I wasn’t happy to find out that whoever owns the field behind our house planted corn there this year. I immediately thought of my traumatic childhood experience which I suffered when I secretly watched the horror Children of the Corn. As you could guess, I was traumatised for life.

For several months, I’ve been watching with disdain the corn behind the house grow fast. I made an ill-thought attempt to cope with my fear of corn by re-watching the now-ancient above mentioned horror set in the middle of nowhere in a cornfield, exactly where I live. I made myself some popcorn to go with the corn. As you would guess, I was traumatised again.

The film is hilariously old-fashioned, but one or two moments in the cornfield still scared me so that I choked on my popcorn. The first fright came when the hero walks in the cornfield to explore because he naively thinks that when he survived Vietnam, he can survive the corn. *spoiler* He was wrong. *end of spoiler* I gasped when a bloody teenager loomed above the man unexpectedly. When I say “bloody”, I don’t mean it as an expletive, I mean actually covered in blood. There were several more popcorn-choking moments, but I shall not expand on these because I’m trying to supress my memory of them.

In the depths of utmost despair, I made yet another ill-advised attempt to cope with the corn and went out in the field to walk behind the rows of the then-knee-high plants. I was thinking the worst that can happen is that the owner of the field will appear and yell at me to get the hell out of his crops. My trip was unadventurous and disappointing.

Meanwhile, the corn has grown about as high as my chest. This is my best guess, I don’t dare to come anywhere near it. My two cats think otherwise, much to my dismay. In summer they like to roam outside of the familiar limits of the garden and they stealthily sneak out under the fence. The other day they happily ate what I gave them, washed themselves and one by one casually retired in the furthermost part of the garden.

After a while, Paw, the big black older cat, went out and disappeared in the corn. I was neither surprised nor excessively worried; she’s a tough girl, this one. But when I saw Ella, my little silly junior, follow in trail, I hurriedly open the window and screamed in her direction: “Ella, are you kidding me?!” She couldn’t hear me, but the neighbours did. I assume this incident only cemented their unfavourable opinion regarding my mental health.

Both cats returned from their adventure safe, sound and with spoils of war. I collected the several dead field hamsters that they dropped on the mat and advised the cats that they’d better hunt for birds because unlike hamsters, birds bother me with their noise. I apologise to all birdophiles and ornithologists. The moral of this story is: if you ever wondered who it is that walks behind the rows of corn, it’s my cats.