The Cats at Their Best

One thing I didn’t like was the rats. Whenever I would go get some feed out of the bin, there were two large eyes looking up at me. I remember the first time this happened: I jumped, dropped the lid, and screamed. Pop was close by, and he yelled out, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I answered and told him about the rat in the bin.

He laughed and told me that the rat was long gone by now. I opened the bin again, very slowly, and the eyes were gone—only a hole where the rat had been. Pop then told me that the next time I was to open the bin, I should kick it first, and the rat would go away because they were there for food, and this was heaven for them. So from then on, I would kick the bin, then lift the lid a little and drop it, just to make sure they were gone. This method worked, but it was still hard to put my arm into the bin. So I took a rake and filled the hole back in with feed. We were always trying to stay one step ahead of them by putting a new board on the wall in the back, behind where the feed bin was located. But they always seemed to get back in.

One day when the bin was very low, I was holding one of the cats in my arms, and I walked in very slowly to avoid making noise. I knew there was something in the bin because the cat was trying to get out of my arms. When I got close to the bin, I opened the lid, and the cat went in. She caught a rat, killed it, and I lifted her out of the bin with the rat in her mouth. She then ran off into the farmyard. When I told Pop about this, he said, “Great job—one down!” I told him I would keep doing this until we get the new feed into the bin. He then mentioned that the feed was coming in a few days and he would hold off putting it in until the bin was empty. This gave me a few days to try to catch more rats. Once the bin was empty, my brother Norman went in and patched the holes before we added the new feed.

My cats caught about six rats from the bin, and now with the repairs Norman made (including adding metal to the bottom and side of the bin), this should keep them out. After the repair of the bin, I never saw any more rats in the feed. I was so glad they couldn’t get into the bin anymore—rats are the one thing I didn’t like to deal with. I could handle most things, like snakes, spiders, and even bats, but not rats. The rats did try to get back into the bin, but when they made a hole in the wall next to the bin, the cats were waiting for them. The cats could hear them and knew they were there. That’s why you need so many cats on a farm: when they can get to the rats, they will catch them. When I would open the barn door in the morning, I loved seeing a cat come running out with something in its mouth.