Murphy

The horses and what they do at Orchard Cottage Riding Stables From the annual Show Day on Sunday 20th. September 1998

Gotzer (the horse, not the rider)

As you know these pages are written by the stables' cats, especially for other cats, and our web friend Sooty Sootington is a town cat and has never seen a horse so we thought we'd begin by explaining that a horse is a half tonne of cat food with metal shoes. Horses are fairly friendly, smell like proper animals (unlike many humans who smell more like flowers and fruit at times), but they are massive so you have to beware. Humans work for cats, and horses in their turn work for humans. We have about 20 or so horses at the stables, ranging from enormous (called ponies) to unbelievably big. The sign in the photo above left says to keep Murphy's door closed at all times; but the humans still come along and open the door and take him out...

Harley	Arthur	Bouncer
Horses, like cats, come in various colours, but we've not seen any true tabby horses patterned like Timmy and few black & white horses are as pretty as Hokey. For sheer pose value Arthur, in the middle above looks fairly good. Amongst the other games they have to play is one called missing the fence. This is where a rider and horse go round a 10 acre field trying not to have to jump some frightening fences. We really can't believe how bad they are at this game: when you have 100 yard wide field why jump over a 2 yard wide fence when you have another 49 yards either side where you can go round it? Timmy says he can jump fences higher than the horses (but he'd have to put his paws on the top) and Hokey says she would just squeeze under the bars.

Rosie

Ebony

Sarbo

On page 2 of horses and courses for the 1998 Show Day (including "falling off" winner).

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