So, I\u2019ll try not to convince you how special Ceres was.\u00a0 Keith and I know it, and that\u2019s the only thing that counts in the end. But I will attempt to give you some flavor of her outsized personality and her general awesomeness.<\/p>\n
The first thing to know is that Ceres was decidedly not your regular tabby.\u00a0 She was actually only \u00be domestic cat, and \u00bc Jungle Cat (Felis chaus<\/em>).\u00a0 As a hybrid cat, she inherited some unique characteristics from her wild cat maternal grandfather \u2013 she was larger, lankier, and decidedly more athletic that domestic counterparts. And truth be told, on her father\u2019s side she had even more Jungle Cat ancestry, so genetically she was probably more like 2\/3rds domestic and 1\/3 Jungle Cat.<\/p>\n Because of her wildcat ancestry it was very important to create a bond with her at an early age.\u00a0 I picked her up from the breeder in North Carolina at not quite 4 weeks of age and had to bottle feed her and gradually wean her on to solid food. \u00a0Even when she was that small, she had me totally besotted.\u00a0 I would stare at her and be absolutely flooded with oxytocin and wanting to hold and protect her.<\/p>\n Of course, as she grew into a rambunctious kitten it was quite clear that she just too bouncy and boisterous to be an indoor cat. \u00a0By the time she was eight weeks old she had chewed off a good sized hunk my nice leather sofa.<\/p>\n But she was never destined to be a house cat.\u00a0 Even before she was born I had created a \u201cKitty Kondo\u201d in the loft of the small barn, with catwalks, climbing trees, and rope toys and where she and the other cats could roam about destroy things to their hearts content.\u00a0 She was destined to become the matriarch of my cat breeding program.\u00a0 But when she was actually old enough to move there, I missed her so much that I set up a hammock between the barn beams and slept most of the summer up in the barn with her in my arms.<\/p>\n She had a brilliant career as a momma cat, and she clearly passed on some of her awesomeness to her progeny, as I would get cards and letters for years afterwards from people who had purchased her kittens and couldn\u2019t believe how much personality a cat could have.<\/p>\n And it was her outsized personality that was the most amazing part of her that is hardest to convey. \u00a0Yes, she was strikingly beautiful and regal.\u00a0 But she was also as bad-ass as any creature could be.\u00a0 \u00a0It was clear she was born to rule.\u00a0 When her breeding days were over, she got installed in the big barn as \u2018the\u2019 barn cat and she ruled over her domain with an iron paw.\u00a0 The big barn had rafters 14 feet above ground, and a catwalk high up in the rafters.\u00a0 From that perch she would patrol for pigeons and starlings and survey her domain.\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019d deign to let the sheep or the donkeys in the barn, but only on her sufferance.\u00a0 And when she\u2019d had enough, she let them know.\u00a0 The same with human visitors.\u00a0 People would be struck by her exotic beauty and apparent friendliness, and have to be warned not to try and pet her.\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019d get a look in her eyes if anyone dared to be overly familiar with her royal personage, and then watch out!<\/p>\n Yet I could pick her up like a sack of potatoes and sling her around my neck and take her anywhere. That was, in fact, her favorite perch, where purring loudly, she would set to work licking and cleaning me within an inch of my life.\u00a0 On freezing nights stuck in the barn during lambing season, Ceres would leave her warm nest and come nestle inside my jacket and help keep me warm during my vigil with ewes in labor.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never had such an intense bond with another creature.<\/p>\n It was as a magnificent hunter and athlete that Ceres really excelled.\u00a0 Cats are very efficient killing machines, and they are unfortunately a leading cause in the loss of our native songbirds.\u00a0 But Ceres was pretty monomaniacal in her hunting.\u00a0 She had a barn to keep clean of vermin and there was more than enough to do there without seeking other hunting grounds. \u00a0And here again, she was unique.\u00a0 She was a \u2018cooperative\u2019 hunter.\u00a0 Cats are by nature rather solitary creatures, and never more so when they are hunting.\u00a0 But Ceres and I could hunt together.\u00a0 I\u2019d never seen anything like it.\u00a0 It was pretty amazing.\u00a0 If I saw a mouse, all I had to do was whisper \u201cCeres\u201d and she was on alert, beside me in an instant.\u00a0 She\u2019d freeze, look at me, and this is the really, really amazing thing, follow my hand as I would point to where the mouse was.\u00a0 Then she\u2019d assume the position, and get ready to stalk and pounce.\u00a0 Now the thing is, animals are not generally able to follow human pointing.\u00a0 Even chimps have a hard time doing it.\u00a0 But Ceres could. \u00a0(note: I just googled this, and apparently some other cats have learned to do this too, but still!).<\/p>\n It this cooperative hunting behavior that first that first clued Keith into her awesomeness.\u00a0 He and my nephew Luka watched her corner a large rabbit under a car and then, with their assistance, flush it out and make the kill.\u00a0 Keith compared it to a lioness on the Serengeti bringing down an antelope.\u00a0 He was in awe.<\/p>\n Her athleticism was legendary.\u00a0 She could leap over a farm gate (5 ft high) in a singe bound.\u00a0 She would often go for walks with us.\u00a0 We would walk along the farm drive, and she would keep pace on top of the board fence (a mere half inch thick).<\/p>\n Yet she wasn\u2019t above cadging a ride in a truck or a car.\u00a0 She had a healthy respect for moving vehicles, but if the car was parked and engine off, and you opened a door and said \u2018hop in<\/em>!\u2019 she\u2019d do so without hesitation and \u2018stand\u2019 shotgun with her back feet on the seat and her front paws on the dashboard and enjoy the ride.\u00a0 In fact one of her favorite things was to walk the quarter of a mile from the barn to the house and wait for me to come out so she could get a ride back.<\/p>\n When Keith and I would come in from a night out, we\u2019d drive by the barn and have a visit with Ceres.\u00a0 It got to be that she\u2019d be at the barn door anticipating our arrival when she heard a car late at night.<\/p>\n Unfortunately she grew deafer and deafer as an old lady.\u00a0 In her later years when we went for an evening visit after a night out somewhere, we\u2019d have to drive up the barn and leave the car lights on for a while to let her know we were there, but sure enough, she\u2019d get out of bed and come visit for a while.\u00a0 As she aged, she lost some of her amazing athletic abilities, but even in her last week, she turned to see a pigeon land in the barn and she went after it.<\/p>\n Her end was rather sudden.\u00a0 Three months after her 19th<\/sup> birthday she went into decline. \u00a0She did not seem to be in pain, but in her final week, she lost weight rapidly.\u00a0 She stopped eating and seemed to have difficult in doing so, no matter what we tempted her with.\u00a0 She could drink some water, but food didn\u2019t go down.\u00a0 On a June Saturday late afternoon, I spent about an hour with her.\u00a0 She was very, very affectionate and didn\u2019t seem to want me to leave.\u00a0 So I kept my hand on her until she fell asleep.\u00a0 I left to go to an event.\u00a0 When I got home later that evening she was asleep in the barn.\u00a0 The next morning I went with dread to check on her and she was nowhere to be found.\u00a0 I wondered that she had the strength to get up, much less to get out of the barn (she had to crawl under a gate to do so, or climb over it).\u00a0 I looked around but could not find her anywhere. \u00a0This was always my fear, that when her time came I would not be there or she would be out alone somewhere in the woods and I would never find her body.\u00a0 Cats like to go away to die and so she did.\u00a0 I did get to say goodbye to her, but I do feel guilty not spending the evening with her and it haunts me that she got up in the middle of the night, weak as she was, to wander off where she couldn\u2019t be found. \u00a0But three days later I did find her, under a bush near the house.\u00a0 She\u2019d been dead only for a few hours and luckily I was the first to find her.\u00a0 We buried her under the foundation of the new barn where we hope her spirit will endure and watch over us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ceres D. Cat \u2013 March 22, 2002 \u2013 June 27, 2021 I don\u2019t want to become one of those people.\u00a0 The ones that try to convince you just how amazing their little departed Fluffy was and what a special pup\/kitty\/ferret he\/she was. While it\u2019s true that the little furball was special to you, it is … Continue reading Ceres<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4659,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4651","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4651"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4661,"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4651\/revisions\/4661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/new.zuschlag.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Ceres-9-weeks.png\")
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