Barn Cats

 I have found that living in the country on a farm has many benefits not seen with folks living in the city. One advantage (disadvantage?) is the arrival of barn cats. For many years we have lived here with a dog or two and maybe even a house cat for a while but we never had barn cats frequent our farm until maybe five years ago. What usually happens is that a cat will find housing accommodations in one of our out buildings through the winter months and then we end up with kittens in the spring.

For the most part, we either will find homes for them or the mother will take them away. Three years ago the Mom took all of the kittens away except for one. The kitten left behind was very loud in his meowing and I ended up calling him Pansy because he was sounded like such a baby. Through the next two seasons I was able to tame him enough to actually have him let me pet him. He is still with us today.

The downfall of Pansy’s presence seems to be the onslaught of three more cats that want to become residents of our farm. Since the hassle of rehoming the kittens in the spring is a struggle, we have made the decision to neuter the cats that are here. So far we have been able to catch two of the four barn cats, one of them being Pansy. It is somewhat of a burden in doing this because the animal needs to be kept in a crate for 7 days while it heals before releasing the cat back into the wild. Luckily, the Humane society has us on their weekly list and for the last two weeks we have used them for the job. It is not an easy task to catch a wild cat but with the aid of “Have a Heart” traps, I have so far been successful.

I’m sharing this story with you just so you realize the fun things we end up doing in the winter months on the farm. We’re just trying to do our part to slow down the over population of cats out here in the countryside. Wish me luck for this next week. I’m hoping to catch both cats this next week. Till next time, Farmer Steve