When I posted this photo recently, several people claiming to be for animal rights said it was obvious that Zip was begging me to let him come inside, curl up by the fire, and nap. I live with Zip and had a different idea about what he was trying to tell: “Hay, Jon, get off your big but come outside and scratch my ear as we get to work at the table taking photos of flowers. It’s my work as well as yours.”

Maria, who is no hardass when defending the rights of animals (she rehomes rats and spiders), agrees. Tell them to mind their own business, she says. I believe I know what Zip would decide if he were given the right. He has the right, not some stranger hiding behind a computer screen in some apartment in the city.

I’m no God, and I can’t be sure what he is saying because he doesn’t speak my language. We both like our freedom, and we both have rights.

Zip sometimes waits impatiently to come outside in the morning and has this annoyed glower when I am late. It’s our morning time together. After we sit together and do our work, Zip takes off to one of several places to hang out, investigate, kill something if he can, and disappear for hours. It might be the pasture, the marsh, the woods; he has the right to choose.

Often, we hook the front door open on the farm while we haul deliveries, food, and wood in and out of the house. Zip could slip in any time he wishes; we don’t worry about it anymore because he has never attempted to slip in, whatever the weather or time of day.

Do we have different ideas about animal rights today? The animal rights people wanted the police to come and take him away to a shelter; they couldn’t imagine he was happy or well cared for.

The logic of the people who e-mail me occasionally about Zip is alien to me. They believe they have the right to intrude on my life and tell me how to treat my animals, but the animals themselves have no right to live the way animals like barn cats can live on a farm or in a barn.

Zip is a barn cat, doing the ancient work of cats. He is the guardian of the barn where he kills rats, mice, and pigeons.

In doing so, he keeps our animals free of diseases and infections that cats can spread. Don’t our sheep have the right to live and sleep in a clean and safe barn? Rats kill many farm animals.

Most of all, I love Zip’s freedom to live the life of a barn cat. He can sleep in the warmed cat house or the wood shed on a pile of towels and blankets. He can also hunt and romp in the snow, no matter how high it gets.

I have the right to take a once-feral cat and give him medical care, warm places to sleep, and two meals a day if he needs it. That is a wonderful gift. Real animal lovers would celebrate that, as we do.

I do not know what Zip thinks since he does not think like a human. He has his way.  More and more, I see that he is just as free as me and, if the truth be told, a lot smarter. He is the happiest animal we’ve yet had on the farm; even our cosseted dogs can’t go where they please.

Freedom means that I can make decisions about my life and extend the same courtesy to my barn cat.

I will always fight for Zip’s right to live as he was meant to live and chooses to live rather than in a crate for possibly the rest of his life.

One day, I hope we will have an animal welfare group that fights for animal rights. They deserve that.