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Cats of Indiana -Part II By: Richard Davidson on 3/2/2005; 2:10 AM Life continued on. My nightly ritual of spending time on the front porch with the two cats who kept me safe from prowlers, evil spirits, or whatever else may wish to cause me harm went on through that first summer, and fall and through the winter into a spring. The cats weren't really much of a defense, of course, but they were an excellent early warning system, I imagined, and their company was comforting. Then one fine spring day, my wife say Mama carrying a kitten and depositing it underneath the old farmer's corn dryer. She went over to take a look, and saw black and white kitten with some kind of growth on its neck. I don't know if it was some kind of kitty cancer, or a goiter, or some other such defect, but she told me she doubted the kitten would live very long, and it didn't. However, Mama had three other kittens, and she had finally trusted us enough to bring them up to the bush at the edge of the yard. This was a fairly safe location for them, relatively speaking. Here in this part of Indiana, farmers commonly drown or shoot kittens, in an effort to keep the cat population down. Cats often choose barns, or crawl spaces under barns as a birthing location, and it is a poor choice. As long as the kittens were on our part of the property, they were at least safe from the old farmer. He had most likely been killing off Mama's children for years, and somehow Boo had eluded him. And now we had three very skittish kitties living in our bush. It was amazing to watch Mama playing with her kids. I had no idea she had so much spunk as the chased each other around, jumping and pouncing, and rolling on the lawn. They didn't allow me to get very near, but I spent much of the spring and early summer of 2002 watching these kittens play. One was black, with white boots and a white spot on its chest. The other two were colored very similar to Mama. My wife decided to name the black and whites Nadko and Sierra. She was sure they were both girls. I didn't see how she could tell from the range we had to stay, but she decided that, and that the black cat with the white boots was a male, and she named him Trouble. My wife often expressed to me that she wished she could play with the kittens, and pick them up, and I told her that with my limited knowledge of cats, I wasn't aware of how to make this happen. I suggested that since hand-feeding had worked with Mama and Boo, that was our best, and possibly only course of action. These kittens were extra shy though, and really weren't going for it. Since they had never scrounged for food, perhaps they weren't as grateful as Mama and Boo for our handouts; or perhaps the number of kittens that had been murdered kept Mama on the cautious side, as she wasn't doing much to help in this regard. As they got older, Nadko became pals with Boo, and the two of them roamed the yard and farm together. Both Sierra and Trouble were quite frantic, and both picked fights with the other cats, and as we made it through another winter, and began another spring, it became apparent to me that my wife had made an error in sexing these cats. I didn't see how Trouble could be a male, since she was obviously pregnant. 
Trouble Sierra was pregnant as well, and since both of these girls were knocked up, and neither got along well with Boo, it was only a matter of logic to determine that Nadko was, in fact, our only male. 
Nadko Sierra was our most skittish cat, and I'm not aware that I have any pictures of her. It was spring of 2002. We had six cats, and four of our girls were pregnant. I was beginning to see why local farmers put so much effort into controlling the cat population. My wife was always going on about wishing she had a kitty she could hold and play with. Boo and Mama were plenty friendly, although you couldn't pick them up, for the most part. On two occassions, my wife had put Boo on her lap, but doing so was a dangerous proposition. If you held Boo on your lap, and anything happened; a squirrel ran up a tree; a car went by on the road 1/2 mile away; a plane flew overhead, or any other such sudden noise was heard, Boo would most likely reduce your lap to a mess of bloody flesh. Besides, she was full grown, and the other kittens were pretty close to the same. Trouble had become very friendly, and trusting, but her brother Nadko, and sister Sierra were still quite skittish, and still grabbed a bit of food and then ate it a few feet away from everybody else. We would never gain the trust of either cat. One morning, at breakfast, I told my wife I'd had a dream that Mama Kitty had been carrying a tiger-striped kitten in her mouth, and had deposited it at our door. We both found this a bit unusual, as Mama's kittens were usually either black and white like herself, or all or mostly black, as in the case of Boo and Trouble. Only a few weeks later, on Memorial Day, I awoke early, and felt a strange compulsion to look outside the front door. Much to my amazement, there was indeed a small tiger-striped kitten out there! Not one to believe in dream prognostication, I was thoroughly blown away by this development. My wife is the one to believe in all that junk; I'm the scientific one. She beamed with happiness when I called her to the door, and showed her what the stork had brought. "How is it possible that Mama gave birth to a tiger-striped kitten?" my wife wondered. I mentioned that I had seen a male tiger-striped cat in the area recently, and speculated that he was the father. She brought the kitten in the house, and made it a little bed, out of a basket and some towels. She said it would be OK while we went to the Ft Wayne Children's Zoo with her mother, who was not the least bit impressed by our discovery. Dog person, I guess. Since it was our seventh cat, my wife named it "Seven." When we got home from the Zoo, I said, "honey, how'd your kitten get out?" There was a kitten sitting outside our door. "I don't see how it could," she said, and looked inside the door, and saw that indeed, Seven was still in her basket. It appeared we had eight cats now. Not too much later, a ninth cat was laid on our doorsteip, and then, many hours later, we got our tenth. The next day, we had all four of our new kitties outside with us, and Trouble came up to see us. She let the kittens nurse, and it slowly dawned on us that my dream had not been quite accurate after all. Trouble was the mother of these kittens, and not Mama Kitty. My wife named the first three Seven, Lita and Axel, and I said that I should get to name the tenth kitten. She agreed, and I named him Dudley, after the English actor/comedian Dudley Moore, who had recently passed away. Lita's name was soon changed to Gunner, as that sexing problem had reared its head once more. Seven was our only girl in the newest litter; Axel, Gunner and Dudley were our new boys. 
Trouble with her litter Sierra, the skittish cat, had also given birth. One cat was almost all white, with just a bit of a black splotch. My wife named it "Paint," but it looked like somthing was wrong with Paint. Sierra kept Paint, and another kitten my wife named "Shy" in the bush where she and her brother and sister had been raised. The four tiger-striped kittens would live on the porch for awhile, and become human-friendly. My wife had gotten her wish, and had kittens to love and play with. Paint didn't survive for long, and with Shy we had eleven cats in all. 
Shy "I think the cat population is getting out of control," I told my wife. "Don't worry; it has a way of working itself out," she replied, smiling grimly. She knew a fact of reality of which I was not aware: Life on a farm can be very dangerous, and also very precious.
RE: Cats of Indiana -Part II By: Brian Webber on 3/4/2005; 12:40 AM I can realte to this story on so many levels. My family too had cat population troubles. At one point we had so many we didn't even bother naming them. Naturally out of 20+ cats, only one ever loved me,m and she died of lead poisoning (old house, old paint you see).
RE: Cats of Indiana -Part II By: Brian Webber on 4/8/2005; 11:51 PM Hope you don't mind Richard, but I took it upon myself to expand your audience. http://viewaskew.com/theboard/viewtopic.php?t=31415 Please accept my praise in the spirit in which it was offered. I really meant what I wrote there.
RE: Cats of Indiana -Part II By: Richard Davidson on 4/9/2005; 2:12 AM Thanks Brian. I appreciate that, and so do my cats.
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