Sheila Garrett says:

They were born on the same day. Storm, of course, was on his feet and moving within two hours but Tibbet took two weeks before he crawled out of the nest behind the hay bales and it was another month before he made it down out of the loft, but after that the pair were inseparable.

It was funny at first to see the leggy colt sproinging around the tiny kitten or Tibbet sprinting all of fifteen feet while Storm raced across the pasture. But we all stared in amazement the first time we saw that three month old kitten on top of Storm, claws dug into his bristly mane, as the colt walked carefully out of the barn, trying not to unseat his friend. And of course it wasn’t long before they were both racing across the pasture, Tibbet going faster and farther than any barn cat had ever been.

Life goes on though and routine training milestones come and go. Our horses are Andalusians, destined for either cattle work or dressage, and both require excellent balance and agility. So we send all our yearlings to huge mountain pastures where they run free for two years developing those skills and learning to be horses.

That’s when we found Tibbet was gone. We searched the barn of course, until one of the hands who had taken the yearlings out thought he might have seen the cat on Storm as they ran off into the pasture. We went back to the pasture to try and find him to bring him home but then we couldn’t find either one of them.

We did finally find them eventually. Two months before we were due to bring the three year olds back to the farm one of the hands spotted Storm with binoculars across the valley on another mountain.

I wish those two could talk. Tibbet was as skinny as a rake and missing an eye with a scarred cheek while Storm had a full set of scars down his ribs and haunch. The only thing we can figure out was a cougar must have tried to ambush Storm and gotten quite a surprise when Tibbet was right there in his face. We won’t ever try to separate those two again.

Leigh Kimmel says:

I grew up in Appleton, where my father was involved with projects he couldn’t talk about. Now and again, he’d bring home an animal, usually a dog, that we were to train and keep around the house. But never for long, because he’d always have to take the creature back to the lab for one reason or another.

After a few times, I stopped letting myself get attached to them. I’d go through the checklists, do all the activities we were supposed to, but nothing else. No more trying to sneak a dog into my bedroom for the night, or playing fetch in the back yard Just Because. It was only a matter of time before the latest dog would have to go back to the lab and I’d never see it again, and I was tired of having my heart ripped up again and again.

Dad must’ve picked up on it, because I overheard him remarking to Mom that maybe it was time to rethink doing the home testing, now that I didn’t seem to be into it as much any more. Mom was the one who pointed out that you can only break a kid’s heart so many times before the kid stops even trying to attach. But then she was the former Army brat, whose dad would get a new assignment just about the time she’d finally made an actual friend in her last school. She’d told me that even after she married Dad and settled down, it was often easier to just let neighbors stay acquaintances than risk letting it develop into actual friendship, lest it be whisked away as well. And that was years after they’d settled down and even bought a house.

And then this little gray tabby kitten showed up on our doorstep. Not one of the animals from the lab, but a stray that must’ve been pushed out of the nest by its mama because it was getting too old to nurse any more and another litter was coming along. But I was still young enough that I didn’t know that side of alley cat life, and I just saw this adorable little furball and realized he could be mine — and he wouldn’t have to go back to the lab like all the other animals.

Apparently Dad must’ve talked to some of his supervisors and gotten switched to a different program, because a few weeks later he came home with a half-grown German Shepherd pup. Toby was going to be staying with us long-term, growing up with me, and with Greyling, as I’d named the kitten.

For the next eight years, we romped together — and Toby was actually very good about playing gently with Greyling, as if he understood that a cat was smaller and weaker, but also formidably armed. Sure, there were some special tests we had to do with Toby, certain things we had to train him to do, and sometimes Dad had to take him to the lab for evaluations. But every evening he came back home with Dad, just as he’d promised and Toby would go straight to Greyling, who’d purr in delight to have his “big brother” back.

And then I graduated from high school, and it was off to Madison to start work on a science degree at U of Wisconsin. I could almost feel Toby’s and Greyling’s eyes on me as I climbed into the old DeSoto and we headed off with my worldly possessions in the trunk.

I’d play with them every time I came home on break, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same any more. I think it was in my sophomore year that Greyling just sort of disappeared, and the next year Dad had to take Toby in to the lab for the last time.

In the decades since, we’ve learned a lot about the secret experiments that were going on at the lab where my dad worked. Some of them would never have been allowed if it hadn’t been for Cold War secrecy, and if Tsar Joseph hadn’t opened up the old Soviet genetic engineering laboratory records in the wake of the Miracle of the Lightning Bolt, ours might still be secret. But President Reagan had felt obligated to make a clean breast of America’s work in that field, even if his revelations may well have been the root of our current troubles.