A Breed Apart

No farm would be complete without a few farm cats around. I have quite a few. Occupational hazard as a small animal veterinarian....you accumulate all those that desperately need a home or face extinction. The one advantage I have, however, is the ability to be sure that they are all spayed and neutered and vaccinated for the worst of the cat viruses.

I have seen many farms (and grew up on one) that was not able to provide this service to the cats that came to stay. What would start out as one cat, would quickly turn into seven.....and then 49....and then...well, you get the picture until some horrible virus would sweep through the lot and kill off 90% of them. That was devastating as a kid. That is one of the many reasons that I became a vet - hard to look a dying, beloved kitten named Fred in the face and know that he is being killed by a completely preventable disease without making promises to devote your life to stamping out disease and illness.....and so, several years later and several thousands of dollars poorer, I take on the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

I try to keep it within reason though. After a while it gets to be a little nuts when you can't make it from your car to the front door without tripping over three or four cats all winding around your legs and purring for affection.

The outdoor cats when I was a kid, were scrawny and wormy and scruffy looking. The ones that I have collected now are a beautiful clowder of cats thanks to a little help from modern medicine and good nutrition. Fed twice daily (or they wouldn't let you get a thing done outside) they are all hefty with thick coats in the winter. A few of them are the farm "Originals" - bred and raised here on the farm by a wayward cat named "Slinky" because she never did stay around - Festus, Abby and Shadow are from that original bunch.

Then there is Tigger. I came across him while working as a relief vet. He had been abandoned by his original owner at the clinic - left him to board and then never came back to get him. One of the techs tried to take him home but discovered that he peed on everything. So, Tigger spent approximately two years in a small 2 x 3 foot cage and would be at the clinic every time I came in. One day, I simply couldn't take it anymore and Tigger came home with me. He is every ounce the appreciative cat. He lives to be held and cuddled and will happily drool all over your lap while you hold him. I love to find him lounging among the flowers in the summer and curled up in the straw or hay in the winter. He ambles along with a shuffle that is similar to that of a raccoon, so he has, at times freaked me out in the dark of the night when I see him trotting up behind me.

Frodo found us. No idea where he came from but he was definitely a wild cat when he showed up. I enticed him with food for several days before I brought my net home from work and managed to catch him. He was promptly neutered and vaccinated before being released back into the wilds of our farm. Originally, my son named him "Mittens", but I simply couldn't humiliate the poor boy with that name and when I realized that he has a perfect white ring around the end of his tail, his name became obvious....Frodo- he carries the ring. It took Frodo a while to warm up to us, and I wasn't entirely sure that he would stick around, but then one day he inadvertently got close enough to pet and suddenly he realized what he had been missing all his life - affection! Now, he sees us coming and his tail will shoot straight up and he will run along side with his funny bunny hopping gait and then sidles up to us and flirts until he gets the attention that he seeks.

Raven is our two year old kitten. She is the boss of the lot and most of the other cats hate her. She is very food motivated and will strike fear into any that attempt to eat before she does. Her first winter on the farm she even took on our dog, Gina, a large Golden Retriever/Great Pyrenees mix. Suffice it to say that more blood was lost from Gina than from Raven. Her best, and only friend appears to be Tink. He is the new boy this year. One of a litter of strays that needed a home and after spending the requisite amount of time in my clinic where I completely fell in love with him, he was brought home to the farm. He is as crazy about food as Raven is. He, too, took on Gina over her food bowl and once again, Gina was the one to loose more blood through an impressive scratch to her nose.

What amazes me the most about these little cats is how tough and resilient they are. I always say that when the people of the world ruin it completely with our pollution and atomic bombs, there will be two things left - cockroaches.....and cats. Cats are obligate carnivores which means that they are best suited to getting their protein from meat. Plant material really doesn't do their system any good simply because they don't break it down well. This has never stopped a cat from trying however, and typically they do get a bit of plant material from the prey that they catch . Hungry cats are really not too picky about eating select parts of birds and beasts....they eat all the parts if they are hungry enough. And when they aren't hungry, they bring what's left as a gift for the people in their life that they love most.....never mind that we aren't really into the whole "headless mouse" thing.

Obligate carnivore aside, I have seen these farm cats eat everything from left over soggy cereal to ears of corn. They can be ravenous little animals. I have had visions of falling on my way to the barn and having them quickly devour me.

The biggest problem that we have on this farm is that the great majority of the cats are male. Now, no offense to males of any species, but male cats tend to be very lazy. Most of this crowd finds the warmest, sunniest spot to hang out for the day to wait for the food to be served in the evening. The girls tend to be the ones to take off hunting for a while. Abby was gone for about a month, we had given up on her coming home and then one night I looked down and there she was amid the mob as usual.

Farm cats will often disappear for days or even weeks at a time. You have to have a very relaxed relationship with farm cats because you just never know if it is an extended hunting trip that keeps them away, or if they have gone to the great cat beyond in some unfortunate accident on the road. There are nights when I will know that one or more of the cats didn't come home for dinner and then hear the coyotes off in the distance and I say a silent prayer to whatever god might protect wayward cats. It isn't that I don't love them and wouldn't like to protect them, but I have come to realize that they are a breed onto their own...wild, yet accommodating and affectionate when the mood strikes. I simply co-exist with them and appreciate them when they arrive. There should be more relationships like this in the world.

Sometimes it is nicer not knowing exactly what befalls them. We have found our share of them on the road after an unfortunate encounter with a car or truck. The sudden knowledge stabs right to your core as you realize that one of your friends has been run down. It doesn't matter that "it is only a cat" because to those of us that love them, they are family.

Occasionally, they simply disappear and we don't know where they go. I had a cat on the farm when I was going to vet school named Tanner - he was a big cream colored, bowlegged boy that had been there from the day we bought the farm. Two years into our stay on the farm, he disappeared sometime in early January. I missed him. Not that I depended upon him for anything, but I missed him trailing around after me while I was outside. Cats have a funny way of just wanting to be with you. They don't want to lick your face or play ball like a dog does, they just want to hang out. Generally, they hang out and sleep, but at least they are there for you.

This last fall I was digging potatoes and had to physically move two of them from their warm nests that they had claimed among my potato plants.

Anyway.....back to Tanner.....I was standing outside on sometime near the middle of April, and as I looked across the plowed field I noticed a cat trotting toward the house. He was big and cream colored,....and bowlegged just like.....Tanner! I called his name and the trotting cat broke into a run across the field. It was like The Incredible Journey with me falling to my knees and Tanner running to sit in my lap, purring as though he had never left. I have no idea where he was or what took him away, but I was glad he was home. Glad, and amazed, and awestruck! Four months he was gone! Where did he go and how did he get there? How did he know how to come home? The questions never have answers, they never tell their tales.

I am always sort of flattered that a farm cat would want to spend time with me. They are such amazing animals and I am often in awe of their abilities. They don't need us, they can take or leave humans, they have the ability to hunt and feed themselves easily and yet they seem to enjoy spending time with us. I have a hypothesis that they are as entertained by our crazy human antics as we are by their feline ones and we are both just waiting around to see what the other one might do next.