Best Little Barn Cat

the story of a true mouser

This is the story of a small barn cat that showed up at the right time. Dash was born under the front porch with five littermates. There were three tuxedo kittens and three long-haired black cats. We had no idea there were cats living under there when we initially toured the place. We found them the second week after we purchased the farmhouse when pulling into the driveway one day. The whole group was extremely skittish and did not want to be approached. All of the kittens had blue eyes and were so clumsy and cute. So, we were guessing they were ~2-3 weeks old at the time we first spotted them.

We decided it would be best if we didn’t intervene until the kittens were a bit older given the mom was doing a good job feeding and caring for her family. We planned to slowly try socializing with them so that they might trust us enough to get them to a vet or clinic. Unfortunately, after a few days of storms, the mom cat moved her litter somewhere else. We searched our property, hoping we might track them down, but we only found one little kitten left under the porch. We are assuming this little fella was the runt and we took him under our care. He became a bottle-fed baby while we continued to look for his siblings and mom, periodically checking our cameras for anything we might have missed. About two weeks after Little Cat (Dash) was left behind, two of his siblings randomly appeared back under the porch and they were in very rough condition. One of them had their eyes almost matted shut and the other had the other end matted shut. I tried to catch them to help clean them off, but they were freakishly feral. I ended up reaching out to a local cat shelter that specializes in feral & barn cats and they came out the next day to catch the two kittens who returned and put them into a foster program. Because they were still so young, maybe five weeks, they were able to become socialized and were adopted out as indoor cats through their barn cat program! It is really nice to find free programs like that nearby.

We decided to keep our little black and white tuxedo kitten though because he was just so much smaller than his two siblings and he was pretty bonded to us after bottle feeding him. Plus, we could use some help with mouse mitigation around here. We call him Little Cat or Dash because he has a small dash mark under his chin and he mad-dashes around.

When I took Dash into the vet, he was barely a pound in weight! They treated him for a sinus infection and couldn’t believe how friendly he was. I don’t think he has grown that much since then, maybe a small bit. He is still a truly little cat. He weighs 4.5 pounds max in total at almost seven months old (as I was writing this I asked B to go outside and weigh him with the scale).

We ran into our neighbor who gave us a little background on the cat situation as we’ve seen a few here and there earlier in the spring. She said that at one point, there were close to 30 different cats wandering around nearby! I’m so glad we don’t have that big of a cat problem, but there will always be roaming cats in a more rural area. One of them that stayed close to her property she named “Little Dot”, who was a female black and white tuxedo cat with a dot on her neck. I think it’s so fitting that we ended up naming our barn kitten Little Cat / Dash, who is probably related to that cat if that wasn’t actually his mother.

Little Cat has really made his mark on all visitors, demanding attention and entertaining with his playfulness. Even people who aren’t cat people have come to love him. We always get asked if we will ever bring him inside, but at this point, he is so used to getting to explore and run along the fence that I think he would be bored inside. Plus, one of our dogs does not like him - like mortal enemy #1.

The other dog that we have protected Dash when he was a kitten and when we had him inside bottle feeding him. It was really cute. She would lay by his box for hours keeping him company. Dash also befriended the chickens! He likes to try to spook our rooster by hiding and popping out at him. Then, the rooster chases him off. Sometimes we catch him just laying around wherever the hens are hanging out.

The life of a working barn cat is a bit dangerous, but we let ours sleep in the garage at night if he wants to with access to food, water, a litter box, and a cozy bed. He definitely appreciates it during the colder nights because our garage stays around 40 degrees. Sometimes on warmer nights, though, he is off on an adventure and nowhere to be found.

He is a true mouser, friend of the chickens, and enemy of the dog.

Well, back to work

KB