Ranch Cats

July 21, 2024

Howdy folks,

Well, it's time for another update from the ranch.  This week I'm focusing on all the cats we have.  Also, unfortunately, in doing so I will also focus on all the cats that we've lost here, as well.  As we're currently sitting here at the middle of summer, we have roughly fifty cats on the ranch.  That's right, folks, I said fifty.  5-0.  50!  While that sounds like a ridiculously massive amount, once you break it down a little it starts to make a little more sense.  Right at the moment I am keeping a list of 35 cats that we have names for and keep track of and try our best to get in every night.  Now, out of that roughly three dozen cats, there are about a dozen that never come in(except maybe during a bad storm or cold night or just for fifteen minutes to snack on some 'inside' food and then go on their way).  There are also about a dozen kittens that are anywhere from just a week or two old to just a month or two old.  They never go out.  Then, there are the dozen in the middle that come and go and most generally are still trying to get our attention at the door so that we'll let them back inside before dark, where it's safe and warm.  That is certainly a pile of cats, but what really blows the mind is the fact that we've lost the same amount of cats(35) since August of last year.  That's sad and a huge, giant bummer, but it is also the way it is out here.  Once these cats get to be 2-3 months old, they always seem to want to go out and explore their external surroundings.  Some like it, some don't.  Some literally never go out again and some go out and never come back again.  Quite a few of these disappearances are most certainly due to the coyotes.  We very often get woken up in the middle of the night to a canine chorus of voices making their presence felt very close to the house.  This is very unnerving, totally gets the dogs going in the middle of the night and quite often leads to a cat never showing up again.  Now, animals can always sense when there are too many of themselves for a certain area, so I'd like to think that, once in a while, they just wander a few miles away for greener pastures and more back porches filled with overflowing bowls of cat food.  Might happen, might not, but it's a better thought to reach for than the constant awareness of lurking predators.  Some of those deaths were little, itty-bitty kittens that got the sniffles and couldn't overcome it.  Sometimes they get it immediately and never recover.  Sometimes they're fine for a month or two and then succumb to it, but, either way, illness has taken probably 6-8 of them.  So, that leaves us currently with a 50% survival rate.  That's not very good, but that's just how it is out here on the ranch.

So, I mentioned that we had about 50 cats right now and then highlighted 35 of them.  The other fifteen right now are the 'outside' cats that all go back to the black mama cat, Bootsie, that has been here ever since we have.  When we got here she was one of four cats.  The other three disappeared one by one, but not Bootsie!  At first, I thought the others were friends, lovers or siblings, but, now that I've watched the last four years unfold, I'm pretty sure that the other three were Bootsie's grown kittens.  She seems to only get one or two to survive out of each litter and then by the time they're one or two, something gets them and they're gone.  Since we've been here, she has actually gotten one or two of her daughters to have their own kittens and that's how we've slowly, but surely grown to the point of there being 15 of them.  Two of those are toms that come and go and sometimes we don't see for weeks.  These are Gollum(a big, one-eyed black cat, with half a tail that looks like he's been run over) and BOC, or Big Orange Cat.  We've sung their funeral orations more than once, only to see them munching on cat food two months later at 2am when we hit the light to see if any cats want in.  Currently, two of Bootsie's babies(Bear & Baby Boots) have litters of their own and there are lots of 'outside' cats, but they are prey for the coyotes, too, and all the other things that go bump in the night out here: packs of dogs; rattlesnakes; scorpions; owls; the boss's dogs.  Our lineup is slowly changing, too, as we are down to just one cat out of the original four that traveled out here with us from PA.  Smokey, one of our old feed mill cats, died last September and was the first to go.  More recently, Bucky, fomerly Buckwheat(another mill cat) died at 20 and then Maddi(our only cat to come from our house) died two weeks later at 15.  Always having kittens around to watch and play with is an absolute joy and a wonder, but out here on the ranch, it does come at a heavy price.

So, for this week, I made up a little gallery of some of our cats out here.  First up, five different shots of Daisy, Erin's favorite, who she rescued from a nest that Bootsie abandoned a day after birth and who she then raised herself with a bottle. She's quite the superstar and likes to spend the night over at the boss's house in her little bird seed can hideaway so that she can get up at dawn every morning and hunt birds at all the nearby bird feeders.  She's quite the turd!  If she does come in, she sucks on Erin's neck all night long(she never learned the whole nursing thing) and keeps her from sleeping!  Then, three shots of Chelly(Ms. Canyon de Chelly), who is one of the three cats our boss brought home in 2021 so that we could fatten up the outdoor cat population.  She has not let us down and she and her sister have both had four litters now!  Then, tiny, little Teddy, born premature to basically a teenage mother.  He is the only one still alive out of five siblings and is just about the cutest, little thing ever!  Next, two shots of a pregnant Piper, one of Chelly's sister's babies, tired and ready to burst, napping on a hay bale.  Next, two shots of Cole, Piper's brother, who pretty much never leaves the barn now and is truly loving it.  Then, a shot out of our kitchen door, showing all the cat beds and other things for our felines to hang out on.  And, then, finally, two shots of Pinkerton, who is nearing two years old now and pretty much never comes in...even disappearing for days and weeks at a time out doing God only knows what!  When he comes back, all the kittens(and especially the girls who have reached or are about to reach adulthood) swarm him and sniff him all over and just fall all over themselves to be near him.  We're pretty sure he's auditioning for the role of new ranch tom and is probably half of the reason that BOC and Gollum aren't around as much as they used to be.  It probably also explains all the cuts and scratches that we see on him whenever he graces us with a visit!

That's it for this time.  Be good.