Oreo, A Tribute

We’re parents of a little girl who longs for a pet. Something to hold and love and take on adventures. Basically, the opposite of her brother. She adores any dog that comes onto our farm when folks show up to trade cattle. During Valentine’s Day she drew us a picture of a 4-legged creature inside a heart; I asked her what it was. 

“It’s the dog you won’t let me have. It’s in my heart.” Talk about marketing!

We haven’t made the commitment to a dog on a US highway (yet), but my parents lovingly brought three male barn cats to our farm last year. Since then, we’re on litter number four from those original three “males”. Truly, the gift that keeps on giving. It was in litter number two that Oreo (black, white, and round) arrived.

Oreo was…not right. He would sit in the middle of a busy barn lot and stare at the sun. He’d eat out of the cat food bowl by burying his head in the feed then looking straight up to the sky and sway back and forth like Ray Charles while he chewed. But Oreo wasn’t blind; we know because we did a sight test. Don’t ask.

Because Oreo didn’t run from the kids when they came to the barn, he became an instant farm favorite. This kitten experienced a whole lot of life with Caroline and Cyrus. He took many ATV rides. He was pulled in a wagon for hours. He was a frequent guest of the swing set clubhouse. He was carried around in a small Igloo cooler, full of grass, rocks, and cat food, so he could quickly go anywhere Caroline’s day took her.

In December we traveled to Kansas for Christmas with my in-laws. Upon our return, Oreo was nowhere to be found. This didn’t particularly surprise us, as we (Cody and I) knew the cat was vulnerable. In fact, we even told our chore help about him. “We have a slow kitten the kids love. You can’t miss him. He looks for ways to get killed in the barn lot. Do NOT run over this cat.”

For days we searched for Oreo in the haymow, the pasture, the barns, the rockpile and stock trailer. And we prayed for Oreo’s safe return from “hunting”, Caroline suggested. Of course, as parents we knew Oreo was not away on a hunting trip. Oreo was easy prey and Oreo was gone.

After about two weeks of mourning, which included morning and night prayer sessions and incessant talking about the missing cat, Cyrus had enough.

We were feeding cattle one evening when Caroline started talking about Oreo again.

“CARE-O-WINE!” Cyrus yelled, sitting next to her on the Ranger, unable to handle the cat talk any longer. “IT GOT ATED! IT GOT ATED BY A WOLF!” he screamed.

Caroline sat in silent shock.

I thought to myself while filling buckets, “Finally someone had the guts to tell her.”

Of course, this brought tears, and yelling back at Cyrus that he was wrong. The back-and-forth went on a few more seconds until he took it a step further:

“OREO GOT ATED BY A WOLF AND HE BIT HIS HEAD OFF!!!”

“Cyrus, Cyrus, stop buddy! We don’t need to hear the details!” I tried to slow the roll he was on. Caroline was in tears, begging me to tell him he was wrong. I couldn’t. I told both that we have no idea where Oreo is, but we probably will never see him again. I also reminded them that we don’t have wolves on our farm.

There was not another word.

Until about five days after that day, when our building contractor asked me out of the blue, “Hey, are you missing a cat?”

I stopped in my tracks. The contractor revealed that he showed up to work on our house one day while we were in Kansas and saw a black and white kitten in the barn lot, dead. Not smashed, no blood, just dead. He disposed of it before we got back.

He probably deserved a large Christmas bonus for sparing us that sight when we returned home from our trip.

While Cody and I hated to hear Oreo had indeed died, we were glad to have some finalization to the matter.

After laughing and talking about all the ways that kitten was an unwilling friend to two rambunctious farm kids, including but not limited to wagon rides, gator rides, cooler rides, heavy petting, swinging, sliding, over-feeding and constant welfare checks, it’s cause of death was finally determined: exhaustion.