Herman's Story

A piece of luck in a cat's hard life

PROLOGUE

Cats. When you live on a quiet country road in a place that can be recognized as a farm, city people think you can always use another cat. Or they may think, upon finding a large expanse of uninhabited state land, that their domestic feline, who has become a burden upon their domesticity, will call up primordial instincts once “liberated.” No longer confined inside four walls, it will naturally prove itself to be a worthy cousin to panther, lion, tiger, cougar, and jaguar. On the loose, it will grow lean, powerful and fulfilled from a free-range diet of small wildlife. They are offering liberation, not abandonment. Yes, old pet, you’ll be fine out here in the country.

I live in such a place, an old farm smack up against a large tract of state land. More than one such cat has found this place over the years, but let a particular marmalade cat tell his tale here.

HERMAN’S STORY

Herman knew that sound: ice breaking. He also knew that it was spring and that he wasn’t napping on ice. Yet that was just the sound coming from beneath him. A large cat, he had often cracked the glazed surface of a puddle as he prowled around the farm on a wintry night. But it wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, a warm, dusty shaft of sunlight was heating up his marmalade rump making this snooze on the hay an especially fine one.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Oh, come on. He had earned a good nap after a three-mole, baby rabbit, and a one mouse night. The moles were pure sport. Their musty smell was unappetizing. The rabbit was too much work, so he had proudly left it on the doorstep of the house. The mouse had been quite tasty – and a bit of sport.

He pulled his nose away from his furry belly and lifted it to test the air. Maybe winter had set in again since he had curled up in his usual spot behind the sheep pen where a good bed of clean hay had sifted in. No, it was still warm, even balmy. Life had been unpredictable for a long time so he was ready for anything – almost.

The out of season noises stopped. He tucked his nose back against his belly and began to reminisce. He was glad cats always landed on their feet. That assurance from the human Rhoda in his first home had seen him through a rough time – though come to think of it there had been no reason to believe anything she said given what happened.

Be that as it may, he had started out life happily enough. The finest kitten in a litter of five, he was the first choice of Rhoda and Sean who cooed and swooned over him and, most important, fed him very expensive – so they said – cat food. What did he know? It was good. There was plenty of it. He had the run of the house but he liked streaking out a closing door to the grassy yard whenever he got the chance. When they stalked him down, their voices were sharp and loud, but only for the walk back into the house. “Whiskers, bad cat! Stay inside! It’s dangerous out here for cats.” (He’d almost forgotten his name had once been Whiskers.)

He was a fine, well-fed, young adult cat when they began to talk to each other in loud, sharp voices having nothing to do with him. Eventually though, his care – whose turn it was to feed him or who was supposed to clean out his litter box brought on angry exchanges. Then Rhoda wasn’t around anymore. Sean let his litter box go for days until one evening close to dark Sean pulled him out from under the couch where he’d been sulking and stuffed him into the Kitty Caddy. It wasn’t for a trip to the vet. This was a much longer ride in the car.

“You’ll be fine, Whiskers, old boy,” Sean had told him in a hearty voice as he opened the door of the caddy. “Come on out, cat,” he muttered, frustrated as Whiskers shrank against the back, only one front paw barely within reach. This Sean grabbed to haul him out onto a roadside overhung with trees.

“You’ll like the country. You’ve always wanted to be outside. Birds and mice to hunt. Trees to climb. It’s a cat’s paradise. Beats the pound anyway.”

Angry at being treated so roughly, he had run off into the underbrush, expecting Sean to come look for him, apologize and take him home. Instead, Sean had thrown the caddy back into the car, gotten behind the wheel and pulled away in a shower of gravel, a piece of which hit him behind an ear.

Paradise, my dewclaw! he thought as he turned onto his back and stretched his full length in the hay, his orange belly exposed to the sun. Whatever the pound was, it couldn’t have been worse than his life before he found “The Farm.” The cat then known as Whiskers had never climbed a tree or had to hunt for a meal. He had eyed a few sparrows through the picture window behind the couch and had chased one mouse around the house for a whole day without getting a paw on it, wondering at the time what he would do with it if he caught it.

“FFSEET!”

Startled onto his feet, Herman was ready to flee. But it wasn’t an owl twice his size, the first bird he had encountered in the wilderness. It was the hen turkey, big, but a regular in the barn, whistling at him irately in broad daylight.

“Ffseeet!” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” They were both scolding him now. The tom turkey was close behind his mate, his warty head and wattle turning from red to blue to white. What a sight! But welcome after the thoughts of the great owl and his grasping claws. Whiskers had used his to climb the closest tree, his first. He’d been up plenty since that day.

Filled with relief, he yawned comfortably in the turkeys’ faces, stretched and curled up once again.

But old tom was serious. He spread his tail feathers into a ragged fan – the winter had been rough on his plumage – coughed, then ruffled up the rest of his feathers, making a muffled drumming sound. Herman was aware that he was supposed to be frightened but he knew the turkeys too well. He closed the one eye he had been watching the pair with and went back to his past.

The sun on his shoulders now, he felt secure and lazy. He didn’t usually hog this spot. The hen turkey sure did lately. But he felt like asserting himself: the top barn cat. Besides the strawberry-haired boy who fed him (dry food these days) had been especially generous that morning, that on top of the tasty mouse.

The boy was all right. When the then abandoned Whiskers had found this place after those long, scary, hungry weeks in the wild, he was bone thin and totally distrustful of humans. The boy’s mother had spotted him first and not with any enthusiasm. “Scram, marmalade kitten! We’ve got enough cats around here!”

Kitten, indeed! Starvation had taken a couple of years off him. But he hadn’t intended to stick around anyway. Humans were not his favorite animals anymore. The boy with dishes of food he’d hide under the spirea bushes won him over. He had been about to leave a couple of times after run-ins with the two other cats on the place. But dry or not, food was food, and when he finally let the boy pet him it felt really good. Then the boy named him Herman, often shortened to Herm. That did it. He wasn’t going anywhere else.

He took over the barn. The other two cats could lord it over the ramshackle old woodshed all they wanted. The barn was his. The boy came out every morning and put cat food in an old pie pan in an unused rabbit hutch. He had put hay in it, too. Nice digs, Herman thought. But another good spot for a snooze was the tall box of wool fleece from the sheep who spent the winter in the barn. The fat little cat with all the extra toes thought that was hers and hissed at him if she found him there but never duked it out. It was the grey cat he had to watch out for – or get the jump on first. The big scratch on his nose proved that.

After that fight, the boy’s parents had threatened they would take “that orange devil” to a dairy farm nearby. The boy scared him out of the wool box whenever he found him there. “Herm, just stay in the barn, please! It’s yours. You’re safe there.”

Three sharp noises like tiny hammer blows made all his muscles tense up. He sniffed the air nervously. Life in the wild had taught him strange new sounds usually meant danger.

“Ffseet!” Well, that’s not a new sound he thought disgustedly. There they were back, the hen turkey and her old puffball of a mate trying to stare him down. Tom coughed, spread his tail feathers into the ragged fan, and did the feather drumming stunt.

Herman decided to show his indifference by starting a leisurely bath. He worked on his back then stretched one rear leg straight up and went after his nether parts, stealing occasional glances at the intruders between licks. He did not like the look in the tom’s eye. A few days before the irascible gobbler had gone after the old sheep dog for no apparent reason. Just out of the blue, cough, fan, drum, whack! He had really roughed her up with his great wings. No telling what this crazy bird might do to a fine marmalade cat ensconced on this contested bed of hay.

Tat, Tat, TAT! CRACK!

The sudden renewal of the attack beneath him caused a certain alarm. No doubt about it, Herm, old boy, it is time to move. Let us see if this can be done with dignity.

Without haste he rose, humped his back in a casual stretch. He then jumped off the hay and ambled out of the barn after giving the hen turkey a look to say, there, I’ve just been keeping the spot warm for you.

Later old wart head came out of the barn alone. Herman strolled back in. Giving the turkey hen a wide berth, he jumped up into his rabbit hutch above her. From his perch he could see her feathers bulging and bouncing here and there. Whatever was under her was emitting strange little peeps.

The boy followed him into the barn and began shouting. That brought the mother and sister onto the scene. He pulled Herman out of his rabbit hutch and held him tight to look down at the female turkey. Laughing, he said, “Herm, ol’ boy, you let mama turkey back on her nest just in time. A few minutes more napping there and you’dda been a father of...,” he paused, counting. “Hey, there a ten of these babies, mom!”

Herman jumped out of the boy’s arms and ran out of the barn. To think, after all he’d been through: abandonment by Sean and Rhoda, barely hanging on in the wild, happening upon this place, squatting in the old barn as he ingratiated himself with new people. He was at his limit. He wasn’t father material. His primordial instincts told him he should eat those wee balls of fluff, but his survival instincts said do that and you’re out of here, old boy. Where did the boy’s mother want to send him? Yeah, to a dairy farm. A fine marmalade cat like him reduced to life in a barn full of big cows even more dangerous than tom turkey. Pee-yew!

He turned back toward the barn. The tom turkey glowered at him, waddle flaming. Herman stretched, butt high, tail straight up, and gave him a wide, insouciant yawn, as much to say, “They’re all yours, bud. I got out of there in the nick of time.”

EPILOGUE

Herman lived a long happy life on our farm. Thanks to entreaties from the boy, a true friend, he was even allowed into the house during the long winters. The turkeys, however, wore out their welcome as they became more belligerent with age. Despite promising to be extremely tough when cooked, they went into the freezer. ꭥ