Flopsy, Sweet Pea, And Barn Kitty Makes Three

By Dottie Evans

There is no accounting for how true families are formed but one thing is sure: They are bound together by more than mere blood and genes.

It does not matter if someone has a woolly coat, a big nose, and weighs 200 pounds, and someone else has pointy ears, a sleek body, and weighs only 15 pounds. Loving each other is what counts.

Tony Macri of Walnut Tree Hill Road and his neighbors Zoltan Csillag and Julia Nable are very lucky because they have spent the past ten months watching a new family grow up in Mr Macri’s back yard.

Technically, this family –– consisting of two male sheep and a male feral cat –– belongs to Mr Macri. After all, they sleep together in his barn, they eat the food he provides, and they play together in a fenced pen on his three-acre property.

But in reality, they belong mainly to each other and the way they came together is the subject of this story.

Mr Macri, a mechanic welder who worked 18 years for the town of Bethel, has always loved baby animals. So it was not surprising that when a friend’s sheep had three lambs, he went right over to admire them. Unfortunately, the ewe sheep died not long after the lambs were born, so they were orphaned.

Offering to help his friend out, Mr Macri took two of the lambs home with him and began bottle feeding them.

“My neighbors, Zoltan [Csillag] and Julia[Nable] were very helpful,” he added.

 Of course, it was not long before he gave the lambs names, as they grew to have personalities.

“Flopsy is the boss and Sweet Pea has the white face,” Mr Macri said.

The two lambs lived in his barn. Shortly after adopting them, Mr Macri noticed another creature had taken up residence.

“I went out there to feed them one day and there was this tiny little animal in the straw. At first, I thought it was a mouse lying alongside the lambs,” he recalled.

“Then I realized it was a kitten. But I had no idea where it came from or how it got there.”

As the lambs grew into sheep, the kitten grew into a cat, but it remained totally wild, never allowing Mr Macri to touch it or hold it.

“I named him Barn Kitty. He’s very shy. He’ll only come near me to eat his food at night.”

But Barn Kitty is not shy when he is around Flopsy or Sweet Pea. If he enters the barn late at night, Mr Macri usually finds the three animals sleeping together in a cozy pile in the straw.

“When they’re outside in the pen, the sheep play with the cat. They pretend to buck him and run around and let the cat chase them,” he added.

“Barn Kitty likes to sit on top of the old well and the sheep climb on a rock nearby. Sometimes the cat disappears for a while into the nearby woods, but he is never too far away. They are always checking up on each other.”

 

A Loaf Of Bread, A Bowl Of                        Dry Food, And Thou

Feeding time is every day around 4 pm, when Mr Macri brings Barn Kitty a bowlful of dry cat food and the sheep each get a loaf of bread.

“They don’t like white bread. It has to be seven-grain or whole wheat,” he adds.

Having the two sheep has been no trouble, Mr Maki said, since they keep his grass cut and even eat the pricker bushes. His only complaint is they were not lambs long enough.

“They were so cute and had the tiniest little hooves. They’d sit in your lap and nuzzle you just like babies,” he recalls.

This summer he might do something about getting more baby lambs. A friend has two ewes, so they them might swap a sheep or two in order to get the right combination and see what happens.

Then in six months or so –– maybe by next year at this time –– Barn Kitty will have a new set of nieces and nephews or brothers and sisters to play with, sleep with, and care about.

Like most families, there is always room for more.