Farm Cats

Living in the country has its share of inconvenience.  Our home on the range is close to nature. Nature can benefit too much from man in some ways.  The hay fields, fields of grain and orchard serve to support life so well it becomes problematic.

There were a few barn cats left behind by the previous occupants.  I made an effort to keep them around by leaving a torn open full bag of cat food. But the transition went on for too long.  (I even threatened to drop the deal at one point.)

When I finally got possession, there was only two half starving cats left. I did my best to feed them back to health, but the next thing I knew there was only one left. It was appearing to be on the upswing and showing some signs of friendliness. Then my dad came by with his usual pack of unruly dogs. Before I knew what was happening, they killed the only remaining cat!

I felt so bad for the struggling creature.  And things got worse with the rodents population unchecked. The field mice started showing up everywhere. And they were taking over the farm house!

My mother gave me a house broken calico.  She was a great mouser and made an immediate improvement.  She would eat the whole mouse except for the head. I would find mouse heads all over the house.

The rodents infestation was still going rampant everywhere else.  Somebody dumped three cats nearby and I was happy to take them on.  They were half starving and part wild when I found them.  I began feeding them regularly and they gained confidence in me.

There was one male and two females.  My first priority was to fix them so that I would not end up with another overpopulation of another sort.  As we got to know them, we'd name them Nina, Scratchy, and Lost Juevos. Nina would grow to deserve my favouritism. I even tried to bring her in the house, but she valued her independence too much for that.

Four healthy, hard working cats are a force to reckon with.  They did an excellent job of maintaining the rodents population. But they were not perfect, and nor did I expect perfection.

On one occasion, an industrious mouse chewed into our pantry from the back wall.  It made a big mess randomly chewing into the contents of our pantry.  Then I realized that it wasn't random; the mouse was selective.  It passed on the marshmallows and sugar puffed cereal crap in favor of the oatmeal, rice, and dried beans! What is this? Some kind of health nut mouse?

When I cleaned out the pantry, I threw all of the contaminated stuff to the chickens.  They would not touch the marshmallows either. And they had to think twice about the sugar puffed crap.  And chickens will just about eat anything. They are a great country alternative to pigs.  Maybe we could learn from the bird brains about eating synthetic food stuffs?

Back to the pantry problem: I found that you can mouse proof a cabinet by lining it with tinfoil type insulation. There's something about tinfoil that mice don't like to chew through?

On another occasion, we had mouse get into the trunk of our car.  When I discovered the mess, I left the lid open and thought to round up the cats for a meeting.  I was planning on demonstrating my expert learned management techniques on negative re-enforcement!  Before I could finish planning my speech about all the immigrant cats out there that wanted their jobs, I turned around to see one of the cats jumping out of the trunk with mouse in mouth.

If there's a second place on the farm for destructive rodents, that would be where I place the pocket gophers.  Mouses can wreak havoc in the house and upon vehicles by chewing through wiring, and building nests in bad places, but gophers can hit you in the pocket too!

They do the most damage where you are trying to flood irrigate.  They dig mounds and tunnels ad the water can get hopelessly lost.  That can result is substantial production losses.  Thankfully, sprinkler irrigation minimizes that problem.  But left unchecked, they populate exponentially and can literally turn a field upside down.  A couple of our cats learned to catch those vermins.

And for third place nuisance, I place all those fruit pecking birds.  They never get their fill on one piece of fruit.  They peck one hole and move on to the next piece.  The bugs take full advantage of the holes in the fruit and the next thing you know, most of the cherries, apricots, peaches, grapes, berries, apples, and pears are rotting on the trees.

When we realized that one of our cats was specializing in birds, we were optimistic.  But out optimism was dashed when we saw her catch a humming bird!  We couldn't translate our prejudice of good birds and bad birds for the cats.  She'd methodically mastered catching the seemingly un-catchable hummingbirds. 

The genius of her evil started by waiting in the shadows of the rose bushes.  She'd wait for the hummingbird to go for the trumpet vine flowers intertwined in the rose bushes.  Patient and perfectly still, she'd wait until the bird got closer to her.  And when the bird stuck its head all the way into the flower, she'd pounce!

We'd shoot her with the bb gun when we saw her under the trumpets, but she just learned to avoid us sneaking around.  We had to trim all but the very highest trumpet flowers to save the hummingbirds.

That's life on the farm.  There are no perfect solutions.  Especially when it's man against nature or nature against nature.  The best we can strive for is our interpretation of balance and coexistence.