Couples Therapy for Farmers Should Be a Thing + The Omen of the Black Cats
While we were watching the thunderheads roll in a few nights ago, preparing to eat outside on our porch with a new friend, we realized that it always rains when people come to dinner. At least it has always rained this particular summer when we have people over for dinner. Or perhaps, even more suspiciously, it rains when we have people over for dinner because there is no where to eat inside our house since I sanded all the textured drywall off our kitchen walls. I thought about leaving the texture on our walls as we remodeled our kitchen — a shrine to the apartment my father, brother and I lived in for a few years during the 90’s after my parent’s divorce. But I decided that I did not want the memory of divorce looking at me every morning while I chopped up almonds to put in my sheep yogurt. The remainder of our house is covered in fine, white dust. Our boots, our books on raising cows, our spoons, the long and thick leaves of our aloe vera plant— all covered in a fine white powder as if the walls sneezed and didn’t bother to clean up after themselves. They must have been very sick. A nasty cold.
While it didn’t rain the night the thunderheads rolled in toward our back porch, (I still had to water the garden) the wind picked up and the sky got so dark over our farm that it felt like I should be making a list of Things To Do Before I Die. Our friend who came to dinner, came as any farmer should and can in the bountiful month of September — with a box full of garden treasures. My wife says it is the best month to be born. I told her she can share my birthday if she wants rather than celebrating hers at the very end of brittle January. She said, “I thought you like it to be all about you on your birthday.”
Our new friend brought boxes of fresh, sweet corn that she picked right before coming to our house for dinner. Our new friend brought bright yellow sauerkraut that was hissing and spitting, threatening to pop out of the lid on the jar it was obviously upset about being inside of. I stood back as our new friend opened the jar and, because she opened it slowly, the sauerkraut conceded to just being a plain and boring sauerkraut that oozed out of the jar instead of popping its top off like a kinky champagne bottle. Our new friend brought pickled radishes in a slightly bigger jar, white and pink layers arranging themselves like healthy candy canes. Our new friend brought bouquets of flowers — bright yellow and orange Marigolds and pink and purple Zinnias. The flowers were wild and falling all over each other, like teenage girls who are all knees and elbows in the backseat of a car. It was my favorite kind of dinner gift.
As we talked with our new friend, we found that we all agreed there should be a special kind of therapy for farmers. Or perhaps, a special kind of therapy for farmers who are farming together, as couples. For the past two years I have been saying, “Farming is like having a newborn. Only you don’t get acknowledged for having a baby. No one sends you gift baskets or teaches you how to strap in the car seat.” At dinner, my wife added, “And the baby never grows up.” The farm stays dependent. It stays needy. It stays hungry. Our tomatoes are growing into the walkways of our garden, crowding out the basil and dominating the marjoram. There is no time to show everyone where they are supposed to grow. Everyone is sharing rooms now. I harvest the flowers off of my Calendula plants and within minutes, new flowers have bloomed in the sun and are flirtatiously asking to be picked. The basil bolts, the arugula grows white flowers on the top of it every morning and we pluck it all off and throw it to the chickens who greedily fight over it. The hens are broody, again. The cows need a different kind of hay as they’ve gone on some sort of hunger strike against the skinny, soft Timothy grass. The hose is cracked and bleeding in the sun. The pigs are running out of corn and the cats — the cats have descended.
Having a farm together, with your partner, does not leave a lot of time for slow, lazy mornings where you can stare longingly into one another’s eyes. I imagine parents understand this. Parents understand the lack of romance, intimacy and sex that can happened when you are solely devoted to taking care of something that is small and helpless. (Sometimes I wonder if the cows are just pretending to be helpless. I think their gentle, brown eyes quickly turn into smirking laughs when I turn my back and walk back up to the house. I’m just a sucker and the cows are winning.)
Couples who farm together have bodies that ache, they are always on call (what if the cow gives birth tonight) and have to train other people for weeks before they can leave their farm in capable hands if they decide they can trust anyone at all. A couple who farms together does not own their couple — it belongs to the animals, to the land, to the seasons and to the ovulating cow. We borrow our time right before a rain when the cows head to the barn and stand with their head through the slats staring toward the wall waiting for the electricity to pass. Unlike having a child, we could walk away from farming any time we want. So every day, we must choose our commitment to together. Some days, I push down the questioning like drowning an injured mouse in a bucket of water. I hold it under until it stops moving. Better to put it out of its misery.
About two weeks ago, Heathar and I were out for a walk on the road in front of our house. It was close to twilight and the bats were starting to come out from the corners of the barn, ricocheting off one another into opposite ends of the sky. As we walked back to our farm, we saw a couple of dark objects run into the road. They were too small to be skunks. I thought maybe they were rabbits or squirrels but they were all black. As we got closer, we saw they were kittens — five kittens. As happens on any farm, you never know where the night is going to take you. This night, it looked like we were going to be taken in the direction of herding cats which, as we know, is not simple.
We could not catch the kittens. I have no patience for herding cats. They would follow us down the road but as soon as we turned around to look at them, as soon as we bent down to call to them, they would scurry away into the sage bushes and alfalfa grass growing on the side of the road. So, we set an animal carrier out with some fresh milk in it in front of our barn and went to bed for the night. In the morning, the kittens were not in the cat carrier and none of the milk was gone. When we finally checked our text messages that morning, we had a couple texts from our neighbor saying she had spent a large portion of the night in the forest with a flashlight trapping five black kittens and could we take any of them? I felt guilty because I had not spent the night in the forest with a flashlight. I had limits. I had a time of night I liked to be in bed. I had shows to watch. We took three of the kittens. We named them: Fig, Dos and Mouse. Mouse is the runt, of course and has eyes that are smaller than the rest. Dos climbs up on my shoulder in the morning and licks her paws and Fig has a white belly. They will be our barn cats. They are living in the old, adobe chicken coop adjacent to the cow stalls while they get used to being our cats. They sit in the window of the chicken coop and wait for the cows to come over and blow breath in their face. They pretend like they are still scared of the cows after days of this game.
A few days later, I am walking up to my office and hear a loud MEOW coming from under the porch. I’m sure it’s another kitten — one we missed who has spent the last three days alone and hunting in the woods. As I bend down to stick my head under the porch, I see the unmistakeable green cat eyes staring back at me. A larger cat. A bigger cat. An adult cat. I call her and she comes to me. Some of her hair is missing and there are blank, white patches under her eyes which I later learn is from not getting enough to eat. She is so thin and she has freshly developed teats that are dragging on the floor. I conclude that I have found Mommy Kitty! Or rather, she found us. So I proudly take her down to her kittens. Only it is not the happy reunion I am hoping for. She hisses and spits at our three kittens in the adobe chicken coop. The kittens run away. The kittens start bullying one another. So I quickly take Mommy Kitty out and separate her. Maybe she just needs to eat?
A couple hours later, after Mama Kitty scarfs down two cans of wild caught tuna ($6.57 per can) and a jar of raw milk, I walk back up to my studio and hear another loud MEOW. This time, as I look under the porch, I see a small ball of black fur rolling in the dirt. I crawl under the porch (which requires me to crawl on my belly) and pick up a 2-day old kitten who cannot open its eyes or walk — Mama Kitty’s real litter, her lineage, the Heirs to Her Throne. She had her own and very separate litter of kittens under our porch. I run down to the barn and scoop up Mama Kitty, releasing her back under the porch to tend to her kittens. She promptly grabs the kitten that was rolling around in the dirt by the nape of its neck and takes it back to her birthing lair. She just wanted me to know: Hey, we are here. Bring us some food please. Now I know.
We have been feeding Mama Kitty and her litter of kittens for the last ten days. The kittens are still too young to emerge from the porch and I am skeptical they are even alive. I haven’t heard them or seen them. I don’t fully trust Mama Kitty yet. Mama Kitty killed a small bird yesterday in front of our peach tree and left the feathers for us to sort though — a gold finch. After that, we fed her grass-fed beef and more raw milk. She emerges late in the morning, whenever she feels like it and demands to be pet and have more food put in front of her. She is not afraid of our dog who barks at her though the window and the blank, white patches under her eyes are starting to fill back in with black fur.
My birthday is tomorrow — Friday the 13th this year. I was also born on Friday the 13th so black cats are kind of like my spirit animal. Usually signs that other people are scared of, can be good for me. Usually signs that mean The Underworld is underfoot are signs that I am on the right track. The Omen of the Black Cat is here and I am listening. Mama Kitty purrs and nuzzles her head into my shin. Heathar finally likes cats. Well, she likes this cat. It reminds her of the first stray, black cat we had when we started dating who we named Chupadero after the village north of Santa Fe we were hoping to buy a house in. And my brother tells me, “You know, cats choose you and that’s always a good sign.”
