Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

This is a preemptive strike. The endless argument about where Zip should sleep is over. It was the silliest and most useless argument I can recall, and I’m not having it again. My time is more valuable to me than that. It was a colossal blunder to be pulled into it in the first place, an outrageous disregard for common manners, my privacy, and my freedom.

Maria was much too smart to join in. I might be foolish at times, but I can still learn. That was a huge mistake.

Zip’s arrival was a turning point for me; I finally learned that there is no rational argument possible with most city people about animals or anyone who tells me what I am thinking without having a clue about me, my life, or what I am thinking. It’s a pointless waste of time.

This morning, I wrote on the blog that Maria and I have decided to bring Zip into the basement on bitterly cold nights (- -zero and blizzards) in the winter, if and when our famous rat returns, and sometimes in extreme weather. This kind is ravaging much of the country.

Zip is a superb barn cat, but our rat is pretty impressive. Still,  I’d bet on Zip. He’s cleared the rats and pigeons from the barn without much strain.

We got Zip because we needed a barn cat to contain rats and rodents. He is a ferocious and determined hunter; he loves being outdoors. He is the perfect Barn Cat and will remain a Barn Cat. I will never take that away from him, and Maria agrees wholeheartedly. That would be the actual abuse.

I knew I’d be  hearing from the Barn Cat Know-Nothing Society soon, and the post wasn’t up for a minute before Fran became the first to chime in:

“YAY, Jon! – should have come to that conclusion last fall, but better late than never, I guess…”

I am very sorry to disappoint you, Fran, but here it is again: a stranger on social media putting thoughts into my head without knowing what they are. It always feels Orwellian to me, and I will never really accept it. I can, however, avoid it and shut up about it, and I will do that.

Over the years, a small but vocal group of people have told me I am hateful to people I dislike or who disagree with me. That has happened at times.

I apologize if people feel harmed in that way. It’s different from what the website or I want to be about. I’ve done much work on that issue, whether true or not, and will keep doing that.

I don’t have a hateful thing to say to Fran or the others who will so gleefully misread what I am doing and saying. That’s life in America in 2024.

I’ll try to be nice, and the best way to be friendly is to be straight and clear without any name-calling or anger. I deliberately waited to post this manifesto for several hours because I was annoyed. Some people confuse disagreement with hatred; I don’t want to make that mistake. Some people hate being challenged to mind their own business and consider that a hateful request.

I don’t.

We will always have that difference. Many so-called cat lovers feel social media has allowed them to reflect on other people’s choices and lives freely. I have never done that, and I pray I don’t ever.

So this is my final word on the subject. There won’t be others, not for a long time.

Give us the straight poop, as my editor said. Here it is.

Zip is a barn cat. No farmer or person with a barn, horse, or sheep farm has ever suggested to me or anyone else that it is cruel for a Barn Cat to live outside in the winter.   Every farmer knows about rats and the harm they can do. Every farmer has a Barn Cat. Barn cats have lived in barns for as long as there are barns. In a way, they are their own cat species, just as border collies are their own species as dogs. You can’t force most border collies into an average dog’s life; it is both cruel and abusive.

It makes them crazy.

Zip is a working cat, born and bred that way.

He loves winter more than Spring; he dances, hunts, races in the snow during storms, and makes a warm nest in the warm and dry hay stacks. We had a heated barn cat house ready for him in the barn, but we only saw him in it once all winter.

Zip loves diving into the snow for hungry mice and moles; he’s pretty good at catching them. He reacts to subzero weather like all weather—it’s just life.

Zip is happy living outside, and we are happy about his lifestyle. He roams and hunts all night, and it will stay that way no matter what some apartment dweller in Minneapolis thinks.

As far as I can tell, this notion that it’s cruel for a Barn Cat to sleep outside is almost exclusively held by urban people—none of whom have ever had a barn cat because they have never lived on a farm— it is an urban myth, like the idea that it’s abusive for giant working horses to pull light carriages in Central Park.

No one who lives in the country as I do, with a barn or livestock, would dream of not having a barn cat since their grounds would be overrun with rats and mice and, soon, disease and even death.

We know that bringing them inside every night in the winter would destroy their hunting will and bore them nearly to death.

As most people with barn cats do, I would consider it cruel to keep Zip inside the house every night all winter.

As Fran gleefully assumed, he won’t be coming into the basement for humane but practical reasons: stop the cats and mice and have a warm snooze if you need one.

Zip will never be invited to live in the house.

That should be clear by now, but it isn’t. It was a good decision, and Maria and I shared it, and it won’t change.

The police around here know about barn cats; everyone does.

They will not consider that abuse because it isn’t. Zip will occasionally be allowed into the basement to keep our house free of rats and mice and, if the weather is brutal, to doze in a heated cat house.

That will be rare in extreme weather or whenever our rat shows his head again.

We got a cat like Zip in the first place just for that purpose – rodents. Yes, he has become a much-loved pal, which I didn’t expect, but he will never be a house cat in winter, summer, fall, or Spring.

The basement is colder than a barn, with a straw cooler for a cat. And a barn cat,  however sweet, is not a pet. Coming inside is not something he wants or needs or something Maria and I want or need.

Maria and I are both notoriously open-minded about animal care. If Zip were to get chronically ill or seriously injured, which can happen, then, of course, we would permit him to come into the house.

Anybody who doubts that has not been paying attention or is not intelligent enough to figure it out for themselves.

I will be honest, which some people also conclude is hateful: I find this argument perhaps the dumbest I have ever had in decades of writing online, and that is saying a lot. I have no respect for people who tell me what I am thinking without knowing or asking or who presume to know my motives and goals are or should be.

I share my life; I don’t give it away.

I will not have this argument again. My time and work are too valuable; I have too much respect for myself, even when other people don’t.

When Zip arrived, some idiot called the sheriff to tell him I was abusing my cat because he was sleeping outside in winter.

The sheriff and I got a good laugh, but that was a turning point for me. I will not enable ignorant people like this to persecute or assault blameless people on an ignorant or irrational whim. I won’t do this again or participate in it again.

I don’t have to poll my decisions but to be honest about them. Here I am, take it or leave it.

I will not post any messages beyond Fran’s or respond to e-mails, texts, or other communications about our decisions regarding our cat. I will happily share my life with Zip and love him dearly and openly.  I do not feel obligated to explain the decisions and choices Maria and I make together in the privacy of our homes to mannerless strangers on social media. A social media browser is not a license to be rude, cruel, or vicious.

I’ve made myself clear: I see nothing in this post I would consider hateful, and I am not looking for the opinions and responses of others regarding Zip. Death threats from people who claim to love cats are getting boring; I don’t read or feel them, and they will certainly never shape my decisions.

I’m sorry, Fran. (Not really.) This is not what you would like to hear or assume you are hearing,  but it is the truth as I know it. Maria and I have the right to make our own choices, and we will do that. You are not invited into the room.