Blogger’s note: Sneakers has been missing for weeks. We found his remains yesterday. A coyote got him, as we suspected. I miss him terribly. He had this weird meow that sounded like a human voice and he used to follow me around the barn muttering things at me that I couldn’t entirely understand. I understood his tone, though. Sometimes he was cheerful and just chit-chatty. Other times, he was cranky and insistent. You really miss a cat like that. So this post is a reprint, it originally ran in April.
Meet Sneakers. Sneakers is our barn cat. He may look cuddly, but he’s not. Trust me. I know him well. In order to survive, I’ve had to learn to interpret his every expression and anticipate all his needs. In the photograph above, he’s saying, “Put the cat food down …and nobody gets hurt.” He is the king of the barn and has trained me, and all other humans who enter his kingdom, to treat him with a fearful reverence.
Sneakers has his own apartment in the barn. It’s a tackroom that we keep heated for him all winter long. He has a little swinging door through which he enters and exits his apartment, and in which he is liable to get stuck if he doesn’t do something about his ballooning weight.
Sometimes in the mornings, if I am very sleepy, I start feeding the horses before I have offered Sneakers his breakfast. Sneakers corrects me when I do this. He always asks politely first. He purrs and rubs against my ankle once, purrs and rubs against my ankle twice, and if I don’t drop the grain buckets and race to get his food, he dig his claws and teeth into my leg and tries to flay my flesh into ribbons. I have scars from this. I’m fully trained now, so he only has to purr and rub my ankle once and I obediently flip open a cat food can and present it to him with a flourish.
Denis has a hockey rink near the barn and sometimes he needs to hook up hoses to the faucet in the barn. Sometimes one of his hockey buddies will offer to do this and the guys allow him, because it’s always funny to see a big hockey guy come running, screaming from the barn with a hissing, spitting cat attached to his shin guards.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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My horse lovin’ (current Emersonian) daughter has taught me the difference between barn cats like Sneakers and house cats. For the house I always choose the fattest, slowest, most world weary momma in the pound, and time after time (Pickles, Pickles 2, Pickles 3, Gretel) they reward me with their lumbering, yawning, lap warming selves. No good when it comes to mice, totally brainless, and any one of them could feed a coyote for weeks.
Sorry for the loss of Sneakers, but at least your beloved cat died in courageous battle, not from obesity.
I have now finished the book and will be recommending it to all.
Oh, what a shame. I’m so sorry Sneakers has ridden on ahead, and sorry for your loss – can’t have been any fun finding him. Losing pets is sometimes harder than losing people.
I have been thinking about him for the past few days – wondering if he was back in the barn. I am so sorry it turned out as it did. Even the grumpy ones have their place in our hearts…..
RIP – Sneakers.
Oh, Ann, so sorry for your loss of Sneakers!
Respectfully,
Annie in Maine
: )
I thought the whole idea of a barn cat was to let it eat the mice????