Harry arrived at Rainbow’s End Farm in Sandy Hook in Fall, 2005 with his suitcase packed and against his better judgment. He was wild and suspicious, and he was ready to bolt as soon as the opportunity arose. From his perspective, he had been catnapped, and had no reason to trust us. Of course, he was unaware that he was a cat with a price on his head.
Harry came from another Newtown farm, a member of a free-breeding colony of feral cats. When the elderly owner of his farm became ill and was transferred to a nursing home, the house and barns were boarded up. The new caretakers intended to eliminate the cat colony, and the cats’ days were numbered.
Fortunately for Harry and the other cats, a nonprofit animal welfare charity, The Animal Center, responded and proposed a relocation alternative. They offered to humanely trap the cats, and each cat would then be spayed/neutered, receive rabies vaccinations, and moved to a new home. The process of relocating feral cats is uncertain, because they are extremely territorial and bond strongly to their original homes. But Harry and his friends were running out of time, and one cat at a time, the plan went forward.
Just at the time I decided to acquire a barn cat (I wanted to avoid poisons at our farm to eliminate rodents who made nests in the horse stalls and hayloft), The Animal Center distributed its first mailing. Harry was the featured cat, a wild child peering from behind tree branches. I discussed the situation with Monica at The Animal Center. She outlined what a barn cat would need: a “home base” in the barn where he would have warmth in the winter; food twice a day; once a year visits to vet to keep his rabies injections updated. I had two dogs, a German Shepherd and a Shih Tzu. Monica was worried that Sirius might scare Harry off, and I was worried that Harry might classify Cindy as one of the rodents to be eliminated. In the end, we decided to proceed, and on a Saturday in October, Harry arrived.
So here he was, the poster cat, with everything going according to plan, with one exception. Harry wanted no part of this. He wanted to be back at his old farm. Relocating a feral cat takes foresight and preparation. A free-ranging cat must be given a chance to become familiar with a new location. You can offer a feral cat a new territory, but you can’t compel him to accept a new home. He will elect to stay, or not.
Harry started out in our warm tack room, which we designated as his feeding place that would be warm in the winter for him. Gradually we expanded his boundaries, allowing him access to the lower barn, then the hay loft area. Finally on a frigid morning in November, we opened the barn doors and windows a crack, hoping that the snow surrounding the barn would encourage Harry to stay put. But it didn’t.
That night as we drove to an appointment, my daughter and I spotted Harry. He was headed away from our farm, walking down the side of the road. We were crushed. You can offer a feral cat a new home, but you can’t compel him to accept. Harry was such a tough little loner; he had touched our hearts in the few days he had spent with us. It was a sad night. Next morning, as I was feeding the horses, I glanced up and there was Harry’s profile at the far end of the barn. I got his food out, which he accepted with dignity, although he watched me constantly over his shoulder to make certain that I kept my distance.
From that time on, Harry established himself on the farm. Rodent nests disappeared from stalls and no signs of mice in the grain or hay area reappeared. Harry was like clockwork in the morning and evening, waiting for his rations on his high cat perch strategically placed at the tack room window. He would hiss and raise a warning paw if we came too close, and he made it clear that we were partners, not friends. We respected the agreement: we would deliver a little wet food, he would keep the barn clear of rodents. He sometimes would lay his prey out in a row in the hayloft, as though to prove to us he was doing his job. One could imagine Harry as an old time gunslinger, blowing smoke from his paw and carving another notch on his belt.
Harry was fearless. I would see him ranging in the forest behind our home, through the paddocks and across the street into the large fields where cows graze. I was afraid for him because of coyotes and other prey animals, but he always ended up back in the tack room, sometimes with marks of a fight on him, but always fiercely independent and alone. If I heard coyotes in the evening, I would check out the barn and close it up if Harry was inside, but often he was out and on his own. Blissfully ignorant of cat psychology, we thought that since he had come from a cat colony, he would like a buddy who could watch his back and keep him company. When we tried the relocation process, the newcomer Drewberry (a feral kitten whose fear of humans had deterred potential adoptors) loved him, but Harry clearly was not interested in feline companionship. (Drewberry became our indoor cat, affectionate and loving, and she sits purring on my lap as I write this piece.)
Once a year, we would scruff Harry and wrestle him into a crate. Our vet would deworm him, check him over, clean his teeth, and give him rabies vaccinations. Ironically, at the vet’s office, Harry morphed into a model of decorum. The vet always cautioned that after his annual anesthesia, Harry should not be allowed to climb for twenty-four hours. Either Dr. Steinmetz neglected to give this post-operative instruction to Harry, or, more likely, Harry declined to follow his doctor’s orders. After his first anesthesia, I put Harry back in the tack room, locked the cat door, and dragged his cat perch (the only climbable object) into the main barn. The next morning I went up to the barn to feed the animals and was greeted by the incongruous and hilarious sight of Harry in his usual place on the perch…even though the perch was in the middle of the barn. Since the little cat door was still locked, Harry had apparently charged the tack room door and had forced it open. As I dragged the perch back to its usual spot in the tack room, I had to laugh and wonder what Harry was thinking. Maybe, since food always came when he was on his perch, he thought he had to be on it in the morning, even though the idiot management running the barn had moved it. Or maybe he was letting me know that he could take care of himself, thank you very much, and don’t think about locking him up even for his own good.
Time went on, and our relationship evolved. I often work late, and occasionally the evening caretaker would forget Harry’s dinner. On those days Harry would wait for me at my parking spot, and then lead me up to the barn, looking over his shoulder to be certain I was following, to get the meal that was his due. (Harry was an honest guy; unlike my indoor cats, who always pretend that no one has fed them, he never asked for dinner unless it had been overlooked.)
Harry’s behavior changed after his next annual trip to the vet, and I became quite concerned. Harry was doing something very odd—he was meowing, a poignantly high-pitched, rusty meow, and hanging out near me as I did the evening barn chores. I was extremely concerned because I had never heard Harry meow before. His only vocalization was warning hisses. I wondered transiently if somehow we had brought the wrong cat home, but there was no mistaking Harry. I brought him back to the vet, who could find nothing wrong. This ushered in a new phase of our relationship. Harry was starting to trust us. He continued to meow, and although gradually his vocalizations no longer sounded rusty, they remained amusingly high pitched given his tough guy demeanor. I would have expected bass. Christmas of that year, I heard Harry purr for the first time.
Harry became my late night buddy. When I worked on the farm in the evening, I left the dogs in the house and Harry hung out with me. He would stay a few feet away, but would track along with me as I did evening chores. When I raked leaves, he would jump into the piles pretending he had discovered prey. Or he would dash across the arena in zig-zag patterns, playing tag with himself. Or chase a single leaf drifting in the air. Over time, he paid me the ultimate compliment: he sat with his back to me, surveying the territory in front of him. A wild cat always watches for possible threat from all directions. If he sits with his back to you, he is giving you a powerful message: you’re watching his back, and he is not worried about threats from behind. He only has to watch 180 degrees in front. Eventually, he would cautiously approach me, brush against my leg, and accept scratches behind his ears. It was always clear, however, that our relationship was based on mutual respect and on his terms.
I had a feeling in the winter of 2009 that Harry was not well. His habits were unchanged, he looked the same, but there was something wrong. Three trips to my excellent vet did not reveal a problem; his lab tests were normal, as were abdominal and chest x-rays. And then Harry disappeared on a Friday. He had done this before, gone off for a day or two, and then reappeared. We all looked for Harry, but this time, he was gone for seven days, and we feared that we would never know what had happened to him.
The following week, after a one-day trip out of town, I received a telephone message left by a neighbor that Harry was lying next to their home and appeared very sick. Afterward, my neighbor said they often had seen Harry patrolling through their back yard, and they and the adjacent neighbor welcomed him. He said they knew Harry had a home, because he appeared healthy and well cared for, and he called me in an effort to locate Harry’s owner. When I raced over, they told me Harry had quietly lain down near their home the prior day. He had no marks of injury. After they attempted to reach me, they contacted Animal Control to seek help. Harry died shortly after Animal Control arrived, and the vet to whom they bought him could not save him. I can never repay my neighbors’ kindness to Harry and to me. A small lilac bush, a thank you to my new friends who helped Harry, was planted by them near the place he chose as his last stand.
I miss Harry. In the mornings when I feed the horses, I start to reach for his half can of food, only to remember that he is no longer here. Driving up my driveway at night, I have to remind myself that he will not be waiting for me. My consolation is our memories of Harry, and the contrast between how his life began and how it ended. If his original farm owner had not become ill, Harry would have continued as an anonymous feral cat in his original colony, expanding the population size, and spreading and at risk for disease. Alternatively, had The Animal Center not intervened, he could have been trapped and killed by the new caretakers. Instead, he found a territory that he kept free of pests, where he roamed free and independently, and where he found security and companionship—always, of course, on his own terms. Cat dignity and independence, you understand.
I keep thinking that I see Harry, just at the periphery of my vision, patrolling through the edge of the forest. I contemplated a burial for Harry, but somehow burial for this free spirit did not seem appropriate. His presence permeates this space in the territory he roamed fearlessly. We are scattering his ashes here at the farm, where he stamped his little pawprint indelibly on our hearts.
In the end, Harry did walk away with his suitcase, when he chose and on his own terms. Harry’s life reminds me of Kenny Rogers’ song, The Gambler. Harry left without fanfare or fuss when it was his time. We were lucky that he spent a few years with us before he moved on.
Goodbye, Harry.
Michele, Lara, Christopher, Drewberry & Ray Charles
