Heritage Farm is home to (as my husband says) too many cats. With the birth of two new litters this summer, the population has grown. We like to have them around to keep the number of rodents down… provided they hunt.
The younger cats and kittens are a delight to the young children who visit us at the farm. They like to hold them close and pet the kittens. So you can imagine that the wildness of the farm cats is easily tamed out of the young felines.
The head tomcat is named CB by our grandchildren. He is a big, healthy looking tabby cat. He has survived several winters and looks well fed. So one might suspect he is a good hunter.
CB likes to assert his dominance on the farm. All too often we hear the whining howls of cat fights ringing out. When I speak up and scold them, the altercation usually stops giving the young toms a break in the fighting. They get a chance to run off or chase up a nearby tree top. CB usually follows them up the tree but stays on lower branches in order to guard his so-called enemy from a much needed retreat. It becomes a waiting game.
We have a few mother cats. Patch and Marble are their names. Patch is the eldest and hunts. Marble has caught a few mice, but I am not sure she has figured out how to keep her prey from the other greedy cats that would snatch it from her.
One of our other mother cats, called Hanabi, tended to be on the wild side. She came for her ration of milk, but would not allow us to make her a pet. She was a good mother to her kittens, and she hunted well enough to keep herself healthy when she set off on her own. But one day this summer she disappeared. At this time, we do not know her fate.
She left her litter of kittens. By then they were eating solids and they are doing well. But unfortunately, her offspring did not get the benefit of being trained to hunt by their mother. The calico cuties stay close to the farm waiting for a handout.
Yet one day as I looked out my kitchen window, my daughter and I saw one of the kits traipsing up the hill with a mouse in his mouth. At long last this kitten had discovered his “cat-ness”! He figured out that a mouse can be caught. But like Marble, he lost it to another hungry cat… to the next to littlest kitten from the youngest litter! Nevertheless, we are encouraged that all of the cats are figuring out their “cat-ness.” We have high hopes that the young, cute little fur-ball kittens will be able to feed themselves someday.