Before we lived in Cornville, we lived in Tucson.  My cat Daniel was born in Tucson several years prior to the events in this story.  Daniel was the only orange striped cat born to a cat named Tabby Abby.  Tabby Abby had a litter of kittens that were all white – all except Daniel who was orange striped.  I begged my mom to let me keep the orange kitten and she finally agreed.  My favorite TV show at the time was Mr. Rogers Neighborhood - because I was in preschool.  If you know Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, you know that there is a character who is an orange cat, a puppet and his name is Daniel Striped Tiger.  Daniel Striped Tiger is one of many puppets who live in The Land of Make Believe.  Some of the other characters are King Friday, Queen Saturday, Prince Tuesday and Lady Elaine.  Daniel Striped Tiger was one of my favorite characters from Mr. Rogers, so, I named my orange cat Daniel.

     Daniel was a really cool cat – he behaved more like a dog that a cat.  He would come when you called him, he would accompany me on my various exploits and missions out in the desert – or fishing down at the creek.  Daniel survived the harsh Arizona landscape – and we went through a lot of cats – the coyotes and rattlesnakes were really hard on the cats!  I have a picture of my college graduation in State College Pennsylvania and Daniel is there in the background – so he survived to a ripe old age and lived his final years as a mostly indoor cat, in the civil and much milder landscape of Pennsylvania.

     Anyway, long story short, I took my traps down to the Oak Creek that ran along the bottom of the pasture and set a couple of traps baited with tuna.  This was the very first time I ever trapped.  The next morning, I got up and checked my traps.  I was excited.  I had my .22 rifle.  As I approached the first trap, I could tell there was something caught and thrashing around in the underbrush.  I moved forward quickly through the brush, my heart pumping like crazy – and you can probably guess what or more precisely who was thrashing around in the trap.  Daniel. 

     Daniel was obviously in distress, his right foreleg caught in the trap and he was kind of limping around in a circle, yowling.  The rest of the memory is kind of a blur. I lay down the rifle, went to Daniel and released him from the trap.  Tears were streaming down my face.  Daniel didn’t try to bite me or scratch me while I pried open the heavy steel jaws of the trap.  He was relatively calm.  I carried Daniel as quickly as I could across the pasture and up to our house where my mom promptly drove us to the animal hospital. He had this ridiculous cast on his leg that went all the way to his shoulder – but eventually, after a few weeks, his leg healed and he was back out following me toward adventure out in the desert.

You can read more from Travis here: http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2015/09/jesus-john-and-daniel-striped...