Chuckwagon Adventure: The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Huck Finn on the farm.

"Hello, ma'am. I have your cat," the male voice said on the voicemail message.

My phone was on speaker. G and I exchanged startled looks and burst out laughing in unbelief. Huck Finn was alive and well! With all the intense medical stuff going on lately this piece of news sent our hearts soaring. What a wonderfully startling, unexpected, uplifting event this was!

Let me start at the beginning. Huckleberry Finn and his brother Tom Sawyer were our barn cats on our horse farm in Georgia. Now, G and I are not cat lovers, but we needed a couple of hunting cats to keep the varmints out of our horse barn, so that's how we ended up with two cats. Somehow or other Tom and Huck got under our skin, and we ended up being quite fond of them.

They were half grown, scrappy kittens when we got them. They each managed to get torn up a few times from tangling with critters a bit too large for their size learning the lesson the hard way. Life was good on the farm and eventually they became a good hunting team and best companions. They were the friendliest, most comical and loving, farm-smart pair of barn cats we'd ever met.

In preparation to sell the farm we found homes for our remaining horses. We were down to Gus the Golden, Duncan the Westie and Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Sadly, Tom Sawyer was snatched one night by a coyote.

The rest of us moved into a rental home for a year, and out of necessity we turned Huck Finn into a house cat. He was smart and caught on fast to proper house manners and used a litter box in the garage, but he never lost his wanderlust. He would often jump the seven foot yard fence and disappear for a day of adventure, but he always returned.

Then Gus developed cancer and only Duncan and Huck Finn remained. Once we bought the fifth-wheel we realized that RV life would never suit Huck Finn, so he went to live with G's son Pete and wife Ali. After only three days at the new place Huck the renegade gave Ali the slip and disappeared into the woods never to return.

We were all really crushed and distressed that eleven-year-old Huck Finn's fate might be to live out the end of his life as a stray. Ali set out a live trap in her yard and managed to catch every stray cat in the area except Huck Finn.

Huck Finn escaped wearing a green collar with brown polka dots and a tag bearing his name and my cell phone number. I knew he was skittish of strangers, but I hoped one day out of necessity he would befriend strangers who would call me with news of his location.

The call came thirteen months later. We hopped into the truck and drove one hour and 45 minutes to Carrollton, GA to see if we could retrieve our rascal. We figured he'd be half wild, ragged and skinny, flea and worm infested and hard to get our hands on.

We arrived at the location which turned out to be some sort of half-way house. A bunch of young men lived there together, and they had all been very kind to Huck Finn taking turns feeding him table scraps for the past 2-3 weeks. One of the guys (Casey) who'd finally noticed the tag dangling from Huck's collar was the one who'd left the voicemail.

Huck was sitting on the picnic table in the back yard as big as life not a bit afraid of the guys milling around. His once green collar was now faded out to a white. One of the half-way house guys simply picked him up and placed him in G's arms.

Huck Finn didn't look too bad. In fact, aside from being skinny he looked darned good and seemed pretty tame...until G tried to stuff him in the cat carrier. Off into the woods he fled.

My heart sank. "Lord," I thought, "Did you bring Huck Finn back into our lives to temporarily cheer our hearts just to dash them again?"

We waited. I sat down at the picnic table and talked to Huck Finn as he skulked around the perimeter where woods met yard. I was hoping he recognized my voice and remembered us. Huck edged toward me. I kept coaxing him.

"Nobody moves," I warned.

Huck rubbed up against my leg. I slowly reached down to pet him and worked my hand toward his neck. In a moment I had him by the nape of his neck. We used a butt-first tactic this time to stuff him into the crate and succeeded.

Huck Finn is now an RV cat. He seems to like his new digs. Duncan the Westie and Huck Finn recognized each other straight off. Huck has managed to retain his proper house manners, seems remarkably tame, is clean and uninjured, and I can't find a flea on him! We're fattening him up, and next week the vet will check him over.

Now that we're all back together it's as though time and distance never happened. Huck definitely knows us and is happy to be back in the bosom of our family. It's as though he never left.

If Huck Finn could talk I wonder what sort of adventures he'd tell. I guess he was tired of living on the lam and just decided to surrender.