The Cats

Page 3

Little Lou is one of our best mousers...

A gray tiger cat with intense eyes laying on top of a black car.

This is Whiskers the feral cat. Whiskers is one of the Nasty-Cats. One day we found a mom cat and five kittens living under some boards near the barn. They were all wild. Knowing winter was coming we decided to try and tame the kittens. We captured the kittens and handled them every day. The kittens were wild and would try and bite us when we handled them. We named the mom cat, Mom-Cat and the kittens Nasty-One, Nasty-Two, Nasty-Three, Nasty-Four, and Nasty-Five. We had to wear heavy gloves to handle them. The Mom Cat was upset her kittens were in a cage so we let her have two of them back. We continued to try and tame the other three. We were somewhat successful with the remaining three. The mom and the two kittens we let go were hanging around the barn because of the food we put out. Even the mom was becoming slightly more friendly. We eventually let all of the kittens go. They hung out around the barn for months until they all eventually disappeared. They were all gone for months. One day Amie and I heard a cat crying. We looked around and saw Whiskers on the barn roof. Amie climbed up onto the roof (it is ground level on one side) and picked Whiskers up. He was skin and bone and very hungry. Amie carried him to a bowl of food. Whiskers never left again. He lives right on our porch. Amie is the only one who can hold him. He comes really close to us but does not like to be held or touched. We can always count on Whiskers being right outside our door. He never goes far from the house. Once in a while we will spot another Nasty-Cat, but they do not hang around like Whiskers does. Two other Nasty-Cats hung out enough to earn real names. One black female was named Claudia and one of the other male tiger kittens was named Cutie-Pie (Amie called him Cute-Stuff), however we have not seen these cats in quite some time now.

A one-eyed black cat with white on the chest, back legs, front paws, neck and nose.

One Eyed Hammy is a feral cat who ended up at the Maguire Farm by mistake. A load of hay was being delivered. When the van doors opened, out jumped Hammy, who was apparently hitching a ride! He ran off as fast as he could. We thought, we'd never see him again. However a few days later he was spotted on the barn roof. I took a picture of him and when I zoomed in on the picture, not only did I realized he had a cold, but he also only had one eye! His missing eye was completely gone of out of the socket. One can only imagine how that happened. We also realized he could not hear. There was nothing we could do about the missing eye and the loss of hearing, but we could do something about the cold. We started wrapping antibiotics in Velveeta cheese and tossing them to him. To our delight, if we moved far enough away from him, he'd eat the cheese along with the pill. One Eyed Hammy, as we now call him, would still not come near us. He stayed very far away. However over time we were able to get closer and closer. Stephen even touched him once. He no longer runs when he sees us. He sleeps in the barn with Little Lou, our best mouser cat. We still cannot get close enough to really pet him, but he does not run when he sees us and that's a huge leap. Maybe someday we'll be able to get close enough to give him some good old kitty love. Perhaps someday...

A black cat with a stripe of white on her nose, white on her chest wrapping around her neck and on her paws. She is laying in grass looking up at the camera.

Mittens does not get along too well with the other barn cats. They all seem to dislike her. She spends most of her time living with the turkies, chickens and guinea fowl.

A gray tiger cat with intence eyes laying in dirt with a black mat and a green garden hose behind him.

Snow Flake, the lovable, but whiny, bratty cat. Amie spoiled him ;-) ;-) ;-) He's a brat because he only loves Amie. When Amie holds him he rubs his head into her neck purring. When I hold him he stretches his head away from me trying to get down. Brat, brat, brat...