My favorite cat was a grey and white tabby we named Gota. My sister Nancy named her as she was taking Spanish in High School. Gota must mean cat in Spanish.
Gota had many litters of kittens. Many became farral and ran to hid into the buildings when they were approached. I would chase them into bins with my red pig tails flying trying to catch them to play with them. My dad liked the cats as they kept the mice down that had scuried into the grainry to have a big feast or came in from the fields to the buildings when the weather was cold. In the house we always had mousetraps in the cellar and utility room to catch the mice. My Mom would say “Ick” and then stick out her tongue in disgust if one was caught and she had to remove it from the trap. She hated the mouse dirt with a passion.
My Uncle Swede was my Dad’s designated manager of the over population of cats. This seems cruel, but not very different from the way we euthanize excess animals today at local animal shelters. It accomplishes the same purpose (controling the cat population) in a quick efficient fashion. Skip to the next paragragh if this subject makes you squirmy. We would capture Gota and maybe a few other favorite cats and put them in the barn with the door shut. All the children were ushered into the house away from the killing. My Uncle Swede was standing by with his 22 shotgun. A bowl of milk was placed in the middle of the yard for the cats. They all ran to the bowl to have some milk. Bang. Bang. Bang. The end of the over population. By the time the kids were let out of the house, all the mess was cleaned up and buried some place. I’m sure my brother has a different view of what happened as he was probably included in the clean up. He told me one time when I questioned him about this, that this was a more human way to manage over population of cats than what my grandmother and grandfather did. They put litters of baby kittens into a burlap bag and then placed them in the running ditch water to drown.
It would make sense to neuter or spay the cats to control the problem. However, veteranian usage was for only emergencies or to remove the horns from the calves, not for cats due to limited funds.
I ended up as an adult raising a few persian and himilayian cats for a while. I named them game names like Bingo, Domino, Checkers. Others were named like their color such as Panda Bear, Rusty, Valentine or just cat names such as Cooper or Nelli Bell. I finally outgrew my need to own cats, spay or neutered them all and found them good homes. Now we have a couple of neutered dogs from the animal shelter.
We had a big irrigation ditch running adjacent to our front yard. My sister, Nancy, was the champ at finding snakes that had scooted out of the ditch onto the grass in front of our house. She would take a shovel and chop off their heads. She ended up living on a farm in Nebraska and has been trapped more then once by a rattle snake in her yard or barn. She had a deathly fear of snakes because of that. I didn’t have the same experience with snakes and can’t really remember seeing them up close enough to use a shovel on them. I’m not really afraid of snakes, but I probably wouldn’t pick one up on purpose.