Being a city girl, homestead life has thrown a few surprises my way. FARM CATS would be one of them. The problem is, us ‘city folk’ think of these farm cats as our pets. We love on them, spoil them, cuddle them, feed them, and take them to the vet. Country folk consider them a necessary addition to the farm, but probably not so much pets.
Hard Lessons
We’ve learned there is good reason for this. DAY ONE (moving day) we learned our first hard lesson. We inherited 4 farm cats from the previous owners. As we were loading some things in the barn, we found ‘Thunder’ the big orange tabby resting forever in the hay. It was sad, but we hadn’t gotten to know him so we gave him a proper burial amidst all our moving chaos and moved on. Not long after, ‘Melman’ wandered off and decided to live somewhere else. We aren’t exactly sure why, but we guess it’s probably because he was the ‘barn cat’ and we decided to lock him out of the barn to keep his turds and barf off everything. A couple months later we found ‘Lightning’ mysteriously laying in the grassy lawn.
We decided to start planting trees for all our deceased friends.
Kittens
At this point, Chocolate was our only feline friend who was still living. The kids were BEGGING for a kitten, so we asked around and found a few. Enter ‘Vanilla’, ‘Moose’ and ‘Squirrel’ (whose name was actually ‘Swirl’ to go with our ice cream theme, but our little 3 year old friend always said ‘Squirrel’ instead and it stuck). We were in love with them. And, even though they were definitely NOT coming in the house, we gave them a special little shelter and locked them in a kennel at night to keep them safe from the coyotes and other predators.
Soon after bringing them home, Moose started coughing. We thought it was normal, maybe a hairball or something… a couple days later he was not looking so good. I rushed him to the emergency vet and they did all kinds of tests. In the end, we took him home and fed him milk from a syringe every couple hours while he rested indoors in a kennel. He did not make it through the second night.
The Moose tree was planted.
Shortly after that, Squirrel got similar symptoms. We nursed her through the night, only to lose her the next day.
The Squirrel tree was planted.
We were back to our trusty ‘Chocolate’ and his new companion ‘Vanilla’. Both the sweetest kitties ever… but the boys were itching for more, so we asked around and ended up getting ‘Sherbert’. He was an indoor cat that needed a bit more space and room to run… he LOVED it at our place and quickly became part of the family. These three were buddies for quite a while. But, when the warmer weather returned and we started to set up the above ground pool, we ran into a problem. We found Sherbert floating in the pool one day after work. This was definitely the most traumatic of all the kitten deaths.
The Sherbie tree was planted.
Again, we asked around to find more farm kitties. A teacher friend of mine said his roommate could get us a couple which resulted in us taking in Herbie and Mango. Not long after, Mango just disappeared. We assumed an eagle or hawk got her, but we really have no idea. Then, Vanilla went missing too. It was a sad couple weeks.
The Vanilla tree and the Mango tree were planted.
We ended up getting two more furry friends, Taco and Rocky. The current foursome enjoys cuddling on our porch and catching mice. We love on them, and treat them like pets… and we DEFINITELY get them neutered. But, we are learning that they might not stick around as long as we would like. I guess we better plan on having a forest of ‘ farm cat trees’!
What lessons have you learned about farm cats? I’d love to hear your comments below.
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