The Lowly Farm Cat

I am not a big cat lover. I don't hate cats, and there have been a few special cats in my life. But, for the most part, I can take them or leave them. My husband, however, adores cats. I have never known a man who loved cats as much as he does. I can look outside at any given minute and will see him walking around with one of our barn cats on his shoulder and, so it seems to me, having some profound conversation with it!
The cats don't get much more than an occassional mention on my blog, so I thought I'd dedicate one whole entry to them...for my husband's sake! They do, after all, perform one very important task on my farm...KILL MICE!
Mrs. Grey is a great mouser. We have had very little trouble with mice in the house since we got her. She hangs out on the deck, under the back porch, in the sheep barn, wherever she knows the nasty little creatures will be lurking.

It looks like she is hunting something up now!

This next cat is Tommy. Tommy is Mrs. Grey's only surviving kitten. Greg was sure he was a boy, and he reminded me of a cat we had when I was a kid. This cat had started life as a girl who we named Darling. But, as she grew older we discovered Darling was a he cat. So we changed his name to Tommy. Funny thing is, our new Tommy, turns out, is really a girl, not a boy! We checked again the other day because hubby was sure he had grown his little boy bits. Sorry, dear...but Tommy is a girl! She looks a lot like her momma.

Next is Padre. At first we called Padre, "Little Blackie". At the time we had Mr. Brown, Mrs. Grey, and Mrs. Black (his momma). So, we stuck with our pattern for awhile, but then we heard a story about a cat called "Father" because of it's all black coat except for a white spot on its "collar". Greg thought we should change his name to "Father", but I wanted to be a bit more original, so we call him "Padre"!

Next up is "Flitch". She is from Mrs. Black's second litter. Again, the only survivor of the first four kittens born here on the farm (the others came already born). She was pretty sick when we found her, so we brought her in, doctored her up, and now she is fine. "Flitch" is a combination of "Fluffy" (picked by our grandaughter, Lydia) and "Twitch" (picked by our daughter, Jessica). Her momma, Mrs. Black, is pretty wild and doesn't come too close to us humans, although we do still see her from time-to-time. Flitch, however, is pretty friendly.


This winter it got pretty cold out there in the barn, so Greg started working on putting together a variety of warmers to keep the different animals' water from freezing. He built a couple of differnt boxes and put light bulbs in them for some of the smaller waterers. He had an extra one, so he put it in his shop (where the cats hang out) and put a water bowl on top of it for them. Well, they kept knocking the bowl off and sleeping on the box...so he built another one. One for them to sleep on, and one to keep their water thawed! I told you he loves his cats! He feeds them too much, too! I keep telling him they won't hunt mice if they aren't at least a little bit hungry! Here is their water on its warming box.

I've already mentioned in an earlier post about the cat that came in with the big blizzard. It seems to be de-clawed, and, if so, I'm gonna assume it's been fixed. I think it's a female. Or else it's a male with no bits. It's very fluffy so it's hard to tell for sure. It really likes the warming box. It's a very pretty cat, as cat's go. I've always wanted a fluffy orange cat. But, then, I'm really not much of a cat person.

Here are Tommy and the new cat enjoying the warming box together. They do look very sweet sitting there...but don't be taking me for a cat lover, because I'm not!

We haven't named the orange cat yet. I'm thinking "Fluffy", unless someone wants to offer me something better!
You may have noticed that I mentioned Mr. Brown, but didn't show a picture of him. Well, sadly, we haven't seen Mr. Brown for quite some time. He was a wanderer, but he always came back every day. We figure he must've met his demise in some way, or else he'd have come back by now. Poor Mr. Brown.
Really, I am NOT a cat lover!