Yep, been gone a long time. I last posted on the last day of last year, so I suppose it hasn't been that long, but it sure feels like it. I've been busy with eldercare, my Etsy shop, plus my casual job is now permanent part-time (and as permanent is getting rare these days I guess I can't complain about it too much, snort), so this blog (and commenting on others) was put on the backburner for a bit. But I didn't want anyone to fear I'd completely disappeared, so thought I'd pop in for a spell and talk about cows coming home.
The title of this post is an idiom of course, and it's always struck me as odd that for a species who tries to deny its animalness as strongly as we do, animal references litter our linguistic landscape as often as factory farms dot the physical one. Sadly, while some cows may indeed have come home when the colloquial phrase was first coined, cows haven't been coming home for a long time. Factory farms aren't home by any stretch of the imagination, and you certainly can't talk about "coming home" when you can't even leave in the first place. So I was happy to see, and happy to share, a couple of instances where we CAN talk about genuinely happy cows and cows coming home. Home to safety, warmth, and comfort.
The following cows (in case you haven't seen them yet) are joyful indeed, and remind us of why happy cows (unless living in a sanctuary) are usually found only within scare quotes:
Then, there's Sweety, who truly has come home to not only find warmth and safety, but also genuine friendship:
This, my friends, is what love (rather than the saccharine slop dished up by the media) is really all about. More about actions than words, and never species-specific. So find your true heart this Valentine's Day, and go vegan if you haven't already. :)
