Finally, The REAL Truth About Cats!

I guess I need to place a general warning about this post.  Some of the scenes you are about to see described may be disturbing to some people.  Certainly NOT cat owners.  Cat owners come from a regiment that is fit to fight at the scenes of many battles.



Cleo, who lived to be 20 years old, was the
ultimate bird catcher.

 I have an extraordinarily long history with cats.  Longer than my history with dogs or horses.  A cat was the only house animal my mother would let me keep as a pet for the longest time...hence the reason for my long term fascination.

I wasn't even thinking about covering this subject until I found a dead animal body on our patio this past week, and rescued a chipmunk from the clutches of one of our cats yesterday.  Cats, who are vivisection specialists, often leave their dead kill for us humans to find.  Some say it's to show what good employees they are, others say it's to teach us how to hunt, just like they teach their offspring.  I honestly do not pay my cats to go out and kill things, and I've told them many times that I will not hunt mice ever, no matter how many times they "show me."  Still the bodies show up. 



Emma, the mildest of our cats.  She was simply
a bug catcher.  She lived to the age of 16.

 In the Spring and Summer months, the general kill zone seems to bathe our entire development in a swath of destruction.  I am truly surprised that there are not many Hollywood studios that have capitalized on the pure destruction of cats and produced movies such as:  Night of the Living Dead Cats, Zombie Cats, The Great Cat Massacre, and Scarey Cat Movie. 

The cat swat team arrives en force to terrorize our neighborhood.  These cats come from various armies, including one on the hill not too far away from where we live, where all the cats are feral, and certainly good fodder for a Steven King book.



TD on the left and Oggie on the right.  Oggie was
the largest cat we ever owned.  TD came with our
present house when we purchased it.

 There are generally two factions who think and discuss the topic of "outside" cats.  Some folks believe that cats should stay in the house, some folks believe that cats should only stay outside.  I guess there is also a middle of the road faction, who believe that cats should do both, enjoy the outdoors and have a soft spot to land inside the house when not patrolling their respective areas.

I think it depends on where you live.  If you live in areas where there is alot of traffic, major roadways, large numbers of cat preditors--such as coyotes, fox, large swooping birds--I think making a cat stay inside is probably the best decision for the longevity of the cat.  If you live somewhere similar to where we live--no traffic, no access to traffic, over 200 acres to roam adjacent to our farm, approximately seven acres of farm, etc.--then I believe letting the cats outside to sun themselves, enjoy the greenery (cats do like to eat grass) and just be cats, is a fine idea.



Gus on left and Harry on right.  Best friends.  Both are
the smallest cats we've ever owned.

 Our cats spend most of the summer outside playing or climbing trees.  I always bring them in as dusk settles, and they stay in for the night.  In the winter, you can't get the cats to go outside.  It's too cold and they don't want to step in the snow.  They are not dumb.  They also know that any prey may have moved inside--for example to the barn or garage, and tend to want to be in both those spots just sitting like a statue staring at spots where they may have previously seen some activity.

So, the animal I found on the patio was unidentifiable.  I'm not an animal forensic expert, but I'd say it was a mole or a mouse.  I couldn't really tell because parts were, uh, missing.  Dr. Strangelove had already performed a lobotomy, so the, er, head part was essentially, well......changed.  I've had to build up, over the course of my years of cat ownership, a resistance to wretch violently and add to the messes I find.  Still there are some unexplainable cat things that have occurred, which I find lend to the "personalities" of certain cats we have owned.

For instance, there was Cleo, who used to climb to the top of any bush (I mean ANY bush) and lie in wait just below the surface for a bird to fly close.  She would leap up from the bush like a guerilla warfare agent lying in ambush waiting for the enemy, and grab the bird.  I warned our neighbors, at the time, that no bird feeder could be high enough.  Our one neighbor tried to put their bird feeder on an 18 foot pole that they then placed in a large (12 foot high) bush to protect it.  Watching out my kitchen one day, I saw a white blur of cat leap from the top of the 12 foot bush the extra feet to grab a bird flying to the feeder.  Cleo was also the cat who was stalked by a pair of very large black birds for YEARS.  These birds remembered that she was the cat who robbed their nest of its fledglings, and they would dive bomb her every time she was in the yard.  It got to the point we had to keep her in the house if we wanted to cook out, because the birds would dive so low, they could hit us.

There was also Muffin, who collected the tails of her kills in a makeshift trophy room under the stairs of our front porch when we lived elsewhere.  We discovered them when we had a backed up sewer system, and Roto Rooter had to go under our porch for access.  There were all kinds of mementos under that porch.  It was freakishly scarey.  We continued to love that cat, but we slept with our door closed.

We had another cat that left a rabbit head, in Godfatheresque style, on the welcome mat of our front porch.  I'm not sure what the message was there....perhaps, "change my food, I hate what you are feeding me" or "I hate that new dog you brought home?"

Bootsie, my aunt's cat, who lived with us for a
short time when my aunt had to move.

In catdom, we have owned many types of cats, those described above, as well as the heart extractor, bunny specialist, chipmunk chaser and squirrel stalker.  We've had fixes for all of them, including training one of our dogs to "get the cat" when we heard a bunny's doleful squeal on the property (this was our Australian Shepherd, Phillie, who would dash out the door and chase the cat who would drop the bunny--the bunny would be put in a covered box for about 12 hours until the shock went away and then would be released in a safer place--at least a safer place in my mind).  Our kids, while growing up, knew that a covered box in the spare room was a bunny that needed to be left alone to calm down. 



Church lived with us for 18 months after being
abandoned in an old barn.  She was a very old cat.

 So getting right down to the real truth about cats.....they can be pretty disgusting creatures.  In saving the chipmunk yesterday, I had to stalk my cat Harry without him knowing it, because he would have run off to a place where I'd never find him.  He laid, instead, in the grass.  After he dropped the chipmunk, in order to "play" with it for a while before the big kill, I was able to hone in and grab him to confine him to house arrest.  He already wears the orange striped suit.  I then went back with a pair of gloves and carried the dazed chipmunk back to the wall between our horse paddocks.  It went in gratefully, chirping what I'd like to think is a "thank you."  Now, I dislike chipmunks.  They are cute, but truth be told they are rodents.  And so Harry was simply "doing his job" which is ridding the barn area of rodents who ultimately can create large holes in the flooring around the barn as they set up their tunnel network.  But, I just can't stand by and watch the destruction of a chipmunk, mouse, bunny, or any animal, if I can still intervene.  It's the dilemma of my existence, and of my cat ownership.

When you couple all I've said above with cat hairball technology, you wonder why we own them at all?  Nothing can make you sit up from a dead sleep as fast as a cat wretching a hairball.  That sound is unique in the animal world.  I've perfected a series of "grab and run" moves that allows me to at least get the wretching cat to a cleanable surface, instead of the persian rug.

So why do we own them?  They can be very lovely creatures.  It's the Jekyll and Hyde of cats.  They are smart.  They figure things out.  They learn quick.  They are aloof when they want to be, friendly when they want to be...kind of like us.  When they are friendly, they are cuddly, cute, playful beings.  They keep you company when you are sad (we had a cat named T.D. who knew just how sad I was when one of our dogs crossed the bridge, and he would lay by me every night, much in the same way that particular dog did). They seem to have an inner soul that knows things--both our cats Cleo and Muffin were loved by other families in our neighborhood.  One family had a special couch for Muffin to lay on when she visited them and an older, invalid woman down the street hosted Cleo on the edge of her bed for an afternoon nap a few times a week.  They purr--that most soothing of sounds that shows happiness and true contentment.  I count myself lucky to have fallen asleep to a cat purring on my chest.

Cats are an endless source of enjoyment when they are at their best, and, yes, it is true, they aren't as much work as dogs.  An automatic cat feeder, auto water bowl and litter box, can keep a cat happy for a few days while you make a short jaunt to a B&B or other mini-vacation.  Not so with dogs.

We have two cats that grace our life and our patio right now...Harry and Gus.  We've owned up to five at a time. We've rescued and rehomed three to other unsuspecting cat owners in the last 10 years.  We took in a cat in such bad shape, found in a local barn, that we named her Church, after the cat in Pet Semetary, because she really did look like someone buried her and then she came back to life.  While she only lived with us for 18 months before her past neglected life caught up, she had a fine and grand life in those last months, and began to even look like a cat again.

It's safe to say that I know the real truth about cats and I accept it, I just hate cleaning up after it.

Aarroooooo!