Our Thelma and Louise

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Thelma and Louise: A Tale from the Farm

Thelma lived for ten years after Louise disappeared. I had imagined them together until the end. But we didn’t live in Hollywood.

Thelma and Louise were young feral cats from a rescue operation on the North Shore. It was too late to change their wild ways, but they were fixed and I figured that might keep them local, and in turn, the barn pests to a minimum. I kept them caged only long enough to imprint the barn and horses, and then I let them free. It was awhile before they came down from the rafters, but hunger is motivating.

Louise didn’t make the first full winter. Cats are usually resourceful when it comes to finding a place to stay warm. So perhaps she got picked off. There’s any brand of wildlife out here in the countryside that could grab a young, naive cat; fisher-cats, coyotes, an occasional eagle, large hawks and probably others. Maybe the thing that explains Thelma’s next ten years - a solitary existence - was her long hair and her knack for survival. Thelma was a delicate coon-mix; Maine tough yet slight and cautious. Louise was more calico, a short-hair, and more curious than wary. They were rescued together, sisters perhaps.

They arrived feisty and indignant. In truth these young wild ones had found a decent home. I’d just moved onto eight acres with a barn and brought with me a few horses and a couple of dogs. I figured the barn cats would earn their keep along with the rest.

In retrospect, how Thelma made ten years remains a mystery. Never to the vet, not once, in those ten years. You couldn’t catch her if you tried. Certainly she arrived healthy, and there were no subsequent litters and few roving toms to complicate things. Even during the coldest of winter months I could count on Thelma to show up around feeding time for fresh water and kibble. But sometimes during very cold or snowy periods she was scarce. Maybe she had found a home nearby with warmer arrangements. I’ll never know. I found Thelma dead on a cold winter night, ten years after meeting her, frozen in time and space on the snow crusted path between the house and barn.

As she laid there, no earthly fight left, the two dogs watched from a distance. They resembled spectators behind yellow tape at a crime scene, disturbed by the event but slow to move on. Thelma knew how to skirt the dogs in the yard. She’d often wait for me around feeding time just outside the barn door. The barn was her sanctuary and ducking quickly inside was as much a tease to the dogs as it was life-saving. The dogs were not allowed in the barn, or in the fields, under any circumstances. She learned that quickly at a young age and could count on being home-free in one leap. The trade-off was worth it. I let their instinct to protect the yard, their turf, keep the forest from my trees (and the barn, the porch, the garbage cans and my vegetable garden). But that arrangement meant that between the barn and the freedom of the fields and beyond she was on her own. Other nights I would have been buried deep in doggy hugs and kisses. They, and only they, knew what happened.

Yes, I’ve kept mostly prey driven dogs over the years. One can’t own such dogs in the open, but one can make it enormously attractive for them to stay around. In this case I’m talking about ‘Kita, an Akita-mix, and Ouzo, a Malamute-mix. The breed-typical physical appearances and behavioral traits of each breed were dominant, plus a bit of wolf, in each. I’m quite sure of this. More so in Ouzo, a Mala-wolf, whose lupine legs and extra long paws allowed him the silent, nimble approach on prey that kept a wolf fed in the wild. They were rescues too. And after intensive training and testing, settled nicely into the symbiosis of farm life. Work, eat, sleep, play. And not necessarily in that order.

Ouzo was every bit the Eskimo. He might have done well on a sled team. Work the spirits out of him, so to speak. But that’s not realistic. You can’t work the spirit out of a Malamute. You can only guide their spirit with activities that somehow satisfy, even for a minute, the vestigial drive of their ancestors. The other rescue (yes, ‘Kita the Akita) is close but no cigar. A large Akita-chow mix with a Malamute-like color pattern, she is beautiful and feminine. And true to Akita temperament she could be as happy in an apartment, sleeping with a cat across her neck (and she on my lap, of course), as in the wild. But once in the elements she could become every bit of her large fangs and muscular frame.

It’s a delicate balance, this nature thing. We strive to understand the modern dog and create a great life for them. But a dog’s nature – if left to their own devices – resembles that of the wolf. Some breeds more than others. To the observant eye, pre-domestication behavior and pack-mentality are primal in their simplicity and predictability. Yet we ask these ancestors of the great wolf to mind kitty and refrain from nipping at heels while protecting the farm and the humans therein. I imagine there are moments of great cognitive dissonance among even well-trained prey-driven dogs on a daily basis. We imagine the great majesty of the natural world from our suburban plots as these modern-day dogs sit at our feet by the fire-pit, ears pricking at the slightest sound in the distance, ready to serve and protect. But don’t chase kitty!

I’ll have to sort this one out over time and figure out how Thelma and the dogs knew their place and took their chances each. I couldn’t catch Thelma if I wanted to. It took all of ten years for her to even come near me around the barn. She would neck-rub the fence-rail and preen just out of reach as if I was scratching her myself, but within those final inches to true connection she would invariably scoot off, too wild to allow it.

But the night before I found her in the yard I was able to hold her, quite by chance, for a brief time in the hay stall. She was in her cardboard condo on the hay stack and was slow to move away when I climbed to get at some desirable flakes. In retrospect, this was odd. But I had thick leather gloves on, and in the moment, with the confidence of an expert handler (in a suit of armor) I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and brought her into my lap. She resisted at first, but I had a good grip and she relaxed long enough to experience loving human touch and a soothing voice (obvious constructs of anthropomorphic lunacy).

Nevertheless, she did, for a moment, give in. For maybe fifteen seconds I could feel her relax a bit. Then her wild side took over again, so I let her go. She did, by the way, try to bite through my hand at the outset. My thick leather gloves saved me and allowed the fifteen seconds we did have together. Was her death somehow connected to the first human touch in ten years? Did she get soft? Was she dazed? Was she sick? Is that why I could catch her? I will go to my grave wondering whether I had something to do with her death.

Did I screw up by handling her? Did she drop her guard because she was now more trusting of me after ten years? Or was the fact that a dumb and slow human caught her a signal that she was slowing down and the circle of life was about to bring her home anyway? Regardless, as I stood over her looking around for an explanation, a deep sadness overcame me that weighed enough to bring me to my knees. Through tears that froze as they hit my cheeks on that icy cold New England night I looked over at the dogs and said; “I am sad, and you should be too. You will miss her.”

Ouzo and ‘Kita, both faithful dogs, knew damn well I was upset. They had lain down around me and licked tears from my face on other occasions. And I, for my part, had comforted them in their times of distress, insult or injury. But they were in no way, shape or form letting on that they’d like to join me in solace at the scene of this crime.

Kita knew better than Ouzo what the moment held. The Akita is generally cat tolerant, sometimes cat-like themselves. I think she knows Ouzo screwed up. I suspect it was him. He had snuck up on me enough times that I knew it was only a ninja’s sense of environment could keep track of his whereabouts. Ouzo was an otherwise totally mush-loving-scratch-my-belly-until-I-die doggy

And Ouzo, from a safe distance, seemed to wonder what the fuss was about. “Why the long face, humanoid? I was just doing what comes naturally! Isn’t that what you love about me the other ninety-nine percent of the time?”

Yes, Ouzo, it is. But we humans process death differently and as such, I am deeply sad tonight. Goodbye Thelma, I hardly knew ya’. Louise will be happy to see you. I’m sure she wants to hear all about how you survived for ten years without her, and share with you what you missed for ten years on the other side

Essays: The Horse Hollerer | Can I Die Now? | Sharing Onions

Metaphysics Over Easy (Hold the Toast) | Another Day at the Office of Life | Can't We All Just Get Along?

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