Jake and Stamper and Gretel

[Breaking with my long held Irish position of that stories that are made up or stretched are far superior to true stories, I am going to tell you an actual cat story of my youth, which came to mind as I considered the story was going to tell. It will follow.]

 Despite rigorous research I do not actually know how many farms have cats on them. But in my youth I don’t recall a single farm that did not have cats. Farms have cows, cows give milk, cats like milk (even if it is bad for them), therefore cats are a plenty. They love to weave around your feet as you carry milk cans from the barn (we milked by hand) to the house in hopes that they would trip us and they could gorge themselves on milk.

One of the cats we had on our farm we named Jake. Jake was a fine motley looking cats, now that I think of not unlike our Patchtricia and Pawline, though its blacks may have been blacker and its color more colorful. But after Jake had a liter of kitten on the front porch we had to change her name to Jakey. Jakey, despite her name change did not take to having or rather caring for kittens. She would just have a litter each year on the front porch and then leave. We would often try to save these poor little abandoned critters with eyedroppers of milk but it never worked. Jakey was a poor mother and we were unfit stand-ins.

Also on the farm at that time we had a dog named Gretel, a fine dachshund. She never had any puppies though we had tried to have her bred. One year Jakey deposited her litter on front steps and Gretel came over and inspected them. In fact, she picked one of them up and walked off with her. We would see her frequently about the found with this motley slobbered upon kitten in her mouth. This went on for some time; too long for that matter, the kitten should have gone to catland heaven long before. Then we noticed that occasionally, Gretel would stop, drop the kitten from her mouth and the kitten would come around and clamp itself onto one of Gretel’s nipples and nurse away. We found out later this sometimes happens in the animal world for one species to adopt an infant of another species and develop milk and nurse them. That is exactly what happened in this case. And yes, I really am telling the truth here.

It turned out the Gretel was a great mother and her kitten grew up strong. My mother named the kitten Stamper. This was in regards to Lady Macbeth who, from Shakespeare’s pen uttered the words about a cat, “Make that damned cat quit stamping around the house.”

Gretel and Stamper, the best mouser on the farm, stayed buddies all their lives. Gretel eventually when blind from cataracts but they would continue to play. Gretel would go chasing Stamper full throttle when Stamper would suddenly stop and jump left or right and significant distance, as Gretel would go roaring by. Gretel, sensing something was a foot, would stop, sniff the air, and then roar off in the direction of Stamper again. They played this game for hours.

 [The story as I said is true, but it has enough incredibility to it to satisfy my Irish love of story of which truth is irrelevant.]

Post Script. Are you familiar with the ”Farm Affect”? The Amish who live in northern Indiana have some of the lowest rates of allergies and asthma in the western world. Researcher Dr. Mark Holbreich says the scientists believe this is because they spend so much time exposed to things on the farms, such as cats, especially cats. For more complete information go here.