Feline Dumping Grounds

Are farms magnets for unwanted pets? Any farmer can tell you that the eclectic collection of felines hanging around the milkhouse door aren't likely to be homegrown - at least not the first generation. They are permanent boarders that have either been dropped off at a discreet distance away from the driveway (under the cover of darkness) or by a friend of a friend of your wife's second cousin who just couldn't keep the cat because of allergies (what they really mean is that the cat has an aversion to its litterbox or leaves juicy hairballs at the side of the bed).

True strays can usually fend for themselves and know what the business end of a mouse looks like. Former housecats are another story. Each day my mother-in-law tosses out of the house two or three cats who manage to scamper in before the door closes. These cats wear an aura of entitlement and make no secret of their indignation as their backends hit the top porch step.Don't worry PETA, they're fine and back at the back door within seconds.

So many people associate farms with being hostels for orphan felines. "They won't notice one more cat and there's plenty of milk", you think as you toss Fluffy out the door and speed away. How can farmers not notice the Siamese hissing at the other cats as she tries to fight her way to the food bowl? We also notice when some of the regulars disappear but we don't spend a whole lot of time looking for them either. If they're like the neighbor's cats, they're probably off enjoying a little R&R at the farm across the field. In fact, we fed our neighbor's cats all summer. And when they left, the only thanks we got were more pregnant female cats!

Of course all the kids on the farm adore the kittens. But it's not so endearing when the pathetic little things are struggling to survive during a bitter cold winter, especially the last litter born at the end of the summer. Those kittens are usually born to the farm trollop whose nurturing skills equal that of a termite.

And it's even more disheartening when someone leaves off a sick cat that infects the other healthy ones at the farm. I still get angry when I think of the young puppies someone dropped off near our farm years ago. While we were able to turn one of them into the Humane Society, the other wasn't quite as lucky. Someone had struck her as she wandered along the dark road. The vet told us she had too much head trauma to survive, so the only thing we could do was pay to have her put to sleep. Not such a happy ever after ending.

So, if you have a hankering to donate a cat to a friendly-looking farm - ask first.