Penelope found Renny to be extraordinary in the reach of her mind and living less fully in her body than other llamas did. That fit my sense of reality too. Renny was always watching everything, with intense curiosity.
“Would TEAM help her be in her body more?” I asked. TEAM was a method of working with horses, developed by Linda Tellington-Jones, that was just beginning to be applied to llamas.
“Yes, it could give her some softness.”
“Penelope, her external genitalia seem still quite small to me,” I commented. Renny was about nine months old now.
Penelope paused a moment. “Well, she’s quite boyish,” she said.
We turned back to Blossom. Now that she had seen what was going on, she told Penelope, she was willing to talk. She said she was very impatient to get back in with the other ladies; she felt they needed her there to take charge. She couldn’t see how they could do without her!
That sounded like our Blossom all right. “Is her baby okay?” I asked.
She told Penelope that her baby was fine. She was very confident about being a mother.
“She would like to have lots of babies and boss the whole herd,” Penelope said.
She laughed and added, “I get the sense that Blossom has your number. She likes you, but she has you in your place. She didn’t much like it when you had to work on her abscess, but she understood that it was necessary.”
“Actually, her impatience now is detracting from the wound healing,” Penelope went on, encouraging us to put Blossom back in with the others, or at least to have a common fence line with them, as soon as the vet would okay it.
Lil Bit was next. “This llama is very maternal, and there’s a sense of her being old before her time. She’s a very peaceful animal. All the animals tell me they are happy here. Even Posey says now that she is likely to come around and accept being in her body more.”
We walked down to Thundercloud’s field, adjoining the ladies. “He’s a very complete being who likes being a llama. He’s rather solitary. He likes to meditate. He likes being with you, but there is a certain aloofness from you and from the other animals.”
“We’ve had trouble breeding him. He hasn’t gotten anyone pregnant yet. Is there anything the matter with him?” I asked.
“No, there’s nothing the matter with him. It’s just that nobody ever taught him, and he’s having to experiment and figure it all out for himself. He’s a little embarrassed and doesn’t like you watching.”
Penelope said a few words about our other males. Everyone was content. Whiskers was smart, she commented–correctly–but not as focused as his daughter Renaissance.
We had two cats who lived in the barn, Julio and Who. Julio was friendly and Who wasn’t. In the year we’d had her, I’d scarcely ever been able to touch her. She didn’t appear when we were in the barn, but Penelope was able to communicate with her. I asked if I should try harder to make friends with her. Penelope said, “Who says ‘No, don’t try to relate to me. I have very little use for people and just want to be a wild barn cat. I do my job. I’m a good barn cat.’ ”
