Ole Purty Thang (OPT) was Mama’s cat that allowed us to reside at her home, provided of course that we didn’t interfere too much with her cat activities. Mama pronounced everything correctly and said Old Pretty Thing distinctly, but the rest of us pronounced the cat’s name as Ole Purty Thang although occasionally we called her other names such as Pretty Cat. OPT didn’t know about all our other baggage when she agreed to this arrangement. I’m quite sure that had she known about all the hounds (fox, coon, rabbit, squirrel and wolf) and the unusual people, the decision could easily have swung the other way. However, OPT was an opportunist, and in a short amount of time she convinced the various hounds that she was boss, and after a couple of lessons they never pressed the issue again. I can’t blame them. I actually saw few demonstrations of her martial art skills, as only one or two were required before OPT had the run of the place, as before.
OPT was a golden-yellow female, 100% mammy cat. I suspect that she weighed about 12 lbs. OPT had two major claims to fame: she produced big litters of kittens like clockwork, and she could catch and kill any animal that moved, up to those almost her size. The list of prey included many species of small birds, squirrels (gray, red and flying), rabbits, moles, gophers, rats, mice, snakes (garter, blue racer, and king), and fish. I can’t recall actually seeing the fish or the flying squirrel, and they may have been Daddy’s tease of me, but I can attest to plenty examples of the others. She hunted most of the night and showed up every morning to feed her brood and rest up for the following night. Occasionally, when the pickings had been a bit too slim to provide enough energy to feed her kittens, OPT allowed someone to provide some favorite treats: a bowl of fresh milk or scraps of meat from the table. On these occasions, the hounds stood beyond the reach of OPT’s claws and looked wistfully in her direction as if to beg for a morsel or two, but OPT was queen, and queens didn’t always share with their subjects.
The penultimate number of hounds that OPT managed was 52. This occurred when I was in the 1st or 2nd grade. Daddy had temporarily lost his job at the foundry in Dallas and was home for several months. He earned supplemental money by running a kennel for Dr. A. G. Elder (another story) and Mr. Wylie Tye, two of his well-to-do hunting buddies. While this number of hounds was almost more than we humans could bear, the increased number of subjects didn’t disturb OPT in the least. She sauntered in and around almost all of them, with the few exceptions being the newest members of the pack. After some encouragement from OPT the new hounds fell in line with the rank and file. Daddy always told prospective buyers that those scarred ears on the hounds were a good sign of their bravery in battle with coons, wolves etc., but I thought another explanation might be more accurate for a couple of them.
Remarkably, OPT was friendly even with Traveler I (TI), but even she didn’t get too close for comfort. This hound had a specialty, fighting wolves or any animal that came close, so he was avoided at all costs by all the other hounds, and yes, later on there were two other Travelers. It might be safer to state that OPT and TI tolerated each other. In fact, she even housed her kittens behind TI’s appointed leash-spot near the back porch. I can’t recall if she had raised kittens elsewhere before TI arrived, but while he was alive she had a residence either on or under the porch, and he managed the yard in front of the porch. This arrangement seemed to work pretty well, and obviously her kittens were a lot safer there as the likelihood of a marauder invading and terrorizing her brood was minimized with this beast on guard. In fact, I never knew of hounds terrorizing her kittens, and afterwards the mere suggestion to me that cats were dumb animals evoked a reply, “you never met OPT.”
If my father was away hunting, and that was often, we kept any useful hounds that he left behind either tied or penned. If we didn’t pen them, they left in an attempt to discover where he was hunting, and the result would be hounds scattered from one to the other end of Red River County, and many days of work would be required to find them. The useless ones in the pack, and there was always one or two, were allowed to roam free, but our useless hounds would have been great models for artists’ caricatures of the Southern Flop Hound. Some of ours were so worthless that if we tossed them a biscuit, and it missed their mouth they didn’t even go get it. Hunting or defending anything was out of the question for them. On one occasion, in the wee hours of the morning, we heard wolves howling from several spots east of our home. This wasn’t unusual as I often went to sleep at night listening to wolf music in the distance. When wolves howled, Daddy’s useful hounds raised a ruckus and wanted to go for a good chase and possible fight, but this was not to be that night as they were penned. In hindsight, we should have turned those hounds loose to chase the wolves.
The next morning we found OPT, and it wasn’t a pretty site to see. The wolves caught OPT in the middle of an open field, and without a tree to climb she was easy prey. From the looks of the turf around her, OPT had put up a good fight, but even she was no match for a pack of unfriendly wolves. From the wolves perspective they eliminated a serious competitor for small game. We hoped that a couple of the wolves got their ears pierced that night and spent the rest of their lives attempting to explain why they sported sliced ears and gashed jowls. Naturally Mama and I cried over OPT’s unceremonious demise, but she had been with us about 12 years, sired 106 kittens and kept rats and mice to a minimum. Shortly afterwards we replaced OPT with a couple of her offspring, but they didn’t have the upper hand with the hounds and hardly paid attention to the rats and mice that were in abundance. Eventually, these two disappeared as farm cats were wont to do, and we didn’t enlist the aid of another cat for many years. There just wasn’t an adequate replacement to be had for OPT, the ultimate feline.
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