Tail Talk

Ever since our move to God’s country our plot of land has steadily become a working hobby farm.  I believe “hobby” is a misnomer though because nobody would work this hard at a hobby, and the word “hobby” makes you believe this is anything but the lifestyle change we have dreamed of and finally made happen through years of planning and a whole lot of work.  After O’Fallon grew by 41 subdivisions over 10 years without a like increase in infrastructure to take care of the additional families, we couldn’t take it anymore and knew it was time to make our move.  As blessing sometimes happen in life, the most beautiful 25 acre property I’ve ever laid eyes on came available at the very moment we were ready to make our move.  It only had one small problem, it didn’t come with a house but it did have an old dirt floor pole barn and an 8’ X 12’ wooden storage building, so we purchased a 5^th wheel as temporary housing and made our move.  After a few visits to town to do laundry we decided to run water to the storage building and put our washer and dryer back into use because there wasn’t room in the 5^th wheel to hold all the dirty clothes generated during the 105 degree heat wave that happened the entire month after we made our move.  The building was full of mouse poop but after a lot of elbow grease it was finally clean, right up until the next morning.  I noticed immediately there is a difference between city mice and country mice, bringing me to my first moments of understanding that we all live in a Walt Disney cartoon if we take the time to really look at our surroundings.  Every time I took a load of clothes and my magazine to do laundry the mice would sit on the rafters and watch me, as entranced with my actions as I was with theirs.  I decided to name our laundry facility the Mouse House.  A snake made his hole at the front leg of the Mouse House, patiently waiting for whatever delectable meal happened to come his way, and from the sheer number of mouse turds that appeared every morning there was no shortage of dinners available.  Throughout our three years the sheer numbers of mice have continued to be a problem but with our animals we did not want to use poisons to control the population, but when one dismantled the 4-wheeler seat from the bottom up my husband finally had enough and said it was time to add a barn cat to the mix.  In the years since we moved in the old pole barn has gone through numerous incarnations depending on the immediate need, but with the addition of a new pole barn it finally settled into a workshop/storage/cooler building and could comfortably house a cat, and since my husband spends every day working in the barn the cat would probably see more of him than the rest of us.  We went to the humane society and brought two males home, one a young adult and the other an older kitten.  I wanted to insure the cats would understand that in the farm hierarchy the chickens are important and to be protected, so I took the crates into the big barn where the chickens spend their days pecking around when they’re not out in the garden.  I put the food and water bowl in front of the crates, then spent a good hour telling the cats what their farm lives would be and how much fun they would have being part of our bigger family.  When I felt they had calmed down enough I opened the crates, and to my surprise they ran out of the barn so fast I almost didn’t see which direction they went except I figured it was towards the door.  After a couple of hours I found the kitten but the older guy was no where to be found.  We looked and looked, called and looked some more.  In the meantime the kitten settled into his new life as Thomasin, barn cat.  He’s very friendly and just what the doctor ordered, a new love monkey to share our lives.  But it soon became obvious that Thomasin needed more in his life than an occasional house mate dropping by to play so after days of not seeing the big cat we went back to the shelter and adopted two more male kittens, Black Bart and Senor Delcato.  The three kittens settled into play time in their huge play room, running to give us kisses and love every time we walked into the barn.  Life was perfect.   Right up until I looked out the front window last night and there was the big cat sitting on the front porch, looking at me as if to say “I give up and want to be your cat now.”  I walked out with a bowl of cat food and he hasn’t left since, deciding those scary chickens are well worth the price of having a full bowl of food at your disposal.  So we are now a family of four male cats, three dogs, eighteen chickens, one rooster, two steers and a pregnant cow.  And it just doesn’t get any better than this.  We just hope one of the four cats will be a mouser, but if not that’s okay also because they are just too much fun to have around to limit their worth to the work they do.  The joy they bring to our tired souls is worth more than a 4-wheeler seat any day.  If you are ready to bring laughter and joy into your life with a minimum of work involved, think about adopting a cat, especially a house cat but barn cats are good also.  As with our other four legged friends you will be rewarded with a smile so big your jaws will hurt from their antics and you’re doing a good deed at the same time by offering a poor soul that has no one a home where they can be cherished as they should be in a perfect world where there are no shelters.  And never forget, it is only through you that the Randolph County Humane Society continues to save lives, one by one.