When I was in graduate school in Animal Science most of us were
fascinated with animal behavior. We could sit watching calves run around
playing all day. And we did occasionally sit on barn roofs for hours watching
sheep graze. That no one would actually pay us to study animal behavior never
stopped us from being fascinated with it. And we were all jealous of Temple
Grandin who actually found an economically viable use for paying attention to
how animals act.
Animals aren’t saints. Bulls have killed people, not to
mention picking on other animals in the herd. And for every race horse that has
had a goat as a friend, there’s probably a horse who has injured or killed a
smaller animal. But animal friendships still fascinated us. And with all the
books currently out that mark friendships between unlikely species, it would
seem it isn’t just us nerdy animal scientists who find animal behavior
fascinating. The odd couples give us all
hope.
Our neighbors had an
old blind horse and a donkey, who led the horse out to pasture every morning
and brought her back in at night. The donkey never acted like she particularly
liked the horse – but still she led her around. And the horse was always calmer
with the donkey nearby.
We have a cat who always slept with our old Golden
Retriever. When the dog died, the cat kept trying to make overtures to our new
Golden pup. But the new dog was just too rambunctious. The cat though still
goes and sleeps in the dog room, settling for sleeping on a chair near the
dog.
But the most unusual
friendship I’ve seen was when I was kid. We had a blind barn cat, who in and of
herself was a marvel. She was a long-haired black and white who’d been born
blind and she lived her whole life in our barn. She never ventured beyond the barn, but within
it she could find her way anywhere. She knew where there where nesting spots in
the hay mow, where the feed was put out, where the other cats hung out, who to
avoid. She knew which stantions had cows in them and which were empty. She knew
where you could cross the gutter and where to avoid falling into the gutter.
She knew the routine, when milking was, when the cows went out and came in,
when the cats were fed.
So, it wasn’t
surprising that when she had kittens she knew the one stantion that was empty
and where a pile of hay had built up in the manger. And there, between Rhoda, a
white Holstein with black circles around her eyes, and Jessie, a young mostly
black heifer, she made a nest for her kittens.
For the first weeks
of the kittens life, the Blind Cat, as she was called (barn cats don’t get very
exotic names, after all) stayed with them. We brought her food and watched to
make sure the dogs weren’t bothering her. But she kept her kittens well covered
and wasn’t above smacking a dog nose with an open paw.
When the kittens
were about a month old, the blind cat started leaving them occasionally. She’d
walk about the barn or join the other cats to be fed. The kittens could see by
then, and they were beginning to be able to climb over the slope of their nest
and tumble out. And that is when Rhoda the cows babysitting duties began.
Rhoda had been
watching the blind cat and her kittens since the day they were born. She’d lay
down, her head stretched out on the manger floor, her nose almost reaching the
cat’s nest and watch the cat and her kittens for hours on end. But when the cat
started leaving the kittens for short periods, Rhoda took protecting them
seriously.
If the dogs came
near the nest to investigate, Rhoda butted them away with her head. If the
kittens crawled out of the nest, Rhoda pushed them with her nose, rolling them
back in. When they were big enough to run around, she let them play in her
manger, running around her head for hours on end.
I can’t say that any
of the kittens ever paid any attention to Rhoda once they were full grown. But
for the two months that they were in that nest next door to her, she stood
guard over them and their mother every day.
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