Dancing Dogs

by Jon Katz

  SHE CIRCLED BACK near the barn and listened to the rats moving around in the stone wall. She seemed to sense that killing the rats was her purpose, her mission, and she pursued them coldly and with ruthless efficiency. She knew there were not many left.

  Her eyes were fixed on the crevices between the rocks for any sign of movement. She was still for a long time, and then she heard a pebble drop to the ground. The nose of a large rat appeared, its mate hovering behind it. She heard the tiny squeals of their babies back in the nest, hungry for the food that the mother and father rats were heading out to find.

  The first rat hit the ground, then skittered off to the rear of the barn, where the cows were and the smells were strong and rich. She waited until he’d reached the grain pans. He would gorge on the grain, stuffing his cheeks with enough to bring back.

  She waited, even more still than before, her eyes never leaving the cleft in the wall. Soon another rat appeared, the mother, looking anxiously back and forth. When the mother rat landed on the ground, the cat leapt from her hiding place in the grass, landing right on her back. She knew the rat would fight to protect her babies, sensed it, and, long sharp claws out, she grabbed the shocked, stunned mother on both sides of her neck. The rat fought back savagely, crying out and biting her attacker on the shoulder, drawing blood. The two of them rolled around, one screaming a warning, the other silent and relentless. Inside the house, the useless dog heard something and barked. A human voice said, “Jake, ssssh.” When it was over, the cat hopped up onto the stone wall and licked her own blood from her throbbing shoulder. Then she was still again.

  The male rat had heard the struggle and came scurrying quickly around the corner where the cat was waiting for him. She pounced so that he didn’t have time to struggle, nor did he have a mother’s instincts to power him. She had shocked him and she used this advantage. When she was done, she dragged both bodies into the rear of the barn where she would finish with them later. Then she sat and waited for the babies. She could hear them squeaking in hunger. It wouldn’t be long.

  AT THE END of her evening hunts, as the sun rose and filled the barn with its yellow glow, the cat would slide under the fence, hop up to the broken window, crawl in, and land next to the big rooster who clucked and grumbled as he guarded his hens. She would jump over the chicken wire and sit underneath one of the overhanging roosts, where it was warm and comfortable. There was hay and straw, and it was out of sight.

  The rooster had not liked her presence at first. When she invaded the roosts, he puffed up his chest, spread his wings, moved in front of the hens, and clucked imperiously. She paid him no mind. He was a tough rooster, and had pecked at the farmer and his wife when they came too close to his hens. But he eventually grew comfortable with the barn cat, and now when she approached, he would still squawk, but without menace.

  She ignored the rooster’s bluster. She felt at ease with him.

  This old, fading rooster and this ferociously independent cat had reached an understanding. He sensed that she meant no harm to him or his charges. The connection between them was part of the mystery of animals, which humans could not fathom and the animals themselves did not consider.

  She did not bond with the other creatures on the farm. Sometimes when she hunted behind the farmhouse, the big brown dog the farmer called Jake would sense or smell her and come to the window or the porch. She had only to meet his eyes and he would whine, growl a bit, then move back into the house. She was unfathomable to him as well, a quiet creature who seemed to need nothing, and would kill almost anything. Jake was now used to finding bits of frogs, bird’s heads, dead snakes, and the carcasses of rats, moles, chipmunks, and mice all over the farm. They all had her smell on them.

  SHE WAS NOT COMFORTABLE with any humans. She avoided people, especially when she sensed they were watching her. She did not trust or comprehend them. But sometimes she was drawn to the farmer’s wife, who appeared in the barn in bitter cold or storms and left hot milk or soup with meat in it for her. The woman would call out to her—“Hey, cat! Hey, cat!”—in a soft and pleasing voice, and the cat would sometimes show herself, but always from a distance. When the woman saw her, she would nod and smile. She knew better than to pressure a barn cat. “Something to warm you up, give you strength,” she would say before leaving.

  The cat would never appear for the farmer though. When she heard him come out of the farmhouse and walk toward the barn, she would melt away, disappearing up into the tall reaches of the hayloft where she hunted bats and rats and mice and slept, or she would head out into the woods.

  ON THE DAY the barn cat joined the farm, a Chevy pickup trailing a cloud of dust had pulled up to the big red barn on Callaway Road in Belcher, New York. An old farmer uncoiled himself from the truck and moved a few steps toward the barn with the signature stiff and slow walk of all veteran dairy farmers whose knees are shot from years of milking twice a day. A big German shepherd came bounding out from behind the barn, barking until he recognized the old man, and then rushed over to sniff the box and growl.

  “Hey, Jake, old boy,” said the man, setting the box down on the ground. “I brought you a barn cat to get rid of those rats Pete is having so much trouble with,” he continued, rubbing the big dog’s ears. “I had a litter of six of ’em, and I got rid of five and kept this one for Pete.”

  Barn cats were always having unwanted litters, and farmers often “got rid of them.” Some men shot the superfluous creatures, or else drowned or poisoned them. Nobody talked much about the unsavory business, but everybody knew about it.

  From the farmers’ point of view, there wasn’t much choice. Even the shelters didn’t want them, had no room for them. Barn cats were almost never spayed or neutered, nor taken to vets, and if you let them breed unchecked, the barns would soon be overrun with cats and waste, sometimes disease.

  A persistent meow came from the box. Jake whined and circled, his ears back. A man in a red Agri-Mark cap came out of the barn, waved, and called Jake back.

  “Hey, Pete,” called the farmer with the box.

  “Hey, Darryl,” said Pete. “Thanks for bringing the cat over. These rats are getting big as rabbits. One of them bit Jake here, and I had to take him to the vet for rabies shots.”

  Darryl looked over at Jake, who had an adhesive bandage taped around his rear left leg. The dog nosed the box and growled.

  “That’s our new rat killer,” Pete told Jake. “Leave her alone if you know what’s good for you.” Jake didn’t always know what was good for him, but he was obedient, so he stepped away from the box.

  “I think she’ll do right by you,” Darryl said. “I don’t see much of her—I had to trap her with a piece of fish and she nearly bit my arm off—but I think she’s a real hunter.”

  Pete thanked Darryl, who waved and clambered back into his truck. He picked up the box and brought it into the barn, followed closely by Jake.

  A huge red rooster rounded the corner and let out an ear-splitting crow. “Jeez, Argyle, shut up,” said the farmer. A score of Orpington hens trailed the rooster industriously, pecking at waste and bugs.

  Pete put the box on top of one of the hay bales stacked in the rear of the barn. He opened it, stepped back, and waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. The cows were lowing anxiously from the milking area. “I got to get back in there,” he told the dog, and headed to his charges.

  Jake sat on his haunches and waited. He knew there was a cat in there; he could smell her. But there was no movement. He edged closer and reached his nose toward the open end of the box. He heard the hiss and felt the claws long before he saw the cat’s luminous green eyes.

  Jake yelped and ran down the aisles of the barn, past the hay bales, and into the milking bay where Pete was kneeling down, attaching a suction hose to a cow’s teat. Jake had spent his whole life around cows, and he’d been kicked once or twice. Cows rarely looked for trouble unless they were provoked, and the dog had learned to leave them alone. He now knew to le
ave the cat alone too.

  Pete looked down at the bloody marks on the dog’s snout and shook his head and smiled. He got up, called Jake over to the side of the barn, and put some antibiotic powder on his scratches.

  “Well, this one may work out,” he told the dog, scratching Jake’s ears for comfort.

  PETE DID NOT NAME his barn cats, or get close to them. He didn’t bring them into the farmhouse or feed them unless it was well below zero for days, and even then, he would only let his wife put out some leftover soup or cheap kibble from the convenience store. He made a point of not getting too attached to animals, especially barn cats, who had short and difficult lives.

  Some farmers put heat lamps out for their cats in the winter, but there had been several awful barn fires as a result, and so Pete’s cats fended for themselves. The cat was not high on his list of worries, but sometimes he looked around the barn, wondering where she might go to stay warm at night.

  He cautioned his wife about feeding her too often: “She’ll get spoiled and wait to be fed rather than hunting the rats and mice.” He wanted the cat to be hungry. Otherwise she’d just be another animal to feed, and he needed her to work. Pete had had increasingly serious problems with aggressive rats ever since he’d turned the tractor over while hauling some silage into the concrete bunkers where it was stored for the winter. Silage, a fermented corn mix used to feed the cows in cold weather, drew rats as well as raccoons and birds.

  Pete had seen the cat for the first time a week after she had arrived and had her initial dustup with Jake. The dog had whined and growled, looking out at the big pasture behind the barn. There the farmer could see the cat creeping quietly toward the field. Smart girl—it was good hunting ground. He held up his field glasses and saw that she was a beauty, with glossy brown and black fur and striking, almost eerie eyes. She carried herself with great presence. She was not skinny and moth-eaten like most of the barn cats he’d had. She was different.

  He had not seen her since.

  Though she never showed herself to the farmer, she knew where he was at all times. She often watched him as he moved about the farm and did his chores. Sometimes she peered out from the vast stacks of hay bales, sometimes from a branch high up in one of the farm’s apple or maple trees. Often she slithered through the tall grass in the meadow to keep an eye on him.

  Many days, he saw traces of her. He knew she was at work. He noticed the first dead rat within days of her arrival—a huge thing lying by the entrance to the barn, almost like a calling card. He found two more the next day, and a dozen over the following week. Various parts of birds, mice, snakes, and moles—also her handiwork—littered the farm. He marveled at how effective a killing machine she was. The rats were becoming scarce.

  She was doing her job, and one day, like all of the other barn cats he had ever known, she would disappear. Shot by a hunter or a kid with a .22. Hit by a car or truck. Swept up by an owl or picked off by a clever coyote or fox. Caught by a stray dog. Poisoned. Weakened by hunger, stricken with worms, parasites, rabies, or one of the many other diseases that afflicted barn cats. They never got old. They tended not to last long.

  THE FIRST FEW DAYS after she crawled out of that cardboard box, the cat hid up in the hay bales. She caught a few mice, swatted some bats out of the air, and ate moths and spiders. When she got thirsty, she crept down to the barn floor and sipped from the cows’ water trough.

  Cautiously, she explored the vast barn, which sat next to an old white farmhouse, bookended by pastures on one side and woods on the other. She smelled the cats that had been there before her and the two others still in the barn. One was old and rheumy, waiting to die, the other a frail female with an injured leg.

  The female challenged her but the fight was quick. After that, neither of the other cats wanted any trouble. She staked out her territory right away: the big barn where the hay was stored and the fields and woods beyond the farmhouse. The other cats could have the smaller pole barn and the pasture behind it. They stayed out of her way.

  She slept in the mornings and again in the afternoons when the sun was high and strong and warm. At dusk, she listened to the rats and the mice skittering around for food and burrowing into their crevices and nests. The mice were easy pickings, but the rats were big and could fight back. She had to be still, come at them from above or behind, startle and stun them, kill them quickly. Then she’d find their nests and kill their babies.

  Later in the evenings, when the rats were in their burrows, there were other creatures to hunt. Bats, of course, and the mice, but also squirrels, baby rabbits, and moles in the meadow. She was always near a tree, or had an eye on one, in case a coyote or fox came out of the woods to hunt for rabbits. She knew every crevice and every low branch in every tree all through the woods around the barn. One night, betrayed by a full moon, she was nearly caught by two coyotes, but she was able to scramble up a tree. She stayed in the high branches all night, and the next morning she caught a songbird as it hopped out of its nest and began to sing.

  Two nights later, a gray fox chased after her. She made a frantic run back across the meadow and into the barn and found herself face-to-face with the rooster, who was awake and patrolling. She rubbed against him, and he flapped his wings but didn’t move away.

  HIGH UP in the barn, the cat loved to leap up, grab a barn swallow, and then hop from bale to bale with the bird in her teeth. She did it gleefully, and if the farmer or his wife had ever seen her, they would have sworn she was dancing. She was mesmerized by the giant spiderwebs and she clawed at them, fascinated, catching the frantic spiders, eating them or watching them scurry away.

  Some nights she crept up onto the farmhouse porch, where she lay on one of the farmer’s hammocks, listening to the noises from inside the house. She loved to look in the window and see the flickering images on the box in the corner, hear the farmer and his wife talking or the phones ringing, smell the food cooking on the stove. Once in a while she thought the farmer’s wife saw her, and when she sensed she was being watched, she would vanish, fleeing into the woods or back to the barn. But she liked being close to the bustle of the farmhouse.

  She was not like the dog though, of whom she was contemptuous. She did not bow and scrape for food, or follow humans around. She did not play with them, or want to be scratched or touched by them. She did not want to be inside the house, trapped and helpless. She could take care of herself, find something to eat, seek out a warm spot by the cows, or the generators, or bask in the rays of the sun.

  The farm was full of places she loved, but when her work was done and the night was quiet, she felt most comfortable in the barn near the rooster. She was the only creature on the farm who didn’t take the rooster seriously, although his crow, coming at odd times these days, would sometimes startle her and ruin her secret naps under the roost. At some point every day she found herself checking in with the rooster, who had gotten used to her, accepted her, even watched out for her.

  When she came into the barn, the two of them would settle down, one next to the other. She would nap there, or just sit and look out the windows toward the farmhouse. Once in a while, she rubbed against the rooster, and although he was startled at first, he didn’t get flustered or huffy, didn’t crow or flap his wings at her. He seemed to like her company, and she his. This was not something she thought about; it was just something that happened.

  IN THE AUTUMN, almost all of the rats were gone. One by one, she had hunted them down, slaughtered the adults, killed the babies. There were still some mice in the barn, but there would always be some, just as there would always be some bats.

  That November, as winter approached and the days turned gray and the nights cold, the farmer came into the barn and saw the rooster lying on his side by the chicken roost inside the pen where the chickens slept. He knew the old Rhode Island Red was tiring, and was not surprised to see him near death.

  But he was surprised to see the tortoiseshell cat—the one who had cleared the ba
rn of rats—lying next to him. She sat up and looked him in the eye, but she didn’t run. The farmer was taken aback. The cat, who had never allowed him to get close, was sitting coolly just a few yards in front of him, her green eyes meeting his.

  He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and called his wife, who appeared shortly with a saucer of warm milk. The two of them took in the strange sight of the cat sitting next to the rooster. “She’s protecting him from the other chickens,” the farmer’s wife said. Chickens were ruthless when one of their flock was dying. They would often peck the dying chicken to death, starting with the eyes. “She’s watching over him. Keeping him company.”

  The rooster was lying down, able to lift his head and attempt some feeble crows, but otherwise almost inert.

  “He’s dying,” the farmer told his wife. “I’ll go get the ax. I’m not wasting a bullet on a chicken.”

  “Pete, just hold up,” she said quietly but with authority. “She’s sitting with him. Let’s leave them alone.”

  “Why do you think she’s protecting Argyle?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, “But she’s clearly not leaving him.”

  The farmer’s wife had witnessed a few of these peaceable-kingdom friendships—a horse and a sheep, a donkey and a lamb, a dog and a hen. There was no understanding these odd pairs, she thought—they could be explained only by the Lord. But that animals could reach so far down into themselves to find loyalty and friendship always touched her deeply.

  The farmer and his wife left the barn.

  For the next three days and nights, the cat sat with the old rooster. If she left to hunt or eliminate, neither the farmer nor his wife saw her go. In the daylight, the cat hung back a few paces, but at night, she curled up next to the old bird, leaning against him. If any of the hens came near, the cat would get up and hiss, and they would retreat hastily. Although the farmer’s wife never saw the cat eat, the saucer was always empty when she came to replace it. Sometimes she sat down in a corner of the roost and held out her hand to the cat. Sometimes, when her husband wasn’t around, she spoon-fed the rooster.