Oh dear, I’ve started something now.
I suppose it was inevitable all my cat talk would prompt a backlash. Farmer and definite dog devotee Charlie Flindt has penned a piece in praise of our canine friends.
You can read his article, which will appear in Farmers Weekly on Friday, below. I'll post my response bigging up cats tomorrow.
A couple of Tuesdays ago, it was wet: one of those perfect mid-harvest mornings when all the Manor Farm staff had agreed a welcome and much deserved lie-in.Joseph, our cat, had other ideas. He had made himself scarce somewhere indoors on Monday night, and then once he realised that we were all enjoying a bit of extra duvet time, he crashed round the house, noisily insisting that not only was he hungry, but he needed to go out very soon. Some lie-in.
Our dogs don’t do that. They’re always ready to go out last thing at night, and then take up their stations for duration of darkness. Freddie takes his position halfway up one staircase, Maggie adjourns to the chair at the bottom of the other. ‘Protect and Serve’ is their motto. Half an ear is always cocked on the yard outside.
There they stay until the morning brings another stint of innocent doggy tasks like bouncing round enthusiastically, going for a walk or retrieving anything that can be carried – well, Freddie is a Flatcoat, so he can’t help it (hedgehogs are his favourite at the moment).
Maggie, being Belgian Shepherd, has a knack of persuading swarthy men in white Astravans that they might like to try and sell their Tarmac somewhere else. “Ere, does that Alsatian bite, mate?” they ask nervously through a gap in the window.
“Yes, she does, and, being a Mallinois, she really hates being called an Alsatian - mate’!” I reply.
I can’t see a cat shooing away unwelcome visitors. Even the welcome visitors are made to feel ill-at-ease sometimes – allergic or not.
And here’s a funny thing about cats: they always make straight for the visitor who is allergic to them.
According to behaviourologists, it’s all to do with how we greet a cat’s arrival. If we hate something we screw up our eyes and grimace slightly. And this, of course, is how cats show affection to each other. So the sweet moggy heads straight for the grimacing person, with sneezes, rashes and vomiting the inevitable result.
But I reckon that theory’s nonsense. The reason cats head for those who least welcome their company is that they are devious, scheming and malicious.
Delilah, the other cat, has a terrible habit of heading for well-endowed female guests, painfully kneading high in the, ahem, upper chest region, and dribbling. And when it comes to retrieving, both cats are good hunters, but are very generous with their catches. They insist on presenting us with live prey.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gone into the kitchen to find a smug cat ‘guarding’ the fridge. It can be several hours before mouse has been poked out of the innards of the expensive new fridge. Thanks goodness for the Belgian Shepherd to catch and kill the offending mouse, and the Flatcoat to bring the remains safely to you.
Of course, before the Hygiene Police were formed, real farm cats performed a vital job in and around the grain store. Not a mouse was seen in the barn – and the Claas’s belts, wires and speakers stayed untouched throughout the winter. Now thanks to ACCS, poison has to be liberally applied round the barns, so they’ve even lost this USP!
When it comes to pets, our farmhouse is typical: we have two dogs (who get any old name) and two cats (who by tradition have Biblical names) and it’s been like that for the forty-five years I’ve been here – a farmhouse wouldn’t be complete without lots of four-legged company. So I reckon I know a bit about what makes them tick.
The average farmhouse dog has a simple and purposeful life. A collie chases sheep or cattle, retrievers gather pheasants (in theory). Terriers go ratting, Belgian shepherd bark at scrap metal men. Springers run round and round in circles.
All always faithful and sensitive to the end of their days – one of the biggest joys of owning a Flatcoat is its steadfast refusal to let you get depressed. Most of all, with a dog, you know exactly who owns who.
Cats, however, live slightly differently. It’s never quite clear who is the owner and who is the pet.
Their favourite chase is a patch of sunshine as it moves from bed to bed round the house, all they retrieve is a mouse which gets lost in the kitchen, and the only intimidation they do is to scare the dogs off their beds.
And – their worst habit – they vanish. It happened this very week, in fact. Joseph disappeared for four days.
I bet he was hiding in the shrubbery, just waiting for the heartbreaking sound of a tearful child being warned that her precious cat might not actually be coming back. At that, he popped back through the catflap, purring and mewling as if nothing had happened. Like I said about cats: devious, scheming and malicious.
You'd best get on and write it, then...