Farewell to our beloved puss - a farmyard cat like no other

Our sheepdog Murph never liked cats. I suppose ’twouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he actually hated cats - all cats!

We got Murph as a pup around 2005 and named him after my cousin, who gave us the little whitish pet after our previous dog Tiger had died.

For nearly 15 years Murph served family and farm here in an admirable fashion. People say that on a farm, when one dog is getting older it’s time to bring in a younger pup and leave him pick up the ways of the canine world.

While it’s true that one can’t teach an old dog new tricks, it’s also the case that they are creatures of habit and certainly ‘pick up’ canine knowledge from each other. In Murph’s case, he was self-taught, with no older animal to tell him about cows or frisky calves or unwelcome types in the haggard.

Some people have a natural gift for training dogs – not me, unfortunately. In fairness, lack of tuition never hindered Murph and he was everything a farm dog should be and was a great help to us for so many years. 

He had an innate sense that seemed to know exactly what cows and cattle were ‘thinking’ at all times.

Of a summer’s morning, the cows would be full, content, chewing their cud with a ‘devil may care’ attitude towards the impending morning milking. Murph would give one run-around all the animals with his quick, short, sharp bark and soon ‘the lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea’ and in they’d come.

I never saw Murph to actually bite any animal. In actual fact, I’d say he was a kind of ‘anti-blood sport’ type.

In the Boilerhouse or Orchard Field or in the Glen he’d see a rabbit and off he’d run. I think he was just having the chase for fun and never actually tried to catch or kill anything.

Now, he had one exception to this rule - cats.

Summer, or winter, spring or autumn, Murph was consistent in his dislike for any member of the feline family.

We might be working in the yard, maybe with the tractor going, and Murph could be lying in the green in the middle of the haggard. Then he’d be gone like a shot - over through the hayshed, across the silage pit, under the wire and off up the field; lads, he’d win the Laurels in Cork, the speed he used do!

And all because of a cat! maybe Murph had a special sixth or seventh sense when it came to smelling cats – I don’t know, but I think it was just his ability to spot something moving out of the corner of his eye.

On farms like ours, with old tree-lined ditches, there’d always be mice and voles and nesting birds - all suitable menu delicacies for prowling cats. From a few hundred yards away, Murph would see the cat going a hunting.

Cats have great eyesight too, so in most cases, if the attacker was approaching too rapidly, the poor innocent cat would simply shin up a tree, perch on a branch, and watch demented Murph barking his head off on the ground below!

Cats are sociable and knowledgeable animals so I’d say a year or two after Murph taking up residence here, Garryantaggart Farm was officially declared a ‘cat-free zone’. 

As far as Murph was concerned, he was monarch of all he surveyed and cats were ‘persona non grata’ in his territory.

So, peace reigned, and in fairness, when it came to dealing with mice and rats, Murph was not found wanting.

Seasons came and went and we all got older and Murph got slower. He died in June of 2020 close to his 15th birthday. I buried him between two apple trees above in the garden.

We debated long and hard about getting a new dog, but we never did.

Let no one dare call cows or any other four-legged creature a ‘dumb animal’ - sometimes I think they’re smarter than humans.

Last Saturday night, as Storm Ashley approached, who ‘told’ the cows about it? They’ve no internet or Met Office app yet they knew what way to lie by the Kiln Field ditch to get most shelter- they have a bovine intelligence we can only yearn for.

Our herd were quick to realise the Murph was gone - some mornings you’d nearly have to ‘wake them up’ for milking! Ah yes, we missed Murph, and for the small grandchildren he had been an ever-present since they learned to walk. 

Truly, all was changed, utterly changed.

What’s that they say about ‘God never closes one door but he opens another’? So it came to pass, just about two weeks after Murph was gone, didn’t a stray cat venture into the yard one morning? A grey-green mottled tabby cat that seemed nervous and not anxious for much human contact.

All that summer, she’d come – not near the house mind, but over by the hayshed.

When we’d go to leave out food, she’d disappear but come back later and eat it. Then she might not come for a few days - we though she was ‘somebody else’s cat’ and was just paying us a few casual visits.

Over the winter of 2020, the visits became more frequent and the visitor inched closer and closer to the house. Here by day and gone by night was the pattern for maybe a year.

Slowly, but surely, the friendship developed and within a year she seemed to make the decision to take up residence with us on a permanent basis - no questions asked!

Charlie Chaplin said, ‘he who feeds a hungry animal feeds his own soul’ and so, after a cat-less decade and a half, we had a resident cat. Our grandchildren were thrilled, and bit by bit our new found feline became truly domesticated and loved the attention being meted out to her. We made a few attempts to name her but never did - just ‘our cat’, and that’s what she really became.

In time, she became a permanent fixture here.

From July until maybe the following April or May, there’d always be big bales of hay in the shed - straight opposite the kitchen. This was her palace with shelter and heat.

In the morning, when we’d get up and turn on the kitchen light, she’d bound across the yard and up on the windowsill demanding breakfast!

Over the last three years she really became one of the family. She just adored little hands and fingers rubbing her back and tail as she purred with that beautiful sound of pure contentment.

She adored the heat. Many years ago, the Cork poet Sean O Rioirdain wrote his beautiful Cul an Ti, all about the happy, crazy and wonderful mixture of creatures to be found ‘Behind the House’.

His line agus cat ag cru na greinne could have been written about our cat as she truly ‘milked the sun’ and absorbed its glorious rays.

In the spring of this year, we were doing some clean-out of the freezer room. We put a wicker basket filled with shavings on the picnic table by the back door. Well, our cat claimed it as her own! Any sunny day she’d just curl up in the basket for hours and sleep, purr, and enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed.

She was a truly cute cat and a few days, in cooler weather, if the back door was left open, in she’d come to the room, down the hall and off upstairs for herself!

We never knew where she came from or what age she was, but truly she brought us much happiness.

Then, one Monday morning recently, there was no sign of her. We thought she was back to her old ways of ‘coming and going’.

No sign of her for three days, and on the Thursday I found her over near the cattle slats - dead, as if she had just gone to sleep. Nothing had attacked her, and so our lovely friend who came as if to replace our dog who hated cats, was gone too.

Murph never like cats but I buried her in her basket alongside him, between the two apple trees.