This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in Images for East Bernard Express, Feb 9, 2024.
My parents loved animals, even their cows, chickens, guineas, and especially their dogs and cats. They passed that love of animals on to my brother and me.
Of course, each of us had our own favorite animal or animals which we favored above all others, — I don’t know how anyone could love a guinea! For my brother, it was dogs, for me, cats. Although my father loved his dogs, I think he loved birds the best, especially his parakeet and his martins who came back every year.
My brother didn’t dislike cats, and I didn’t dislike dogs; we bonded with both.
But back in the 1930’s ad 1940’s, cats belonging to folks in rural areas were “outside” animals who sheltered in the barn. Even so, our “outside” cats were very friendly and loving. Sometimes we had as many as ten, and each one had a very distinctive personality and a special name. Of those ten cats, two followed my brother and me around the yard like little puppies and played with us like puppies.
One of the “barn cats” was part Persian, and was a big, white fluffy thing. We loved her, but she was not interested in playing with us; instead, she preferred roaming the woods behind our backyard, coming home in the evening full of grass burrs and cockleburs. We had to give her regular haircuts to get the stickers out.
Her name was Snowball, and she was a headstrong loner, — yet friendly enough to let us cut her hair. Like some of the other stay-away-from-kids cats, she would not play with us. Interestingly enough, our girl playmate, who lived across the lane from us, would come over and try to dress all of the cats in her doll clothes! No doubt she’s the reason the aloof cats shunned us.
We loved all our cats and made sure they had warm sleeping “nests” in the barn. In those days we had wood heaters in the house, and would let the fire go out at night, so we slept without heat, too, in our featherbed “nests.”
My love of cats continued into adulthood. Fortunately, my wife was a cat lover, too, so, over the years, we had many cats, each with a very distinctive personality, and each with a special name. All were “indoor” cats.
Patches was so motherly, she would attack anyone who would hit our oldest daughter. Ginger was part Siamese and would mate only with Romeo, the big white cat who fathered most of the neighborhood cats. While Ginger provided us with many baby kittens over the years, my youngest daughter’s favorite was Genji, who patiently let my daughter push her around in a doll buggy all day long. Then there was Prissy, rescued from a garbage bin, who said “Meh” instead of “Meow” like most cats. Another adopted feral cat would squeak rather than meow. Both Prissy and Pixie purred like loud motors.
What I learned from years of raising cats is that all cats seem to have human-like personalities, many lovable but some not so lovable. The most surprising thing is that a few don’t meow. Prissy “meh-ed,” Pixie squeaked, and a cat in my childhood, named Hissy, would only hiss and would not purr! I can only conclude that not all cats meow!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.