This takes me by surprise, coming from this big cowboy guy. But my whole experience with cats has pretty much been with fluffy purring things that snuggle on your lap.

Come to find out, he was attacked by a barn cat as a little kid. He looks towards the barn, eyes the momma cat lounging on the hay, says, "Barn cats are wicked, man." He goes back to fitting a shoe on my dozing Percheron. That seems to be the end of the story.

After having him come out to the house for five years now, I am used to the farrier's talking in spurts and jumps, interspersed with long bouts of silence, which actually are not uncomfortable. I look at his three-legged Blue Heeler dog Biscuit, sleeping beneath his truck. She is sporting a leather collar with hand-tooled silver conchos on it and a red, heart shaped dog tag. I wonder if that's how she lost her leg.

8-year-old C. and I are feeding the barn cats their dinner. A can of Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler's favorite dog food from Trader Joe's. The blue heeler skulks along behind us, ears down, stub tail wagging a question, wondering what we're going to do with that can and is she going to get any. I'm looking for the spoon I know I left down there when I see Matilda, who has been dying of curiosity since they arrived, making for one of the kittens.

The momma cat unfurls on poor Matilda with all of the hair-raising, eye-snapping fury and wrath of Satan. Beelzebub. The Devil. The Prince of Darkness. Old Lucifer himself. (I guess I didn't spend almost every Sunday as a kid in a Southern Baptist church for nothing...) Backs the heeler down a good three feet until the dog gets her bearings and springs forward. My son grabs Matilda by the collar mid-leap, and stops her from eating the now flattened-down-low-on-haunches, snarling devil cat. We search the mute heeler for the large gaping wounds, the big slices, we are both sure those claws have inflicted. I half expect an ear or a leg to fall off. But somehow or other the dog has escaped unscathed.

C. rises up from his knees next to his dog to his full second-grade stature, points his finger at the momma cat and growls, "You leave my dog alone, you old cat. I love this old dog a hundred times more than you!"

Matilda's bob tail begins to wriggle slowly.

The momma cat remains unmoved. Like the Sphinx.

As we're walking back to the house, I try to explain to C. that raising four babies in a barn all by yourself necessitates this type of thing. I tell him she thought Matilda was going to hurt her kittens. But I suspect he is going to hold this against that momma cat for a long time.

Barn cats are a little scary.