My Back Door Friends

Moving to the country has been an interesting experience on many levels.  Levels include in the winter just surviving the cold...the country is colder...having to brave the weather even for simple things like going to stores...they are a long distance away...and the costs of keeping up on things city people don't have to worry about like septic systems and water pumps is expensive.

I never thought about these when I moved here (Eaton) ....only about the idyllic settings, country scenery, and quiet.  (Well sort of quiet! Farm vehicles seem to have no mufflers!))

And so now 20 or so years later I can say...... I found that the country is made up of many things, but one thing is clear: people care about one another.  

Some say it is because they are all related, others say that it’s because the country folk are still untouched by modern city times.  For sure, many in the country are afraid of the city and its dangers.  I don’t know the answer, but the features that endear the country to me are the “people”, many of whom have now gone to the other side.

Neighbors came to the back door, friends just knocked and walk in. 

The relaxed atmosphere of the kitchen is where everyone gathers and still do, and in most of the older homes there is a woodstove that is all too inviting to leave the kitchen for another room.  Even in the summer somehow everyone congregates in the kitchen, coffee or tea offered with a bit of dessert that by afternoon becomes iced tea or lemonade or switchel  in the summer.  

So I etched the window of my back door to read, “ Back Door Friends Are Welcome Here!”  Out of that came a poem, my first in Eaton and now I have a full book of them...enjoy...

Back Door Friends

Back Door Friends are best,

They always know when to call;

Greeting you with a cheery “Hi!”

And “How did your day go?”

Dropping down in a fireside chair,

With enough time to sit and chat;

Telling you all about their day,

And discussing this or that.

Weather, gossip, or just a word of praise,

They always brighten up my day;

That’s why the sign on my door is clear,

“Back Door Friends Are Welcome Here!”

 

Animals I Have Known..

There is one thing for sure that I can say about every rural town:  there is always a town dog or cat.  The other thing that you can be sure of is that people drop off their stray cats thinking that they will find their way to a barn and become a barn cat.  Both of these scenarios I can personally attest to.

The stray cat issue, though, caused me much money and much pain.  It seemed, as I later found out, that the college nearby offered a psychology course that included behavior training or whatever, so the kids would get a cat and then, when they could not take it home, dump it in one of the villages close by.  These cats would have kittens, and the nightmare would start.  My first cat actually was a Siamese I brought with me when I moved to Eaton; he was very old and died there.  I had Chat for many years.  He was about 20 when he died and traveled with me everywhere. He loved to go in the truck.

The first stray in Eaton was Linky, which was named by my neighbor's son after a video game.  I eventually called him Lincus because of his serious nature.  Link wandered in during a blizzard and was full-grown, the vet thought about 5 years old.  He snuck into the basement where I had the wood stove the first winter in the house.  (This stove had to be moved in the spring because the floods filled the basement with water.) Link kept leaving in the morning and then returning.  I thought perhaps he couldn’t find his way home. 

Linky looked just like a lynx, and when I brought him to the veterinarian he exclaimed, “ a real cat!”  I didn’t quite figure that statement out. Linky also was the alpha cat and made all the other cats bow to him.  The younger males would lick his head and ears for him, and then he would put his paw out and they would sit next to him.  I told everybody he was the Godfather and they were all kissing his ring!

One fall I was sitting in the house, and what I thought was Linky was sitting on porch.  I went out to pet him, and he backed away.  I said, “Link, what’s up!”. He didn’t move.  I brought some food out, and he gobbled it down as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Just then Linky walked up the side porch steps, looked at the other Linky, smelled him and walked away!

That afternoon my friend and I sat in the back yard on the deck, and the other Linky sat under foot.  She sat, drank her beer and said,  “Linky is pretty quiet today.”  I said, “That’s not Linky.”  She said, “Of course it’s Linky!”  I said, “No, it’s not Linky!”  She finally agreed when the real Linky walked by.  The other cats sniffed him and never raised their back or their paws, so all we could figure was that this cat was a twin of Linky’s.   When he died a few weeks later I assumed he had come back to the place where they were born to die!  It was certainly the strangest cat thing I had ever witnessed.

When Linky died on New Years Day at over 20 years old, I wrote an obituary about him for the Mid-York Weekly since most people in town knew him because he went out every morning and every night and made his rounds around the town, even until the week of his death.

The cat all of the adults and children loved was Curly.  Curly came to the house in terrible shape the week of Chanukah. I was making a Chanukah Bush for a young friend, who was studying this for a school project, when this sick cat appeared.  He was obviously wormy and starved and looked terrible.  I fed him and tried to clean him up, but no one would take him.  He had something caught in his throat like a bone, and it caused him not to be able to eat much.  Eventually by sheer feeding him small meals and by the bone or object moving, he recovered, and within a year he was the most beautiful black and white cat anyone had ever seen.  The same people whom I had tried to give him to came by one by one, and they all wanted to adopt this wonderful clean cat.  I laughed as I told each one of them that they couldn’t have him, that I was keeping him, and that he was the cat they hadn’t wanted.

The children of town could put him in paper bags and chase with him, and the little girls could dress him with hats and put him on a wagon.  And to really get him going, all you had to do was yell with a bit of a raised voice, “C-u-r-r-l-ee-y.”  Curly died an old and well-loved cat.  Even my friend Pauline a dog lover would sit and pet him; she said he reminded her of an old farm cat they had had as children. Curly was the kind of mellow cat that could just sit in one place and smile that all knowing smile at you, like a Cheshire Cat.

I miss them both! I now have a stray called Rascal who actually is quite like by people, he has his own Facebook page..Rascal Messere..friend him..he will friend you back!

Here is a spoof video we did on Rascal....