by Kathy Brasby | Oct 14, 2019 | Cats, Country life, Family, Humor
We have adopted a tiger.
By tiger, I mean a 3-week-old abandoned barn kitten, of course. We’re not big cat people, but we couldn’t let the little thing starve to death. So we took her in.
Aw, isn’t she cute? Calm? But get ready…..
I scooted to the pet store for a small animal bottle. When the clerk said, ‘uh, oh,” I should have realized that was an early alert.
She took to the bottle right away. The kitten, not the clerk. Hang with me here.
We named her Panda because she was black and white. And it sounded like a cute, calm name.
The first week, after rescuing the kitten from starvation and the elements, I fed her several times a day, and she’d purr as I held her. Well, she’d purr as she stared deeply into my eyes before biting the end of my nose. So cute.
I’m trying to learn kitten psychology and have since discovered that kittens are really micro-lions. They hunt. They attack anything that moves. They have teeth like needles. Cute.
But I have questions. Panda is now 9 weeks old, meaning she’s big enough to run up my leg, over my shoulder, and on to the top of my head where she sits down and bites my skull. I guess I look like prey.
Panda lurks behind a half-closed door, body pressed low to the ground, and leaps onto my ankle, which probably looks like a giraffe leg to her, sinking her teeth deep into my bone. Brave little hunter.
Apparently, an empty toilet paper roll resembles a T-bone steak based on how she prowls around it. I’m not sure what that says about my ankle.
And there was that dangerous shallow box on the floor by the trash can. She leaped into the box, and it moved, so she kept batting it and biting the edge. Better that box than my head, I thought, so I settled in to watch. After the batting and biting stopped, she laid down in the box and started purring. Is that box prey or a bed? I’m trying to learn.
Panda can spring onto our bed with a single bound, which must be necessary for a professional hunter. I want to understand why hunters need to hurdle onto a bed, but, for now, I’m staying with the mountain-climber explanation: because it is there.
From calm to this… in an instant. Look out, earlobes! There may be tooth marks there soon.
She kinda miscalculated one of her bed leaps, though, running into the side of the mattress and ricocheting back to the floor. She got up and looked as nonchalant as I did that time I nearly fell on the ice. Nobody was looking, right?
I’ve made the mistake of wearing shorts in my own home, which means my legs now have micro-slashes thanks to our tiger who knows the best way to the top of my head is up my leg, whether I’m wearing jeans or not.
Friends want to stroke her head. “Ah, isn’t she sweet?” they coo.
Well, not always. They’ve left our house with apologies and a fingertip missing. It’s tough to pet a hunter.
We named her Panda but, watching her in action the last few weeks, I’m wondering if she’d be better off named Panther.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 2, 2019 | Country life, Humor
If you’ve come along on some of my blog adventures, you know I live on a hobby farm with goats. Well, other living beings, too, but this story is about goats.
Remember Rocket, the confused male goat? If not, go check out his story. Rocket has fantastic (code for odd) stories, and I have another of his adventures to share.
Goat romance is a precious thing. Rocket was a classic romantic who spent a lot of time alone, pining for his girlfriend. Now the girlfriend varied from week to week, but Rocket was always ready.
Rocket’s place ran parallel to a small pasture where two does – goat ladies – lived. One day I noticed that one of the does, Lulu, tiptoed along the fence line in shy come-hither steps like a young girl hoping the star athlete would see her. She was ready to meet Rocket.
The other doe, Maybelle, was oblivious. Her afternoon snack held more interest than did a male caller. She ignored Rocket.
I did mention that Rocket was always ready for romance, right?
I opened the gate and Rocket roared into the pasture, legs churning in a blur like Roadrunner cruising the desert where Wile E. Coyote schemed.
Rocket had more hormones than brains. And his pick up line was about as sophisticated as Blinkie the Clown.
Chanting “Hey, good lookin'” as he flew into the pasture, he focused his loving gaze on Maybelle. Not Lulu. Wrong girl.
When a female goat is not in the mood, a hormone-fueled buck is as attractive as roadkill. Dead gym socks smelled better.
Maybelle saw Rocket hurtling toward her and took off like a jet. Her legs were whirling faster than the back tires of a quarter-mile drag racer. I wondered if she’d need a parachute to get stopped. If she ever stopped.
I watched the pair bolt around the perimeter of the pasture, legs spinning. Rocket’s head was up as he sang melodies to the beauty of his new girlfriend.
Maybelle’s head was down; she had no time for nonsense. Kentucky Derby winners might not have been able to catch Maybelle as she circled the pasture.
Meanwhile, Miss Lulu waited by the pasture gate for her handsome hero. She sent little air kisses to Rocket and twirled her tail like a string of pearls. Cute red hearts floated above her head like balloons at a Valentine’s day party. Red confetti filled the air.
As the racing pair headed down the backstretch, their path took them past Miss Lulu who by now was flashing her lashes and tossing her hair like Marilyn Monroe.
I did not know a thundering buck could make a 180-degree correction without turning inside out, but Rocket did it.
Suddenly, he was bringing roses and chocolate to Miss Lulu. Their foreheads touched like sweet kisses. Violin music began to play.
Meanwhile, Maybelle’s parachute must have worked. She leaned against a fence post, heaving for air while her life passed before her eyes.
If I ever get a racehorse, I might consider calling it Rocket. But I actually think Maybelle might be a better choice.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 5, 2019 | Country life, Humor
My husband and I have a little hobby farm so that I can raise goats. At least that may be how he thinks of it. He doesn’t raise goats, although he has done a marvelous job of building things for the goats.
But I raise goats. It used to be that goats were the ugly step-children of farming but no more. Now the number of cute baby goat videos rivals cat videos.
But you can’t have cute baby goat videos without the romance of their parents. If you like baby goat videos, you need to know about goats in love.
In our goat herd, we usually keep our buck – the future daddy – separated from the does – the future mommies – so we can control when the babies come.
One bright fall morning, one of our girls had put on her high heels, lipstick, and Chanel Eau Goat before sashaying along the fence line she shared with Rocket the buck.
Rocket got the message: she was in the mood. Rocket was always in the mood, so with great excitement, he pushed his manly head through the fence to sniff her fragrance.
Hearts were drifting above their heads like hot air balloons. Once I caught sight of a little cupid figure floating overhead, I collected Miss Elinore and brought her into Rocket’s pen. She wiggled her hips and lightly danced from the gate to the fence line so that she could lean against Rocket.
He raised his eyebrows in glee and snorted words of love. He’d have brought roses and chocolate if he’d known. This was just what he had hoped for. Love was in the air.
Except for one problem: Rocket’s massive head was stuck through the fence.
He pulled and twisted while Elinore was doing a pole dance beside him.
She whispered in his ear, gave him little smoochies, leaned against his rippling muscles. More and more hearts floated past his eyes.
Rocket began straining against the fence. His front legs were like pile drivers pushing into the ground. His cheeks would have turned red from the exertion if not hidden by that masculine buck fur. The fence bowed with his manly strength.
No go. He was stuck.
The love of his life was slow-dancing at his side, and Rocket couldn’t get his head out of the wire.
I’m not without compassion. I only watched this display for fifteen minutes or so before I went in search of some wire cutters.
I think Rocket’s first lesson of love was to avoid putting your head through places where it doesn’t fit.
But I learned something that day, too: it is unbelievably challenging to cut wire when you’re laughing that hard.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 29, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
A long time ago, back when farmers plowed fields with dinosaurs, and spare parts were chiseled from rock, I worked at a tractor dealership.
There were only two women in the shop, the secretary and me. What can you say about working with a bunch of guys who have oil stains on their elbows and grease under their fingernails? It was like having 12 brothers.
That time has given me some great stories to tell. So no regrets. The secretary, on the other hand, might have a few.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. We’re talking leap-over-chairs-on-your-way-to-the-parking-lot kind of fear. This was not a good thing to reveal to our crew.
One of the guys came back from vacation one year with a foam rubber animal attached to a thin wire. You could wiggle the wire and make the fake animal squirm along on the floor.
Our secretary almost moved her desk to the front sidewalk that day.
I wasn’t overly fond of mice myself but wasn’t going to admit. I had grown up with brothers, so I knew that you never admit weakness. Bluffing is better.
But the tractor crew still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t unusual, and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner, eyes big like a toddler hoping for a cookie.
The service manager threw his hands in the air. “It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
Because I had learned how to ignore my brothers, I ignored these guys, too. It’s a good strategy if you can grit your teeth for a little while.
It worked. No more dead mouse came to my desk.
But one day the secretary came back from lunch to find a brown paper bag on her desk. It was stapled shut and shuddering with mystery.
The secretary ran screaming to the break room, positive that the guys had placed a live mouse on her desk. She refused to return to her office, and the boss came wandering out to see what the commotion was about.
He really needed the secretary to get back to her phone-answering and bookkeeping. So he went in search of the service manager.
Under instructions to “take care of that,” the service manager brought the lunch bag outside. Way too many curious eyes followed him. We all watched as he sliced the top off the bag and dumped out a frog.
So the secretary got a freshly-scrubbed and sanitized desk, courtesy of the service and parts managers.
And every time they thought about another mice trick, they just sat down until that thought passed.
You gotta be tough with brothers around.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 8, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
As we get to know each other a little better, you may realize that I live on a hobby farm. This includes a few goats, chickens, rabbits, barn cats, and ducks.
I also sometimes fix up houses with my sister to flip. A recent project was more demanding than a hungry toddler.
This all began the morning when I was running late for work and I needed to turn out the ducks for the day. I found a duck egg lying on the ground beside the ducks’ water tub, a forlorn brown egg caked in mud and grass.
I didn’t have time to coddle this egg, no matter how sad it looked, so I did the next best thing: I grabbed a fast food napkin from my pickup, wrapped the egg, and threw it in my purse. I’d take care of it later.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
Somehow a purse seems out of place among all the power tools, so I left it in my pickup while we worked. For two days.
When next I rummaged around the abyss of my purse, there was the egg, still wrapped in the napkin. My sister, Ann, and I were on our way to the hardware store. I handed the egg to Ann so I could find keys.
“What is this?” She held it between her thumb and forefinger like it was a dead mouse.
“An egg,” I said. “Just hold it.”
“I don’t want it.” And she put it in the glove box.
Fresh farm eggs have a coating of something that poultry people call bloom. The coating keeps the egg fresh without refrigeration for a long time. Commercial eggs are generally washed which removes the bloom, requiring the eggs to be refrigerated.
The magic of bloom was why there was no rotten egg in my pickup.
A few days later, we took my pickup to the Chinese place for lunch.
“I think I’ll leave my wallet here,” Ann said. Upon opening the glove box, she caught the napkin-wrapped duck egg. “Haven’t you done anything with this yet?” Speaking of Captain Obvious….
“No, I forgot where it was.”
“Well, get it out of here.”
When we got back to the project house, I put the egg with a plastic bag of supplies that I planned to take home.
At the end of the day, Ann claimed the plastic bag so she could wrap her paintbrush. “How did your egg get in here?”
She didn’t sound curious like you’d think with that sort of question. She sounded like I’d hidden a dirty diaper in there.
“Oh, I’ll take care of it.” I grabbed the egg and put the egg in a box I needed to take home.
The next morning, the egg was still in the box at the flip house. Somehow it then got moved to another room and covered by boards and trim. If you think I’m admitting to that move, you’re nuts.
“We need to get these rooms cleaned out,” Ann said a day later. She started hauling things out, so I grabbed stuff, too. When we got the boards moved, I spotted the box. Of course, Ann walked by at that moment. “Is that your egg?” she said.
She made it sound like I was storing soggy seaweed or something.
“Yeah. I lost track of it.”
“You and that egg.”
I carried the egg to my pickup again and put it in the glove box. I’d toss the egg when I got home.
Four months later, a police officer pulled me over for a license plate check. “I need to see your registration and insurance cards,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” I opened the glove box. My faithful egg was still nestled in its muddy paper blanket. I realized in a flash that the magic of bloom isn’t very reliable after four months.
I tried to explain. I really did. But the officer backed away slowly with one hand doing a halt motion and the other squeezing his nose. You’d think I was holding a hand grenade.
I haven’t let Ann check my glove box now for a long time. Just in case I forgot something.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 24, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
There are times when a plan comes together a little too well, and my search for cats fell in that category.
We have a hobby farm that includes a barn. And mice. Lots and lots of mice. Herds of mice. Pastures of mice.
You think I exaggerate?
Well, I went in search of some nice cats for the barn. They didn’t need to be sweet lap cats. In fact, barn cats a little on the wild side make great mousers.
So when I saw the poster, I thought I had struck gold.
Free cats. On the wild side. The photos on the poster were of three lovely orange and gray cats. Cute cats and I was okay with a little on the wild side.
My son and I were running errands when I found this treasure. With just a little searching, we found the girl with the cats. “Do you still have them?” I asked.
Raised eyebrows, wide eyes, and an open mouth should have clued me in. “Do you want them?” She was breathless.
I was still so impressed with the ease of finding free mousers that I just said, “Yes.”
“Great! I’ll tell my dad.” She scampered away, and I turned to my son.
“I’ll finish up here, and you go with them. We can put the cats in the car and go home.”
He followed the girl, and I finished my work. When I walked into the parking lot toward our car, I spotted my son at the edge of a small group
Why was there a small group gathered around a large cardboard box?
The girl’s father was at the center, snugging the last piece of shipping tape over the flaps on the top of the box. A bystander said, “If they can’t get air in there, they might die.”
The father stepped back from the tap-dancing box and brushed his hands together. “That wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
My son turned to me. “He had welding gloves on when he put the cats in the box.” Welding gloves are long leather armor against sparks leaping from a welder. Apparently, they are required for cats a little on the wild side.
I think the gloves should be in my lighting-the-grill repertoire, but I digress.
I didn’t want to think about why the dad needed welding gloves.
By now, I was near enough to hear scratching inside the box. A lot of scratching. The sort of demonic scratching that threatens to claw through trees and steel walls.
“A little wild?” I said.
My son shrugged. He likes cats, and he hoisted the box into the back of the car. “It’ll be okay.”
I watched the box rattling with cat rebellion and muted yowls.
“What if they get through the cardboard?”
“I guess we open the doors and bail out ’til they escape.”
That was comforting.
The family that advertised the cats had disappeared like Frodo after he slipped on the ring. Poof. I would have, too.
And so we drove home. No sounds until we got to our barn. Some things can’t be explained.
We laid the box on its side in the middle of the barn, so the top faced away from us. We were about to unleash hungry lions. Cheetahs with teeth. Slashing claws and steel teeth. We were fools but not that bad.
I peeled off the tape while my son stood guard. Behind me. He was less a fool than I was.
I had donned my own leather gloves and goggles like I was going into a snake pit. Longing for a helmet – or a proxy – I lifted the flap.
Orange and black exploded before us. A wild yowl rattled the walls, and we saw a cloud of fur and teeth. The cats burst out of the box, across the floor and, in a millisecond, out the open back door.
“I vote we call them Blur and Streak,” my son said.
“I vote we call them gone.”
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