Day before yesterday old Mama Kitty didn't show up. I went outside several times looking for her, but she never showed. I assumed she was killed by whatever creature hurt my Blue cat, and he's gone.
If you did a search for Mama Kitty on my blog, you would find half-a-dozen times I thought she had died. Once she was gone about a week, and it wasn't to find a lover, because I had neutered her by then.
This morning here she was, with spiderwebs on one ear; maybe she found a safer place to sleep... who knows.
I don't ever want another inside-outside cat. But I saw something on Facebook that made me consider a different way to have a cat. In fact, it's the only way I ever had cats, most of my life. Barn cats!
Cats are located in Odessa (35 min east of KC), but we can arrange a place to meet once they are healed up and ready to go to their new homes.
Yes, something might hurt them. They may die. But I won't be heartbroken if it happens. You'd be surprised how many barn cats I've lost in my life. Of course it makes me sad, but life goes on just fine. A neighbor dog killed one mama kitty, years ago. We had an older neighbor lady once who fed all the cats that came around, and one of my cats decided to move over there.
Most of my missing cats just disappeared, and I never knew what happened; so if I would start feeling sad about it, I'd just tell myself somebody probably took it in, or it ran away... and I did a good thing, trying to give it a home.
If I can get a couple of them to stay, I'll have a replacement or two for Mama Kitty when she dies. She's 14 years old now, half blind and half deaf. But she seems to be hanging in there.
We've had a lot of "barn" cats over the years. Although none ever lived the life expectancy of a house cat, we had many that pushed a decade. We always had to be wary this time of year because they liked to sleep on farm equipment overnight, still warm from the previous day's harvest. Unfortunately a few met tragic ends as a result.
ReplyDeleteI had just never had a cat that came inside the house until my gray cat we put down recently. That's why I took it so hard. When they are barn cats, they don't seem like part of the family. They are more like part of the livestock. And truly, my old cat doesn't get mice any more, I'm sure. She just lays on the seat of an old Farmall tractor in the garage all day. There was one time we were without any cats for some months, and the whole barn smelled "mousey".
DeleteIt sounds like you need a couple barn cats. It would be a good compromise--having cats around yet not getting as attached as you did to Blue.
ReplyDeleteA cautionary tale. Some years ago a family just outside of town had quite a few barn cats. Rabies spread throughout the colony. The owners were bit and had to undergo treatment, and all of the cats had to be destroyed.
ReplyDeleteI left the "anonymous" comment about rabies accidentally...just so you know
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