However, their lives - and deaths - are prime examples of just how tough farm life can be, even for animals. They endured things I can’t imagine my sweet house cat experiencing. They were tough cats, but sometimes the farm and the elements would win.
One of my earliest memories of the rough life of farm cats is of going out to do chores one cold winter morning only to find a little kitten squished like a pancake in the spot where a cow had been lying. You see, cows are kind of stupid animals, and apparently, so are some new cat moms. The cows were packed tightly in stalls, and they gave off a lot of warmth. Sometimes, a new mother cat would put her kittens in the straw where the cows slept and would then head out to do some hunting. Later, she would come back to find her kittens dead. This happened far too often and was always a little sad, but we started to get used to finding dead kittens and somewhat expected to whenever kittens were born in the colder months.
Death by sleepy cows wasn’t the only kind of death our dear, sweet kittens experienced. I remember another unique death that took place in the winter. One day, we had finished our morning milking and were gathering all the cats to feed them when I realized one of our black cats - I think her name was Lucky - wasn’t there to eat. So I went to locate her and bring her to get some food. When I found her, she was sitting up on a high beam near a window in the barn. I called to her, but she wasn’t responding, so I stepped up to carry her down - only to realize she was frozen! She was in a perfect cat pose, sitting up with her legs under her, looking all majestic, but she had been there far too long. I felt really bad for her, and it made me want to make sure all the cats were kept warm during the cold months. Michigan can be a frigid place, and a barn isn’t all that insulated, so I’m honestly amazed this only happened once.
Probably the most traumatic thing we experienced regarding cat deaths was when a pair of Rottweilers in heat annihilated most of our kittens. It was sometime in the summer, right after most of our females had given birth. There were about 25 kittens in total at the time. Well, these Rottweilers came through and wreaked havoc. It was nighttime, and I remember Tracy and I were freaked out because we could hear the dogs breathing and panting outside our window. It sounded like a demon to us. We made sure all of the doors and windows to our little house were closed and sat away from the windows, like the dogs were going to come in and kill us while we slept. When we finally heard them move away from the house, we felt so relieved and suddenly safe. When we woke up the next morning to start our morning chores, we remembered the night before, and as we were walking to the barn, we noticed that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t until we were close to the entrance of the barn that we started to freak out. There were several dead kittens lying in front of the barn. They were ripped to shreds with their innards all over the place. It looked like a massacre had happened - because it had. There was so much carnage that we started searching the whole farm looking for living kittens and trying to account for all of our precious babies. We soon realized only one kitten had survived, but her mother had died. This mother appeared to be the only mama cat to have protected her young while the rest of the moms had run away. All of these other mothers had lived, but all of their babies had died. Needless to say, my siblings and I were devastated.
Another time, one brave cat jumped up on the grill and grabbed a steak when our mom was looking away. When she turned around to see what had happened, she was furious! She went in the house and grabbed a BB gun, handed it to our brother, Fred, and told him to go shoot the cat. Tracy and I were so upset by this. I mean, we had a whole freezer full of meat, so we could just go get another steak, but Mom didn’t care what we said. She looked at Fred again and told him to go, find the cat and show it who was the boss. She continued grilling the steak while Fred went and did what he was told.
Sometimes, cats would just show up on our property, most likely because they had been dropped off near our driveway. Other times, they just wandered up to our property. Either way, if they looked like they had been dropped off or if they started trouble with our other cats, Mom instructed us to gather them up and dispose of them. She had us put them in grain bags, and then we would drive to some other farm at least 10 miles from our farm. Once there, we would open the bag, and the cat would run out. A few times, the cats showed up back at our farm. If this happened, we were able to keep them. Every time a new cat appeared on the farm, I was so happy to have a new kitty to play with!
One time a poor cat came to us during a bad summer storm via a tree branch! Now let me explain. This storm was laden with high winds and even a tornado. The tornado broke off the branch where this cat was sitting and sent her flying to our farm. We have no idea how far she flew across the skies, but she had to be terrified, so we convinced our mom to let us keep her. After a few days, we realized she was quite a pain. She kept clawing at the window screens of our house, trying to get in, and then we found out she was pregnant! We finally convinced Mom to let her in the back room of the house so she could have her kittens and keep them safe until they were older. We kept the cat there, making sure she had access to go outside when she wanted. Shortly after she had her kittens, Mom decided we no longer needed her, and we were instructed to take her and her kittens far away and drop them off at some other farm. By this time, my siblings and I had gotten attached to them and didn’t want to lose them. So we created a makeshift crate to house her and the kittens until they were older, and then we planned to tell Mom that they had just ventured back to our house. Well, it turns out cats can’t survive without food … . We totally forgot to feed the mama cat for several days, so when we finally went to check on her, we saw she had eaten her kittens! At that point, we figured it was fine to release her since we would only have one cat to feed instead of five.
Many times, kitties were our only friends. We would make up games to play with them while smothering them with our love. One of my favorite games was to get a string and go up and down the aisles behind the cows and around the barn to see how many cats would chase the string and how long they would stay interested. There were times I started with only a couple of cats and ended up with 10 trailing behind me. It felt awesome.
Another time, Fred found a new kitten to be his best friend and wanted to “play” with him. So he began playing a game we called “Shark.” This game consisted of us standing on a large, half-buried gas tank that was no longer in use. There were large crevasses on either side of the tank where we would stand and act like a shark coming up to attack whoever was standing on the tank. If we tagged that person, then they became the shark. Well, one day Fred decided to play this game with his kitten, but he had a large stick to entice the kitten to follow him. It was the same premise as my string, but it was much bigger, and after playing for a bit, he moved too quickly and ended up hitting the kitten and killing him. Fred was pretty distraught to know he had killed his favorite kitten.
Two of our biggest, meanest cats to ever live on the farm had some pretty “creative” names - Brown Nose and Pink Nose. Of course, they had not always been the biggest or the meanest cats, but they had had a rough life that shaped their personalities. When Pink Nose was just a kitten, he got stuck in the gutter - a system used to clean out the cow poop. Fred, Tracy and I were at school at the time he got caught and were devastated to see him when we came home. He looked so bad. His mouth and face were kind of shredded, and parts of his front paws were missing and he was still bleeding pretty badly. The adults told us to leave him alone and he would either heal or die on his own. It took some time, but he eventually healed and went into survival mode. He was constantly picking fights with the other males and trying to prove that he was the dominant male on the farm. He even started to regularly fight his brother, Brown Nose. When male cats fight for dominance, the sound is pretty terrifying, so we just let them work things out themselves. That sometimes meant that there was blood from the weaker ones. Brown Nose wasn’t as mean as his brother, even after he had his own kind of accident. He was just a very BIG cat. One day in the summer, when we had our large fan out, Brown Nose got stuck in it, and it basically skinned him. All the hair was removed from his back, and he looked like he was in bad shape. He eventually healed, but after this incident, he tried to stick to the shadows and rarely would show himself anymore.
One of the most fun things to watch our cats do was learn how to hunt. Cats are born with natural hunting instincts, but you wouldn’t know it from watching some of our cats! So many times we saw them totally give themselves away to birds because they jumped WAY too early and the birds just flew away. But other times, it was amazing to see them actually catch a bird, especially bigger birds like pigeons. Of course, they were constantly catching mice and moles around the farm. However, sometimes they weren’t aware of all the hiding places for mice, so we would help them out. There was a nest of mice living under a pallet that was covered with feed for the cows. Once that feed was gone, Fred, Tracy and I each took two cats in our arms,lifted the pallet with our feet and threw the cats down to catch all the mice. We also helped to kill the mice by stepping on them and then giving them to other cats. I guess that sounds kind of morbid, but it was a lot of fun “hunting” with our cats.
During the winter months it was common to find me hidden in a pile of kitties! I loved to be surrounded by them and their warmth. Yes, they lived rough lives, but they also brought so much happiness to our lives.
