I opened the door to the old dairy barn and looked around the room. I was ashamed because of what we'd let happen to this place during the past ten years. Built in the spring of '54, when we began dairying, the outside of the double four flat barn still looked pretty good. When I began my grooming and boarding farm, this barn was used for storage and we were milking in the new barn up on the hill. So this was where I started. My grooming table stood over there where the milk tank was planted on cement supports and at first I bathed dogs in the metal sink meant for washing milking equipment. When I started business in this barn, I'd painted the outside sheet iron walls a nice tan, had a chainlink fence built and added a shed on the south side. I had paneled the milk room, added a ceiling fan and lots of electrical outlets. I'd added walk-in kennels to the stanchion room where we milked cows and added pens for cats to the room where we stored feed. There was also a window unit for summertime and a Dearborn for winter.
After I moved the business to Stephenville in '85, time began to take a toll on the old barn as it reverted to a place for discards. At first I think we did have some organization of things but gradually, with more overflow from us and our children and grandchildren, all attempt at order gave way. While plowing through a box for last year's Christmas decorations, we upset other boxes of pots and pans, pictures, and magazines, games and puzzles, treasures too good to throw out but too bad to live with in the house.
And then came the cats! At first there were just three little kittens and they were so cute! These three kittens had several extra toes on both front feet! They were white with long hair. One had pale blue eyes and the other two had yellow eyes. We started bringing cat food out to the barn and as the kittens became big cats, the rats, mice and snakes all went South with our blessing. In no time at all there were black cats, yellow cats, striped cats, long haired cats, cats with Siamese markings, bob tail cats, and all of them had more toes on their front feet than your average cat. We looked around in amazement. How did all these cats come from just three little kittens?
Sometime in there we made an apartment for Elvis in the part where we had kennels. We fixed it up with a hole cut in the wall and a truck mud flap nailed over it. Elvis could just lift up the part that had "Bruner Motors" on it and slip outside to a fenced yard. He started spending most of his days hanging out with the cats. Sometimes he takes a tiny kitten from its mother. He takes it through the hole outside and swings with it or just sits and holds it in his arms. After awhile he takes it back to where its mother can claim it.
Today when I came out to the barn, I had decided to start raising calves again. I figured Elvis would enjoy the calves' company just as he does the cats'. I looked forward to putting the old barn that had seen so many uses, back into good looking shape. Raising baby calves is a job that I know well, having been "chief calf-raiser" several years ago. That time they'd even built a barn especially for my business and there had been as many as thirty little Holstein babies there at a time. Twice a day I fed and watered and cleaned the barn and listened to how they felt about their new formula and whether or not that injection stung. Animals tell you in many ways how they feel and I am a good listener.
Michael, my grandson, brought over three beautiful little black and white babies yesterday, and together we bedded them down in wood shavings. "This time I'm not going to raise so many calves," I told him. He smiled down at me from his six foot something frame, as cats scurried off into the other room. "Yeah, Maw, didn't you start out with just three cats?"
