A cat needs a good home by winter. He’s living the life of Riley now, but he will need to find some place warmer come winter.
Life on a farm during an economic downturn always brings the same thing, people dumping pets off. They don’t want to pay the fees at a shelter and can’t afford to feed/neuter/whatever so they take a trip to the country and dump them off. Usually it is the dogs and the coyotes kill them first night. We’ve got a really bad coyote problem out here.
People tell themselves the lie. “Oh the farmers will take care of them, they have lots of animals.” No, we don’t. When I was a child every farm had livestock, very few do now. Too many regulations combined with too little profit. Let’s not forget that kids are just (&)(*&ing lazy. They aren’t getting up to do chores at 5 a.m. every day and doing them again after supper. Can’t look up from their imbecile phones long enough for that.
I wrote about another cat someone dumped off in 2016. It had obviously been a house cat. I think I saw the car that dropped it off, but not enough for a plate or good description. You could still see the impression in the fur where they took the flea & tick collar off. It had no idea how to survive and a huge thunderstorm was rolling in. Yeah, people are assholes. Thankfully my neighbor was wanting a cat to help with mice and amazingly, Joseph-Tom really liked killing mice. Odd for a male kitty.
Some time before Easter another unwashed rectal sphincter dropped this cat off.
It hid out in the equipment sheds feeding on baby rabbits for a month or two. I was finding tufts of bunny skin inside the sheds. At first I thought the family of ferrets that shows up each spring was just holding tabs. The gap in the back is only big enough to let a medium sized bunny in. Many of the baby bunnies had made themselves nests in my shed to hide out from the coyotes. (I told you we have a really bad coyote problem.) They weren’t destroying anything so I didn’t mind.
About a month after that I got a glimpse of a black tail when I went into the newest shed. It was just a flash. I couldn’t tell how thick it was. My biggest fear was skunk but there was no odor in the shed. I had gone into the shed because I needed to spend a few days working on the forklift. That’s when I heard the first “meow.”
Growing up on a farm you can tell a “barn kitty” from a house kitty. The males that go farm to farm arrive beat up. Other males don’t want them messing with their females. There is also the occasional dog they tangle with. This cat had perfect fur. It was friendly. Once I gave it some left-over chicken to eat it was absolutely demanding about getting some love sponging.
I made him a little bed out of a box with some packing paper and a couple of old towels and put it up on the deck in my shed. He seemed to be sleeping up there when I would go feed him in the morning. Since then he has found the lawnmower seats, the old recliner in the block shed, and some shelves that are high enough off the ground.
He has not lost his fascination for killing and eating bunny rabbits. He’s even got pretty good at sparrows and other birds. He kills but does not eat mice, I just find them lying around outside.
How this cat has lived this long I will never understand. He goes over to my brother’s place (where I thought he would stay because there are females). He goes to my neighbor just up the rode and thins out her rabbit population. Twice now he has opened the cat door and went into her house to pick a fight with Joseph-Tom. (Joseph-Tom is a lover, not a fighter.)
This cat has been ranging about a mile in each direction. Every day when I go for my two mile walk I see huge piles of coyote poop on the road. How he is getting around them I will never know. These piles are large and fresh enough that I’ve thought about getting a carry permit so I can buy an carry a little .22 caliber handgun. If they are close you don’t need a cannon, just the smell of powder to turn them around.
At any rate, this cat needs a good home come winter.
