My cat Socks is twenty years old. I never get tired of bragging about that, probably in part because as a child I thought the average life span of a cat was two years. There was high turnover in our dynasty of farm cats, which I now understand to have been a source of stress for my parents. Case in point: that time one of the cats got hold of a bluebird.

Scene: the cat has the bird firmly in its jaws. Mama has the blade of a hoe on the back of the cat’s neck, pressing it into the ground, and the cat still won’t let go. Three little girls are standing in a semi-circle around her, making a most mournful noise. I’m guessing we saved that cat’s life, because I would remember if we hadn’t.

Daddy was less ferocious, but he did love to “hullabaloo” the cats. This involved sneaking up on a cat (who was probably gazing intently in a chicken house window) and shouting something that can be approximately transcribed as “HULLABALLOOO!” The cat would run like mad and he would finish the job by leading it expertly with a clod of dirt. He never threw rocks.

Our cats had one overarching goal in life: to get into the house. Unless of course they somehow managed to get in the house, and then they were desperate to get out. Their modus operandi, which they apparently never got tired of despite its dismal success rate, was to “hang” on the screen door and scream like lost souls. They did such a number on the screens that we took to covering the screen doors with ratproof wire. This kept the wire on the door, but did not keep the cats off the door.

Mama would ignore the noise for as long as she could stand it, and then she would fill a big pitcher with water and hurl it through the screen door. The cats hated to get wet, and this would drive them away for a short time.

One time, on a really hot day, a bunch of us kids were sitting on the front porch. It must have been too hot even for the cats, because none of them were anywhere near the front door. One of the boys was sitting on the railing, and for some reason decided to practice his cat noises. He howled and yowled and caterwauled until we heard footsteps come stomping in from the kitchen, and we all watched while a big glug of water came flying through the screen. We remained silent while the footsteps went stomping back the way they had come, their owner none the wiser.

Sometimes, though, my mother would give me a basket of hardboiled eggs to take to the barn when the latest batch of kittens was old enough to appreciate them. And it was she who rounded them up and took them to the vet when the need arose.

Daddy, even after he was bedridden, would yell “SCAT” at the top of his lungs whenever one of my nephew’s cats would sneak into the house. But he would only do that when he had an audience. If you approached his door quietly, you might see that old orange cat curled up on his bed and him scratching its ears. And after he had died, and it was time to move him, they had to move the cat first.