Stray cats always went to my friends farm. They would put a little kibble out for the cats & hope for the best. They wanted the cats to remain wild & live in the barn with the cows. But from time to time a friendly one would appear on the farm & it would be welcomed into the farm house for a little loving & then put back outside. None of the cats were fixed or had any shots. I wasn't angry at them, as they didn't have the money to deal with all the cats that people would dump at their farm (they lived in the middle of nowhere). So it was survival of the fittest cat & they did a great job at keeping the mice & rats away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lori Jordan
They had farm dogs too, but they didn't breed them thoughtlessly, they were wild dogs, that got daily loving from the farmer before he went into the barn. The dogs needed to be fairly wild as they had to keep wolves & theves away. Their top dog was an outdoor simi pet. She was breed as they needed more dogs (their very old dogs had passed on) & the wolves were back. She had 10 pups & all but a couple remained on the farm (friends wanted a pet, so they gave them a free puppy). Those pups were far less wild as they were born on the farm, but they kept the wolves away.
Its one thing to view the animal as a tool with respect, but as a replacable object is wrong. My farm friends would never have harmed one of their animals, but they did live by the rule, if the farmer couldn't bring the animal back to health (the sick animal would be brought into the house for care) & it was suffering, it would have been shot, cried over & then burried.