5 minutes reading time
I love dogs. I really do. They’re friendly, eager to please, and they got that desperate, yearning look in their eyes that makes you think they actually love you, whatever the hell "love" is supposed to mean for an animal trapped on a farm. People train them to herd livestock, guard houses, and act like dutiful little subordinates. A dog will grovel for a leftover bone and act like you just handed him the deed to the property.
But cats? Cats fascinate the hell out of me.
In a rural or semi-urban setup out here in the plains, a cat doesn't owe you a single damn thing. If you pack up and disappear for two months, a dog will starve in the yard or break his heart wandering the dirt roads looking for scraps. A cat won't even notice you're gone. He'll just keep patrolling the rafters, living his own quiet, arrogant life, and eating whatever moves.
They are the cleanest freeloaders on the planet. They spend half the day licking themselves spotless, go bury their own shit out in the scrub without making a scene, and walk around like they own the place. They don't do the brown-nosing subordinate routine. If a cat comes over to rub against your leg, it’s not because he respects your authority; it’s because he decided, in his infinite mercy, that his chin needs a scratch right now.
And physically? What the fuck. They got retractable switchblades built into their toes and reflexes so fast it looks like dark magic.
I’ve watched a farm cat take on a spectacled cobra. Now, a cat ain't a mongoose: he doesn't have that built-in immunity to neurotoxic poison. If a big cobra or a Russell’s viper lands one solid strike, that cat is dead before the sun sets. I get terrified just watching it. You sit there with your heart in your throat, sweating through your shirt, watching a six-foot snake coil up and lunge. And then the cat just... moves.
I don't possess anywhere near that kind of speed. Humans move like heavy, waterlogged sacks of grain compared to these things. The snake strikes, the cat dodges by a millimeter with his ears pinned back, slaps the snake across the head, and dances away. Honestly, a good farm cat is more effective around the yard than a big fighting rooster when it comes to keeping venomous snakes out of the porch.
That’s the wonderful part.
The fucked-up part is that a cat is an absolute, unfeeling killing machine, and he doesn't give a solitary shit about human ecological preferences.
He doesn't sit down and read a handbook on which animals are "vermin" and which ones are "good for the ecosystem." When a cat goes out to hunt, he hunts everything.
I don't care when they snap the neck of a field rat or a mouse. That’s why they’re on the farm in the first place. But then I’ll be sitting on the verandah and see the bastard stroll out of the hedge carrying a bird in his mouth. A bird! A creature with wings that can fly straight up into the sky, and this four-legged fuzzy psychopath somehow caught it in mid-air.
Then it’s the garden lizards. Then the chameleons. Then shrews. Shrews aren't even pests: they eat bugs and mind their own business. And worst of all, they kill the rat snakes. Now, American rat snakes might be brainless ropes, but our Indian rat snakes (Ptyas mucosa) are smart, fast, and keep the rodent population down without poisoning anyone. But the cat doesn't care. He’ll fight a five-foot rat snake just for the sport of it.
It leaves you completely conflicted. You want the cat around to keep the storage from getting chewed to pieces by rats, but the price of admission is watching the local wildlife get slaughtered piece by piece.
And half the time, they don't even eat what they catch.
Just last week, I watched one of our cats catch a field mouse. Instead of killing it cleanly like a professional, he brought the damn thing right into the house, set it down on the floor, and started batting it around like a toy. He was just playing with it, completely bored. The mouse waited until the cat looked away for half a second, bolted under the wooden chest, and got away. I could swear that little mouse gave the cat the middle finger as it vanished through the floorboards.
Cats aren't heroes, and they aren't helpers. They’re just small, perfect predators that happen to tolerate living in our houses because we don't bother them. I still don't know if having them on the farm is a net positive or an ecological mistake, but watching them work is the most terrifyingly beautiful thing on four legs.
Image Credit: Cropduster spraying pesticides.jpg by USDA Photo by: Charles O'Rear, licensed under Public domain.