So Long, Farewell

Author J. Ryan Stradal learns the power of goodbyes from a wild and weather-worn farm cat.

- J. Ryan Stradal

My first pet belonged not to me but to a place. I was two when my father became the foreman at the Gandy research farm near Owatonna, Minnesota. It was a corn, soybean, and hay farm—no livestock—but I was delighted to discover a cat living in a forbidding shed south of the old white saltbox farmhouse. She was different from other cats I’d met. She wasn’t cute, cuddly, or particularly friendly, and my father assessed from the scars on her face that she’d done battle with countless rodents. Having grown up on a farm and known many such cats, he assessed that this one was a true warrior. She was definitely not a pet.