This is one of my most vivid childhood memories, and I was wondering if any of you have ever seen or heard of anything like this...
When I was growing up, my family lived in a rural-ish suburban area. One of our neighboring properties was a farm owned by an elderly couple, and the husband died when I was young. The wife continued to live there for several years after.
It was no longer an operational farm, so they had a barn with a large feral cat colony living inside. Our widowed neighbor was their caretaker.
She took daily walks down our street, which was a dead-end street with very little traffic, about a half-mile long. The entire cat colony would follow her down the street and back, keeping distance, but always right behind her. It literally looked like she was leading an army of cats whenever she took a walk.
Some of the cats would stay off to the sides of the road, where there were trees and more cover. Others would proudly march down the center of the street behind her. So basically, the whole street would be occupied by this cat army.
I was thinking about this recently, and thought I'd post it here, because I was wondering how (ab)normal this is. If anyone has heard of such a thing, it would be a TCS member.
Sorry, I don't have any pictures. This was around 30 years ago.
Edit: I guess I don't know for sure if it was truly the "entire" colony following her; but it was definitely a ton of cats.
When I was growing up, my family lived in a rural-ish suburban area. One of our neighboring properties was a farm owned by an elderly couple, and the husband died when I was young. The wife continued to live there for several years after.
It was no longer an operational farm, so they had a barn with a large feral cat colony living inside. Our widowed neighbor was their caretaker.
She took daily walks down our street, which was a dead-end street with very little traffic, about a half-mile long. The entire cat colony would follow her down the street and back, keeping distance, but always right behind her. It literally looked like she was leading an army of cats whenever she took a walk.
Some of the cats would stay off to the sides of the road, where there were trees and more cover. Others would proudly march down the center of the street behind her. So basically, the whole street would be occupied by this cat army.
I was thinking about this recently, and thought I'd post it here, because I was wondering how (ab)normal this is. If anyone has heard of such a thing, it would be a TCS member.
Sorry, I don't have any pictures. This was around 30 years ago.
Edit: I guess I don't know for sure if it was truly the "entire" colony following her; but it was definitely a ton of cats.
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