Life and Times of Goldie Creef Cat
My life began in Suffolk, Virginia where I was #4 in a litter of six kittens – three brothers and three sisters. We lived on a small 10-acre farm with seven people, four dogs, 15 cats, 50 hens, 15 ducks, one ugly turkey, and a goose or two. It was a busy complicated place where a kitten better stay out of the way or get run over by something.
Some of the people were little people (children), and they just loved to handle and hug kittens because we were soft and cuddly. The most cuddly little person was Jennifer, and she chose me to be her squeeze toy. I would squall and run away, but she always found me and made up for lost time...it was awful!
One day a neighbor drove over for a visit on a big pretty red Ferguson tractor. He had a nice soft voice and I fell in love with him. I climbed up on his tractor tire and took my first of many 16-year naps on his lap that day. After he left, I followed his tractor tracks and explored his barn; it had many mice. He had two outdoor cats and three indoor cats. The outdoor cats were nice – a gray-and-white girl with only three legs named Mom Kitty and a calico girl named Mingles.
They invited me to share their mice and allowed me to sleep on the tractor seat. Because I was an orange-and-white cat, I was named Goldie. Since I had run away I was reclaimed, but every time I had the opportunity I would return to the big red barn. Finally Jennifer and her family had to face the facts. I liked the red Ferguson seat better than their blue Ford seat. They gave my birth certificate and my shot record to my new family and I became a Creef. Life was good. I just loved the barn and the new farm where there were ducks, geese, chickens, five goats, a donkey and a llama. If I tried to walk across the barnyard, I was always chased by one of the inmates...NO CATS ALLOWED; that was the barnyard rule.
The people made a special pet door on their garage so we could get cat food anytime we wanted it. We also had soft warm beds and even a kitty pan in the corner. The garage was also a barber shop where men could get their hair cut, and many did. I can’t count the times I was evicted from that nice barber chair with the big green leather seat. That chair was my very favorite place to sleep, but haircuts came first. After all it was a barber chair.
One day I was told we were moving to the mountains, and sure enough we did. On sixteen different occasions a U-Haul trailer was hooked to our Jeep Cherokee and filled with furniture. It took a year for us to move as our stuff disappeared load by load. Then one day a truck with a big long trailer came at breakfast time and the Donkey (Peanut), Llama (Osama Ben Llama), and the Goat (Scud) were loaded onto it. We cats were loaded into the Jeep and a truck and we had a convoy to a place called Monterey, which is also known as “Little Switzerland.” The first thing we noticed was the cooler air and lack of bugs, but the pasture looked funny. It was all lumpy and uneven. It is a good place and there are many sheep and cattle, but there also were new animals we never saw before. A wild dog thing that murders deer and sheep and a furry thing called a ground hog or “whistle pig” that lives in the ground and eats grass. Both of them are enemies of farmers because the coyote eats his animals and the ground hog tunnels often cause cattle and horses to break legs.
We Creefs have grown old and now we choose to spend the harsh winters in a nice place called Sunnyside and the nice agreeable summers in the Highland County mountains. Our years together have been most agreeable, and we have many memories of our days near the ocean and our days in the mountains. Life has been very good. If I could vote, I would vote to do it all again.
--Goldie Creef Cat, with help from Luddd Creef