We always had cats when I was a child. We were a cat family.
Where did we get our cats from? Why, the farm, of course. My
grandparents had a farm in the country. They had a big barn with lofts for hay
and a big entryway you could back a huge haywagon into. Below were rooms with
storage bins full of grain for the animals. In the back, on the downside of the
hill where the barn was built, were stalls for the cows. They had these steel
collars to lock onto their necks while they stood at night. During the day they
could graze in the fields, weather and season permitting. A trough was full of
hay and grain and an iron bowl filled with water when they plunged their noses
into it, triggering a valve mechanism. It was a humane way to treat cows like
cattle.
Of course, the rich grain attracted mice, rats, and other
vermin. Lofts full of hay, hay full of stalks and heads full of seeds. Seeds
full of nutrients. And so they had cats, of course. Farm cats. Barn cats. I
remember the cats. My grandfather had an outbuilding we called the Summer kitchen.
Back in the day they used to take on borders during the summer. They had
immigrated from Russia and Poland to New York in the early 1900’s and later
bought the farm in eastern Connecticut. They still had contacts with the city.
People liked to ‘Go to the country’ for the summer. Kind of the early twentieth
century snowbirds. Go live on a farm for a month or so. Rent a room. Kitchen
privileges. Get away from the rat race!
Part of the package was kitchen privileges. The farmhouse
had its own kitchen, which was there for the use of my grandparents and their
children. There were rooms upstairs for the lodgers. And an outbuilding just
beyond the house. The Summer kitchen. Inside, there were two cast iron
cookstoves; One oven, six hot plates, a boiler, and a firebox each. There were
cabinets and work tables. Enough for the lodgers to have a place to cook their
meals and store their supplies.
When I was old enough to understand all this, there were no
more borders. My grandparents were approaching their 70’s and no longer needed
the adjunct income. They still had the stately barn with three or four cows
down on the lower level over the pit where the cow flops were hoed into. It
made excellent fertilizer for my grandmother’s kitchen garden. They had a pig
sty where they put in a few piglets in the spring and took out bacon and pork
in the fall. They had chickens, a breathable distance from the farmhouse, and
cock houses for the roosters to squabble and fight each other. Lilacs grew by
the outhouse. Crab apple trees and concord grapes grew where they could. And so
did the cats.
It’s a farm, of course it has cats! Feral cats. Their job was
to keep down the mice and rats. And not get too friendly with the humans. Which
is where we came in. Whenever we needed a new pet cat, we just talked to
grandpa. Our cat, Bootsie, just died. She was sister to Puss. Puss ‘N Boots!
Puss was getting old and we wanted to have a few more cats, maybe to keep him
company, definitely to keep us so.
“OK,” Grampa would say. “I think we have some kittens
growing in the barn.” He would bring us into the barn, by the cathedral like
chamber for the hay lofts, down a narrow staircase, past the cereal bins, and
into some little room off to the side that looked kind of creepy to me. It was
full of spiders and bees’ nests. And in the corner he would show us, behind
some trough or something, a little nest of straw or fabric. And a cat, a momma
cat, cradling her kittens.
“Don’t touch them!” He’d say. Of course we wanted to pick up
the kittens and cradle and coddle and cuddle them. “You’ll get your scent on
them and the mother might reject them and leave them to die. They aren’t ready
yet, but you can take a look every time you come over and decide which ones you
want.”
As far as that, ‘Momma cat rejecting them because of their
scent,’ thing. I remember hearing that you could dab some vanilla or talcum
powder on the mother’s nose and on her babies and she would think they were all
hers. It sounded feasible to me back then. Dubious now.
When the time came, we selected our kitties and took them
home with us, to the lap of luxury. They didn’t know how lucky they were. They
escaped a life of feral working barn cats to one of suburban pampered house
cats. The surplus kittens who were not so needed were not so lucky. The surplus
get drowned. Farm life is cruel.
I haven’t had a cat in five years, and I miss them. So I
decided to get a pair of cats, I wanted to keep up the tradition of getting
them in sets so they would have a little playfriend. My nephew had a momma cat
with a litter of kittens and had asked me if I wanted one. “Sure,” I said. I’ll
take two. Do you have a girl and a boy?” He only had boys. Pity, I liked the
idea of having a brother and a sister.
The day of adoption arrived. I got a cat carrier, litter
box, cat toys, and food. I went to their house and picked up the kittens. Jesse
told me they were kind of skittish. His is a young family with precocious
children, so I just figured it was due to the excitement of the household and
that they would calm down eventually in a more sedated environment. We scooped
up the adoptees and deposited them in the cat carrier, cavernous with two mini
furballs quaking in the back. I brought them to their new home.
Once there I put down the carrier in the living room and
opened it. I waited with a cat toy to amuse them with. Cat’s like their humans
to be amusing. I had gotten a call in the car on my way home, but had hit the
‘reject’ instead of the ‘answer’ button, so, while I awaited the second coming
of kittens, I called back. After about five minutes the kittens ventured out of
the carrier and scooted past me toward the hall. After a while I finished my
conversation and went to find them.
They weren’t anywhere. I looked around, under beds and
sofas, in corners. Nothing. I called them and made kissy noises, to no avail.
Where could they have gotten to? I know you’re scared but you don’t have to act
like war refugees.
I noticed that I had not closed my front door. There is a
screen door and that had closed, so I don’t always close the main door,
especially if I might be going out soon. Could it be…?
The screen door had not latched. Is it possible that they
had looked outside, the door was actually all glass, no screens at all. I
pushed. It opened. Oh, shit. Now began the doubt. Would they have opened the
screen door? Could they have? It’s pretty heavy, being all glass. Kittens
aren’t that strong. Or smart, for that matter. But they are curious. I’d better
check around the house some more. They can’t have figured out how to escape
that quickly. Could they? I had just been on the phone for ten minutes when the
great escape occurred. Right?
Nothing. No sounds, No scurries. No commotion. No cats. Now
I was starting to worry. I went outside and looked around my yard and in my
garage. Maybe they were still hovering around the property. Nope. Back inside
for another futile search and rescue operation. Nope. Not a peep. Not a purr.
Not a pratfall.
Now I was getting panicky. I lost my nephew’s kittens!
I had to go out that evening. I told some people what had
happened and that I felt pretty bad about it. In the evening I came home and
once again did a kitten sweep of the house. Nothing. So I went to bed and
berated myself for my negligence.
Then, as I dozed guiltily, I heard it. A little, “Mew!” My
eyes shot open. Was that real or was it a dream sound you hear when you are
starting to dream but are not quite asleep yet and get woken by it. Was I
hearing in my mind or in my ears? I picked my head up and listened wakefully.
Nothing. I laid back down again.
Again, “Mew!”
Alright. What’s going on here? I went back for another sweep
of the house. Nothing… except. There was cat poop in the litter box! “Al right!
Where the hell are you?” I demanded of no apparent living thing. I put some
food and water out, cleaned the litter box, and went back to bed. The next
morning the food was gone and the box sullied.
“Where are you, you little monsters?!” I demanded of the
living room and proceeded to do another deep search of my habitable house. And
there it was. A love seat that I had not looked under the previous day. It was
low and it did not occur to me that there was much room underneath it, so I had
neglected to check. But of course, kittens don’t take up much space. There,
underneath and way in the back, were two kittens, back to back, looking at me
nonchalantly. “Mew?”
During the day I managed to trap first one, then the other,
and try to make nice. They were both skittish, but one let me hold him in my
lap and pet him without protest, for a few minutes at least. With time he will
probably come around to at least tolerate me. The other hissed and spit and
clawed his way out of my intolerable embrace immediately. I decided then to
call this one Gaslight for the head fake he put me through. I’m not sure what
to call the other one. Norman Bates, maybe?
These two should be back in the barn. Why do I want cats,
again?
