Saturday afternoon and a time for reflection. This story is true and it happened on my farm that I had owned in rural Ontario. It was outside a town called Orangeville and close to a very small town called Grand Valley. The farm was built in 1850 and aside from the two barns and two ponds it now had two dogs that roamed around and two small children.

I don't remember if it was early Spring or Autumn but it was that type of cold morning with a film of fog and windows slightly steamed up. I was at the kitchen sink. A window was in front of me that looked out onto the property. There was a small yard and then an arena that was used, back in the day, to corral horses and such. It had wooden fences that wrapped around it. The small yard was close to the farm house and my children often played out there with their toy dump trucks and cars My daughter, who was still very young, would clutch her power ranger, not all that interested in the 'boys and their toys' routine.She would giggle and play with my dogs, Boo and Frank. they were large dogs and extremely gentle. Boo would lick her face and she would squeal with excitement.

On this morning I think I had, as I would often do, sleep late. When one works as an actor on film sets the down time is usually spent(for me anyway back then) as a time to regenerate and shed whatever character you had just played in a film. I often played bad guys and yeah, it is not something you want creeping into your real life. Perhaps i suffered from an unhealthy ego but i thought of it much like a boxer recuperating from a fight. In any case, it was late morning and I had wandered down to the kitchen and made myself a coffee. Looking out that window I saw my two beautiful munchkins.They looked like such farm kids, in their overalls and boots, hair tousled and unkept. Morgan often wore the cowboy hat i had got him and he loved his authentic vintage cowboy boots. Lily was young, maybe around 2 and half at the time if memory serves me. She adored her big brother and between him and the dogs, wow, she was in heaven on this farm.I had even dug a river for them and had put in a tea house, Lily's tea-house, with tiny delicate plastic cups and saucers that sat on a tiny table. But I am getting ahead of myself and the tea house was usually on days like that, an afternoon excursion where I would pull them both seated in the red wagon, the dogs, galloping beside us, as we headed down through the long grass behind the big barn and to that little creek where they was a candy striped bridge you had to cross to get to Lily's tea-house. Idealistic is an understatement. A kind of Utopia I had created for them based on my love for old films like to Kill A Mockingbird.

BACK UP FOR A SEC Before we had returned to the farm from Los Angeles I had rented my farm to a couple. I had sold my fancy house in Los Angeles to pay an attorney as I was deeply entrenched in a child support case that drained me dry even though I was paying support before an order had been placed. I rationalized at the time, that it was good, my children will grow up on the farm and have a normal healthy upbringing unlike what Los Angeles had to offer.Well this man who had rented the farm had had snakes and had left behind a very large aquarium where he had housed his snakes. I had moved that outside and it sat in the small yard, about 6 feet away from an old wood car garage that I used for tools. I just hadn't gotten around to moving it to one of the barns or throwing it in the junkyard. It sat on a metal table, the top which was about 4 feet off the ground. He must have built that stand and the glass, which was about another 2 feet high. All in all it was close to six feet from the ground up to the top of the glass of the aquarium.

So as I am looking out the kitchen window still groggy from sleep, I notice them both staring at something, like there were frozen. They are staring at that damn aquarium. I see something in the water (about a foot and a half of rain water sat in it) and my God, I see what looked like a new kitten we had recently been given trying to swim ad drowning!!! (I should add here that many cats had lived on that farm with us and almost every-time I would return from being away, either filming or looking for work in Los Angeles) the cats, my wife explained had run off or she didn't know where they were. Yup, cats had a way of disappearing and I didn't question it that much as we lived on a farm, with woods nearby and I always assumed that perhaps another animal had gotten them.This new kitten however, was very little, I think about six to eight weeks old and it was almost dead!! The head appeared to be submerged and only it's tiny arms, slowly moving, were fighting to keep itself moving. To stop fighting would be sure death. The kitten was close to death!!!! I pounded on the window screaming for the kitten. My wife glanced over her should at me. She seemed both surprised to see I was awake plus annoyed. I pointed to the aquarium desperately yelling, "the kitten, the kitten!!!!" I watch while she slowly turned and then walked begrudgingly over to the aquarium and lifted the kitten out. The poor thing, it's belly was almost the size of the rest of her!! Hell, I could see her bloated tummy from the window!!!

I couldn't take it anymore as I raced around the corner, through the tack room and out to the door. Just then, as I rounded the corner and headed out I see her walking slowly towards me, the kitten held in her hands at about her waist level. She looks at me and then drops the kitten onto the concrete slab (old farms would often have a poured concrete slab just outside a door) that was just outside the entry way into the tack room. I was beyond shocked and angry! I couldn't believe it. How could she have done that?? She saw my reaction and she then flippently said, "It's dead anyway", as a way to explain why she dropped that poor thing. Really, I felt like punching her in the head. My children are of course watching all this and I sit on the doorway and scream for towels as I begin gently rubbing that kitten's belly. I rub and rub and rub the belly. My children take all this in. They seem puzzled by my attention to the kitten. I really at the time, did not think I could save it. At one point, after the wife had thrown some towels at me, I said to her, "you never give up on something." The rest of what I said I don't remember but something along the lines of 'if there is still life, there is still hope'. Continued below. Relevant because it deals with child abuse and trauma