Brown Bagging It

Here at the farm, we encourage self-sufficiency. Cubbie, one of our Farm Supervisor Emeriti (she's now at the Grand Hunting Grounds in the afterlife), understood this quite well.

Yes, we do feed the outdoor cats every day - but just once in the morning, and not too much. We do need them to help with rodent control.  But, we also need them to maintain some level of self-sufficiency because life outside requires a certain amount of toughness.  Yes, we are kinder with the food in the colder months and have been known to bring the outdoor contingent into the basement in extreme cold.  So, before you think us heartless, even our Farm Supervisors will tell you otherwise.

Or maybe they won't.  They're cats.

If Cubbie caught a rodent and we were around, she would meow to get our attention and our praise. Normally, she would wait until we skritched her and told her how wonderful she was. Then we would inform her we did not want to eat her prize - at which point, she typically ate it in our presence. Nice.

Things were a bit different on this particular day in 2009. She'd just had her breakfast that we had provided her and Doughboy (another Farm Supervisor Emeritus). She managed to catch a mouse. She yodeled for attention. She got it. I went to do something somewhere else. Some time later, she appeared there - with the mouse - and asked for more praise. She got it.

I went somewhere else and the same thing happened. I left for town to run an errand or three. I came back. She was in a new location, with the same mouse nearby.

She'd been carrying that mouse around like a brown bag lunch all morning. Never know when she might be hungry.

While I was never certain as to her motivation for carrying the mouse around I did know one thing.

If she offered to share again, I was still going to decline.  

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The original blog post of this Throwback entry was in March of 2009.  I took the time to add some photos and additional material to what was a very short and sweet blog post. I hope you found it to be enjoyable.