The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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Actually, I don’t even like cats. Well, that’s an overstatement, maybe. I don’t relate to cats as some people do. Yes, we’ve always had farm cats around the barn. That’s a necessity, to keep the mice and rats under control.

The kids would have favorites, and yes, I’d help doctor the sick kittens, but I kept telling myself I didn’t really LIKE them. After all, you can’t actually TEACH a cat anything. They do what they want, pretty much.

We’ve always had a variety of animals and poultry around, but one preliminary rule has always been: no pets in the house. Except, of course, for emergencies. A sick baby donkey, a convalescing rooster who placed second in the fight — a foal that the kids brought into the kitchen to show to Mom. But no REAL house pets.

Cats fall into several categories. (No pun intended). There are outside cats, house cats, barn cats, part-time cats who live somewhere else for a while and then come back. (I think they’re the smart ones, being fed by at least two families).

Our cat population has always consisted largely of barn cats. There’s been a fast turnover, because outside cats in a rural setting are exposed to a lot of dangers. Hawks, owls, coyotes, traffic, disease — a couple of times our cat supply has gotten so low that we had to get a new start from the pound. Other times, we’ve had so many we trapped a load of cats to replenish the barn cat population for a friend’s place. (I tried to catch all the pregnant ones on our place).

Just now, we have plenty of cats. Not an unmanageable number, just about right. I feed them a little dry food and they hunt some and we haven’t had any problems. But, we sure didn’t need any more cats.

I was feeding cattle up at the pasture, a few miles from home when I saw something move in the tall grass. At first I thought it was a rabbit, but then I got a better look. A kitten, just four or five weeks old, it appeared, thin and half starved. It was in a pretty vulnerable area with little cover or concealment and a number of large hawks cruising, looking for a meal. I wondered if somebody had “dumped” the kitten, but I wondered even more how it had survived. I didn’t think it could last until evening, where it was.

While I was trying to convince myself that it wasn’t my problem, the kitten seemed to come to a decision. It loped up to me and started to rub up against my boots, purring loudly. Really a sort of attractive animal, as cats go, I thought. It could be, anyway, if it wasn’t half starved. A sort of calico, which meant it’s a female. Of course, we don’t need any more cats, but ...

She slept on the truck seat all the way home and seemed to fit in with the rest, elbowing her way in to eat with them. But she wasn’t healthy-looking and kept going downhill. Against my better judgment, I took her by the vet’s a few days later. They wanted to know her name for their records. She didn’t have any. I’d just been calling her “kitty.”

“Like ‘Miss Kitty’ in the ‘Gunsmoke’ series?” asked the young woman.

“Yeah, I guess so —”

So, that’s her name. She’s really thrived after being dewormed and getting her shots and all. I’m getting a lot of flak from Edna and the girls about this.

Miss Kitty has just about tripled her weight, I think. She’s sleek and fat and I’ve seen her catch one mouse when I opened a feed bin in the barn. I have kept her on the screen porch while she was convalescing, but no, she’s not going to be a house cat. She is pretty smart, though. Smart enough to spot somebody who’s a soft touch, anyway.

See you down the road.

Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.