A Pet Story | Homage to our Pets
Text by Christine Stimac, photos © Elise Prudhomme
A Pet Story tells about how our pets contributed to Three Feathers by protecting the farm and keeping out wildlife. Today, our two dogs and four cats have all gone. The dogs were fourteen and seventeen when they passed away and the last cat was twenty.
We were adopted several times by strays who became beloved members of the family.
Fido the Cat
The first of these was a black Manx cat who seemed to come with our first home in Newberg. He moved with us to our home two years later. We called him Fido as he had aspirations to be a dog.
Elvis – Nothin’ but a Hound Dog
Christmas evening, 1997, we were having our usual roast beef dinner in the dining room when Cynthia saw a dog outside the window!
The smell of the Christmas roast must have attracted it. It was some kind of hound and it was obviously lost and hungry for the rib bone was all it took to lure it inside. After trying to find its owners with no success we adopted him and named him Elvis because “he weren’t nothin’ but a hound dog”.
Actually, he turned out to be a pure-bred Blue Tick Coonhound of a certain age. Obviously, he had been a hunter in his youth as he would get very excited whenever he got into the car and set up a howl.
Elvis Makes a Home at Three Feathers
It was not unusual in that era for people to abandon animals on Chehalem Mountains as there were few homes here and unwanted pets would be sure to disappear. We had several stray cats and even an Emu once.
Elvis was not young but he would still chase wild life that came on the property. He would pick up a scent and off he would go baying and running full speed though woods, brambles and thicket, always finding his way home afterwards. He was fearless and we had seen him standoff coyotes.
He was with us until his death in 2002. We were devastated and swore, no more! But when I was looking through the local farm newspaper not long afterwards and saw some blue tick puppies for sale, I felt that it was fated for us to have another Coonhound.
A Pet Story – Double Trouble
I came home with two! A brother and sister, Amos and Sassafras – Sassy for short. Now we had double trouble! But they chased everything and kept the deer away. And, as it turned out, other predators as well.
Meanwhile Fido was aging. We had no idea of his age, but he was slowing down and we felt another cat would keep him young and be a natural transition when he left us. The search was for a calico female but to make a long story short we found a lovely tuxedo male kitten first and then got a calico kitten as well.
A Pet Story | Introducing Sylvester
The tuxedo resembled the famous cat in the cartoons, Sylvester. That name was also in memory of my father, James Sylvester Armentrout. He had some Persian blood so although he was tuxedo coloring his fur was long and soft. The calico we named India, for her exotic coloring. She was short haired.
Marley Adopts Us
As the all the animals were adjusting to each other we were keeping the dogs from chasing the cats and the cats from fighting with each other like “cats and dogs”. Into this mix stepped another player. A stray who had obviously been living on its own for some time, this was a big male tabby cat. His fur was soft and completely matted from living in the wild.
Marley was named after his Rastafarian hairdo. He would hang around looking sad and hungry. It took a while to get him to feel safe enough to handle. We took him to the vet to be examined and inoculated. The groomer shaved off all the matted hair, leaving him looking a bit like a cartoon lion. Of course, Marley was not amused and gave me a good nip to say so.
Our pets were our friends and companions, our blessings and our responsibilities, but it was not until they were all gone that we realized what they contributed to the protection of the farm.
Fast forward to 2022 and all the pets are gone. For the first time we are living on 92 acres with no guard dogs or cats and gradually the wildlife is creeping in (you can read Part I and Part II of this saga here).
Chehalem Mountains Wildlife
Despite fencing in the vineyards, the deer and coyotes are finding loopholes. Lynx are scratching the tree trunks and deer are rubbing their antlers and eating the roses. Rodents are everywhere: mice, voles, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, gophers of many varieties big and small, skunks, even porcupines are coming right up to the house and onto the porches.
Something got into the chicken house and killed 11 hens; just killing them without eating them!
Now What?
So what is the solution? We feel it is too late for us to start over with puppies and kittens, but an alternative must be found…. Rent-a-Cat? Virtual Dogs?