Photo by Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com)
I’ve always been fascinated by cats. You may have figured that out by the number of times I mention them.
I used to write newspaper columns about them now and then and one time, a reader wrote a letter to the editor asking Jim Hagarty to stop writing about those stupid cats. One way I knew I lived in a small town is the newspaper, where I worked eight hours a day, printed the letter. Which was written by a guy who lived just down the street from me and with whom I often had long chats.
In any case, I didn’t quit writing about cats. I hope my critic was able to stop reading about them.
Cats enthrall me because when you have them, it is like having a bunch of mini tigers around. They are amazing in every aspect as far as I am concerned and growing up on a farm, I had plenty of opportunities to observe them in action, as we always had lots of them around.
I remember at one point we had 17 cats. Then distemper came around and in a very short period of time, we had exactly zero cats. We had to borrow some from a neighbour to restart the population which had a bigger job than keeping the kids amused. They were tasked with keeping down the numbers of rodents that were skittering around the barn, chewing holes in the granary and eating the grain.
I loved watching a mother cat look after her kittens, carrying them in her mouth by the back of their necks when it was time to find a new place. I remember being sternly warned to not touch the kittens as sometimes the mother would abandon them if a human had messed with them. Abandoned kittens with their eyes still closed had a cruel fate before them.
It was also a thrill to see adult cats hunt down their prey. We had our own real-life nature movies on the biggest screen of all – we just had to go outside to watch them.
Our best mouser and mother cat for that matter was Bobbie, who had the disadvantage of having only three legs but who could run like stink when supper made the mistake of dashing by.
And I remember being sad the day I couldn’t find Bobbie anymore, because I knew what that meant. Cats know when they are going to die and they want to do that in private so they crawl away to the most remote locations to lie down and wait for the end. I believe the instinct is related to preservation of their family. They don’t want to lead predators to their young ones.
But even if they don’t have kittens, the instinct is strong and we pretty much always knew when another one was gone. I hated finding them.
I can’t remember whether or not I ever found Bobbie but I know she disappeared.
Barn cats don’t usually have an easy life but I think in a lot of cases it is a life worth living. Winters are hard on them. They need the warmth of the bigger animals in the barn to keep them alive. They face so many perils from electrocution by electric fence to death by being stepped on by a thousand pound cow in the stable to life-ending maiming by farm machinery they don’t see coming when they are hiding in the long grass waiting for mice.
A barn cat’s average lifespan is about six years; today’s pampered house cats live up to 16 years. The one difference between domestic and stray cats, however, is the wildness of the feral ones. If they don’t want to be caught, forget it. And if you do catch one that didn’t want to be caught, holding it can be like holding the underside of a running lawnmower up to your face.
We didn’t allow cats in the house and it is a very good thing today that my parents can’t see the vet bills my family have paid to maintain the health and wellness of our beloved Mario and Luigi not to mention the cost of the fancy food they swallow each day.
A few months before she died, my mother visited me in the house I was renting and I introduced her to Grumbles, my new pet cat and the first one I’d ever had as a houseguest. “What do you need with a cat?” she asked. When Mom died, that question was answered.
I needed some company and a living being other than myself to look after.
Mom had a great sense of humour but I don’t know what she would have thought of my cat columns. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have written a letter to the editor complaining about them.
©2012 Jim Hagarty
