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José Cuervo, The Black Chicken
This story is not copyright; it is public domain.

    This is a true story.

    In my early 30s while renting a cockroach apartment in Los Angeles' Little Korea, I subscribed to Organic Gardening Magazine and dreamed of country living. My ex-wife and I had recently begun a little typesetting business that grew rapidly and prospered. In 1973, with our first extra eight thousand dollars, we made the down payment on an acre in the western San Fernando Valley, a huge lot with an old, small house, vintage 1920s, a place that had been someone's "retirement in California" dream. It had one huge apricot tree with the best fruit I have ever tasted. And of course, I put in a large food garden.

    If you did not mind hot days and flies, living was pretty fine in Canoga Park at that time. The smog stopped about 6 miles to the east. And it always cooled down at night. There still were dirt streets where people enjoyed horses and hobby ranches. Driving downtown on the uncrowded freeways was relaxing and took less than 45 minutes except during rush hours. These days Canoga Park is much worse: all apartments and postage stamp lots; the 101 freeway is a continual aggressive madhouse where everyone is trying to get ahead (of you).

    At that time my ex and I also were dilligently studying Korean karate. Our dojo was near downtown LA, in the same neighborhood as our business. We commuted daily. I have always found stop and go traffic irritating, but driving into LA and back was not so bad because we left home after morning rush hour and worked late because the karate class started at seven pm. None of this is what the story is about. It is merely the landscape.

    One evening after work as we waited on the street for the instructor to arrive and open the school, a scrawny, dirty little gray tomkitten came staggering up to us. He was exhausted, dehydrated and seemed ill. My ex, Susan, immediately fell in love with this animal; we had no pets as yet. So we made a quick detour to the convenience store, got a small carton of milk, fed the kitten and put it into our car to wait for our class to end. Though it received much love and care, it became rapidly sicker and died in a few days.

    There was something special about this cat. It seemed intent to find us, us especially. It seemed to have a powerful spirit. So as it was dying, I told it, "now it knew where to find us. Next time it should not wander around aimlessly, wasting its strength, but should appear in our lives again soon, in good health next time."

    About six weeks later to the day, a little gray tomkitten about six weeks old, almost identical to the first, appeared in front of the karate school while we were waiting for the class to start. This time it walked right up to me and said, "nang!" And rubbed against my leg.

    "Hello, Nang," I said, delighted to know his name. "Welcome back!"
Again we bought milk and again Nang was put in the car to wait for us. This time he succeeded at becoming our cat.

    Nang turned out to become a very large, fast, tough tom who decently did not spray about our house. He highly preferred outside living and appeared for meals, pets and admiration almost daily behind the back door. Occasionally I had to doctor his punctures and abscesses (Nang was a fighter); sometimes he would visit me in the garden while I was working.

    Tough, fighting toms don't have tend to have long lifespans, and Nang was no exception. He disappeared before he reached three years old. But this story is not about Nang. It is about the food dish that Susan put out for him every day and what began to happen there.

    Other neighborhood cats began to discover this largess. First to appear were "Grandma" and "Nibble," two calico females who were clearly mother and daughter. The neighbors told Susan that "Grandma" was quite old and had owned our house for a long time. Nang was not happy about sharing his bowl with these two old ladies, and as king of the backyard, he got his own dish, freshly put out at mealtimes. Grandma and Nibble shared another.

    These two females were only semi-civilized; they would allow Susan to pet them WHILE eating and perhaps for a few minutes thereafter as though allowing Susan to express her gratitude for their deigning to eat her kibble. But they began to hang around outside and could always be found near our back door.

    This number of cats was okay with me. Nang was not a begger and Gandma and Nibble were skittish and did not get too close. And all three were good, hardworking, self-respecting cats--successful mousers all--who probably could have survived handily without us. Our relationship with these three animals was voluntary and based on admiration and affinity.

    But word of this food dish spread, and soon we also had "Food," a long-haired black untidy Persian that was too friendly and constantly underfoot. And then there was another begger and yet another. These last two were not even named.

    Susan and I had words about this. I asked her to stop feeding the whole neighborhood because I could not even walk from house to garden without stumbling over purring, rubbing cats begging for a handout. But she would not hear of it. So I decided on a covert approach to problem solving. I went to a gun store and bought a box of low-velocity subsonic .22 bullets. When fired, these made the sound of a handclap that could not even be noticed more than 50 feet away.

    One day while Susan was away for a few hours, one of the unnamed beggers ended up in a small hole in the garden. This was not noticed by Susan, but the execution did trouble Grandma and Nibble. So I sat down on the back porch and had a talk with them. I explained that I had a problem to solve with the other cats, but that these two were special to Susan, that I also admired their industry and independence, and that I would always protect them and allow them to stay. Grandma and Nibble had no attachment to the other cats anyway. In fact, I think they regarded the other beggers as intruders and were pleased that I was going to eliminate them.

    A week later and the second unnamed cat was disappeared by the local gestapo. Susan did notice it was missing but she figured that it had found a better handout elsewhere. I said nothing. Though Foodcat had noticed these eliminations, it did not seem to discourage her. So, pop, and another stupid cat bit the dust. Now we were back to the three best. And I could live with that.

    I think the two old ladies were prompt to inform any new arrivals that becoming dependent on our food dish was not pro-surivival, because we never had another sponger show up. And after Nang vanished, there were only the two old ladies hanging around the backyard. In fact, these were hardnosed, outdoor cats. I never could entice them to come into our house.

    Being on a "farm," I also got interested in other animals. I ate a fair amount of meat in those days so we fed a steer until its body filled our freezer, I raised and "chopped" countless rabbits and we had a small coop of chickens. But as the garden's quality vegetables performed their magic on our bodies, we found eating flesh less and less interesting. I think I ended up giving away 25 pounds of frozen beef. Killing the rabbits became very distasteful and frankly, we did not like eating them so much anyway. So away went the cages and my breeding stock.

    The chickens were another matter. As I studied their behavior, I worked out a very synergistic system to provide us with better-quality fresh fruit and eggs. I put a six-foot-tall chain link fence around the orchard and put in a flock of bantam hens (with two roosters). The chickens slept in the trees, safe from preditors. They took care of themselves. I liked the rooster's alarm clock, the chickens stratched bugs under the fruit trees, ate a lot of grass and weeds, their egg yokes (when I found them hidden in the grass) were intense orange and the flavor of the tiny bantam eggs were superlative. Each spring while the grass was growing extra fast a broody hen or two would manage to hide a clutch of eggs from me and one day, a mama hen would be seen walking in the chickenyard with a line of little peeps behind her. This provided an automatic replacement for the old hens that had stopped laying. All the system took was a daily egg hunt, the normal orchard care, a water dish, and a handful of cracked grain every day. And the grain became fertilizer for the trees after it nourished the hens. And the chickens kept the fruit nearly bug-free.

    Grandma and Nibble showed no interest in the hens. Maybe if they had been starving . . . . but since they had Susan's food bowl, attacking such a large bird wasn't worth it. And the one time I saw them in the chicken yard the hens' aggressive reactions made it very clear why the two old cats stayed away. Then, one spring day, on the mowed lawn on the "cat's side" of the chain link fence, I discovered a little cluster of light, yellow feathers. A songbird? Next day there was another, and yes, I noticed, one of my mamahens was missing two chicks. It was clear what had happened. As long as the little peeps stayed on the orchard side of the fence, mamahen could protect them. But the peeps could pass through the chain links easily while mother hen was stopped. Without mama's protection, Grandma or Nibble was having a nibble.

    This was entirely unacceptable. So I went into the yard and sat on the grass right next to one of those little yellow feather piles and called the two old ladies over for a pet and a chat. After they had settled comfortably, I explained to them that those chickens were MINE. MINE! All those chickens were MINE. And if I saw another pile of yellow feathers again I was going to get my .22 and bury two old cats in my garden. But, as long as they would leave MY chickens alone, they would be fed and petted. And allowed to continue owning our yard.

    You may not believe this, but my conversation worked. On subsequent days I sat on the back porch and watched little peeps pass through the fence and walk right in front of one of these cats. Grandma or Nibble would eye them and permit them to walk right back to their mother. They had gotten the message about MY chickens.

One day, one of our typesetting customers who also lived in the San Fernando Valley, gave us a baby crow fallen from a nest in her yard. Her house was not large enough to permit her to raise the crow. Would we like to raise it and care for it? The idea was exciting.

    When I was in grade school a fellow student had "owned" a pet raven. This bird would fly over to the schoolyard at recess, land on its boy's shoulder, and then fly home at the end of recess. And the raven could talk. So I imagined wonderous happenings from having a crow in our space, and built a large cage, and made special crowfood concoctions out of ground meat and liver and vegetables, and hand-fed this fledgling. And named it José Cuervo, which in Spanish, means Joe Crow. I spent a lot of time talking to José, teaching it to say "Ole, José!"

    José grew rapidly, into a large, friendly black bird. When let out of his cage he loved to sit on my finger while I gently stroked the fine feathers behind his head. He would hop around on the living room carpet. And one day he began experimentally flapping his wings, and with great effort, reached the curtain rod over the living room window and perched there. Cleaning up an occasional crow dropping from the carpet was possible. But from the white drapes, never. So I took José down and set him back on the carpet. And it occurred to me that José would have to soon be set free. Maybe he would stick around like that schoolboy's raven.

    First, there was the matter of handling Grandma and Nibble. With José still hopping around on the rug, I called the old ladies over to the back door as though to feed them a special goodie. Then Nibble looked into the living room and saw this baby crow hopping about on the rug. Suddenly all I could see of Nibble was four claws and jaws clinging to the screen as she tried to force her way into the house. José was a little scared at the sudden movement, but did not understand "cat."

    Something had to be done about my cats or there was going to be no easy way to accustom José to being outdoors and giving him some flying lessons. So out into the yard I went for a little serious conversation. I explained to Grandma and Nibble that this black bird in my house was not a wild crow they had a license to eat, but was a black chicken, and like the other chickens, was MINE. Then I told the ladies to wait for me for a moment while I brought out this chicken to show them. Then, for the first time in his life, I brought José outside and set him down on the grass right in front of Nibble. And dared Nibble to do anything to MY chicken.

    Of course, Nibble did nothing, even when José walked right over to her and gently pecked her on the leg. And Grandma only watched. And affected total boredom with the whole scene. So every day for the next few days I took José outside, set him on the lawn, and allowed him to walk about. Then, surprisingly, he flew to the top of the fence, perched there a minute and then flew away. And never returned. So much for my dreams of a pet, talking crow.

    I have always hoped that, for the sake of his longevity, José developed a more sensible idea of "cat" than he got from the behavior of Grandma and Nibble.

    A year or so later it came time for us to leave Los Angeles and move to Oregon, I bought a large cat cage, set it in the shade in the yard and began putting the food dish inside. The two old ladies got used to going in the cage and eating. One day, I surprised them, shut the door on them, loaded them into the car and we drove off.

    Both cats stuck at the new place. I did not have to smear butter on their feet (local lore) but only had to put out their familiar food dish first thing. Grandma, though already quite old, survived three Oregon winters in our unheated woodshed, burrowed into a hay pile beneath my garden cart, cuddling with Nibble. One warm spring day, she just died. No warning, no suffering.

    Nibble lived on for another year, but was depressed, lonely and bored without her friend. One day as I drove my car up to the house, Nibble, sitting quietly by the driveway's edge, suddenly threw her body under my tire and was crushed.

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