Chapter One
Our first summer on the ranch up in the high
country of Central Oregon, Peter and I were cage-trapping
feral cats one by one and having them cut if
we liked them, killed if we didn't. Up there in stock country,
cutting animals wholesale is a common and necessary practice,
although it's not usually cats. Nor is it always coldhearted:
Horses sometimes get what's called cut proud, which
means a cut gelding can still get hard and mount fillies. He's
got no sperm but he's got his pride.
A lean, sunburnt horsewoman named Faith Gaines told me
about proud cuts. She was a local veterinarian, so I figured she
knew. Faith was doing our cats in exchange for Peter's legal
advice. She said to me one day, "Those good ol' cowboys wait
until a stallion's had sex and then they cut him, so he keeps the
male menace in him, menace to cow a steer with, the horse is
absolutely carryin' menace in his brain." Faith went blank after
she said that, stood absolutely still, as if the menace had
got her, as if the whole cosmos had stopped and was waiting
for her to move. It was eerie. I was sucked right in.
She started up again: "So, uh, uh anyw ... read full excerpt from Geography of Saints ebook
