A Trip to the Farm

Last week, I visited my family in Pennsylvania.  While I was there, my father ran over to my brother's house every day to take care of his four cats while my brother (Mike) was out of town on vacation.  At one point, one of the cats went "missing" outside and all I could think of is...here we go again.  How do we tell Mike this time?

Growing up, we'd always had a cat or two, but Mike wanted a bird (Hmm.  Cat, bird...Sylvester, Tweety...pretty much everyone but Mike could see where this was going.), so he begged until my parents gave in.

Sure enough, the cat took one look at the bird and said, "Aww, for me?  And it's not even my birthday."  And then proceeded to do her level best to make him a distant memory.

If we didn't hang the cage from the ceiling, it was commonplace to enter a room and find the cat on top of the cage, sticking her paws through the bars and calling, "Her birdie, birdie, birdie."

Summer was the best season for that poor little thing because Mike could hang the cage in a cool, shady corner of the front porch and the cat was more interested in terrorizing easier prey like Alvin, Theodore and Simon.  It worked well until the fourth of July, or the beginning of the end for the bird as we like to call it.

Every year, my dad and Mike would set off a few small fireworks on the street in front of our house.  In a one-in-a-million, couldn't repeat it if we tried moment, one of the "rockets" went astray and shot sideways, just missing my mom's head as she sat on the porch steps, but zooming through the cage before crashing and dying.

It's hard to say who was more upset by the incident, my mom, the bird, Mike or my dad, but at least two of them survived without any deep psychological scars.

Long story short, little Polly was sent to a better home where his life was not constantly in danger of being snuffed out by a cat or an exploding device.  Sadly, no one thought to add exterminator to the list and while my friend was at work one day...

With the resilience of youth, Mike moved on and a few years later adopted a stray cat.  On a good day, this poor old thing looked like Rocky after going sixteen rounds with Apollo Creed.  But he was sweet and loyal, and quite the guard dog as it turned out.

Nobody, but nobody got into our yard without Fred's approval.  We had to escort unwary guests from their cars where he had them trapped or have them wait for one of us across the street as he patrolled back and forth across our lawn, tail up, chest thrust out and emitting a low growl, daring them to try and get past him.

No matter how many times we tried to convince him otherwise though, he always viewed the mailman as an enemy agent, bent on carrying out an evil plot that only Fred could foil.  Day in, day out, this man took his life in his hands as he strove to fulfill his sworn duty, until one day when he had enough.

As reported by a neighbor, who gleefully watched the whole thing go down, the mailman brought along some protection in the form of his German shepard, stood across the street from Fred, who stuck out a claw and drew a line in the dirt, and ordered the dog to "sic 'em".

As the dog charged, Fred yawned, calmly inspected his cuticles, and when the behemoth got close enough, swiped his paw, nine-inch nails extended, across the dog's nose (or what used to be his nose).  The dog cringed, whined, tucked his tail between his legs and bolted back to the mailman who, panic-stricken, threw the mail up in the air and man and dog took off up the street never to be seen again (seriously, we had to collect our mail from the neighbor for the next year and a half).

Fred the brave finally accepted a challenge one day that he lost (I believe it was with a semi) and my dad took him to the vet for one final visit.

Ten or fifteen years later, at a family dinner, we were reminiscing about our childhood when the subject of family pets came up.  Naturally, we recounted the story of  Fred, concluding that it had been a sad day when we'd had to put him down.

"What do you mean?"  Mike interrupted, confusion written across his face.  "Dad took Fred to live on a farm in the country."

Yeah, where he frolics with the Easter Bunny and Santa brings him a big bag of catnip every Christmas.  Hellooo.  The only farm Fred went to is the big one in the sky.

"Mike,"  I chided him,  "you did not have a good track record with pets.  Fred, your bird..."

"Wait.  What happened to my bird?  Didn't we give him to a good home?"

Yeah.  On a farm.

Luckily, this time the cat returned and we didn't have to tell Mike that his cat had joined Fred and the bird on their farm.