. I must have presented a strange if not ridiculous sight: a grown man with his head down a rabbit burrow, shouting ‘Toby Jug!’ Easing myself back to my knees I turned around with what must have been a shame-faced grimace and started lamely to explain what had happened when I stopped in jaw-dropping amazement. What I saw was a man standing staring down at me with a wide smirk on his face but what really astonished me was the sight of a second person. She was bending down stroking and