Remy, the hero

Yesterday, Remy was the hero.

It is not a story for animal lovers. But it IS a story for those who recognize the value of a farm dog doing a farm dog's job.

Remy has alerted to possums on the second floor, from the scent that he could detect, coming down through the old hay chute.

Yesterday, he was standing under the old grain vent in the barn ceiling, alert and barking that same signature bark...

We had to go to the opposite end of the first floor, open a door, go up rickety stairs, pick through the storage room, and then into the hay loft. A real lose-your-bearings sort of way to get to the spot one floor above where he had detected an intruder.

He made a beeline to the correct corner, and sniffed all around the ancient heater that someone else put in 30 years ago. Then into the tiny unusable room hidden behind that heater, where I could hear an almost instant, terrible fight. My thought was "That's much bigger than a possum!", but I did not have my phone to shine a light in there.

It ***sounded*** like what I imagined a coon/dog fight would be. I had nothing to help and no way to get in there.

He came out a split second later, not with a coon but with a hissing, spitting, clawing black tomcat wrapped around his face, claws engaged and teeth biting through Remy's ear. Literally, the cat was hanging on in a spitting rage, with all teeth and claws em

bedded.

I recognized it immediately as the intruder that he is. This cat has been seen only a few times, but we've been certain it is hiding out in our barn for about 3 years now. The dogs have run it off a few times, and we thought it was gone...

Remy did not let up, even as I tried to pry the cat's mouth away from Remy's eye, with the board that keeps the hay loft doors shut... Remy was whimpering with pain at the same time that he continued trying to pin that enraged cat.

They disengaged for just a second, and the cat flew down the stairs and got under the old elevator platform. The lift was disabled years ago by us, because it did not have a safety feature to stop it from crushing anything that might have been under it, as it descended. Dogs can still fit under there, and would become trapped, so I called Remy off. He had to shake himself in order to switch gears, but did come reluctantly to me, and I shut the door to that area.

Remy has a bitten leg and a gash in his ear, with bleeding claw or teeth marks around one eye. I do not know the extent of injuries to the big tom cat, but will try to watch for him. He is feral, and will not be friendly if I get my hands on him.

After regrouping and shaking off the limp a bit, he circled back to the other end of the barn, where stray cats can squeeze in, and tried to dig through the wall that kept him from getting to the cat under the elevator platform...

He was calmer by then and called off several times, as I tested his recall... A good dunk in the water trough probably put all kinds of bacteria into the bite marks, but did make him feel better.

Yes, I will be watching to make sure no infection sets in. I had dog antibiotics left from some event in the past, and started him on them right away.

Today he is limping, but able to walk on the bitten leg, and no swelling.

For that cat having been clinging with all claws and teeth, to Remy's face, I am quite grateful for Remy's thick coat and the short duration of the fight.

(Stray cats are not welcome, as they can bring disease, they can injure or run off our own barn cats, and they can set our dogs off on late night barking sprees if there is a cat fight, night after night. But this is the first time one of the dogs engaged in a fight to the death with an angry tomcat...