Jeff Horn
"I grew up, I tell people, so far out in the country that everyone had their own tomcat. Some of you are not going to get that."
-Governor Rick Perry
I can be counted among those who didn't get the tomcat joke in the governor's goofy speech that Rachel highlighted last night. I grew up in relatively rural and even somewhat agrarian surroundings, but that particular expression is foreign to me. My top returned result in a brain-google for "tomcat" is "Say baby!..."
Some folks think it was a gun reference, but it seems to me everyone in Texas has whatever guns they want no matter how close the nearest farm is. I think he was being more literal than that.
First, I should note, it's an actual expression. He didn't make it up -- although the more common phrasing seems to be "keep a tomcat":
- "The farms are far apart. So far, it's said that every farmer has to keep his own tomcat."
- The town of Vanceboro itself, Hale says, was so remote that "everyone living there had to keep his own tomcat" and where the "thickly settled" sign outside town heralded three or, at best, four houses in the next mile.
- "The distance was expensive - for one thing everyone had to keep his own tomcat."
- Ranches are "so far apart everyman has got to keep his own tomcat."
Most of my reading on this is anecdotal message board stuff (It turns out a lot of people online like to talk about cats. Waddayaknow.) but the overall picture is believable enough to satisfy my curiosity.
Most obviously, cats are good hunters, so they're kept by farms for rodent control. More significantly, cats, particularly non-neutered males, are viciously territorial. So while it may be convenient for a group of farms to share a single tom as a sort of stud, it's probably also a natural fact that farms within a given territory range will have only one tom because they'll fight each other until that's the case.
So extreme is this territoriality that tomcats will slaughter a rival's kittens. (The discussion here is a little gross -no photos though- so you might just want to take my word for it.)
KnowYourCat.info
So it behooves neighboring farms to share a tomcat rather than have fighting toms and imperiled litters.
Now strap on your nerd helmet because, while of course Perry was being colloquial and folksy, as long as we're in this deep we might as well find out literally how remote a farm has to be for it not to overlap with another farm's tomcat territory.
The actual numbers (and there are actual numbers) vary pretty widely depending on degree of domestication, but generally speaking a cat has a specific defended territory and then a much bigger "home range" that it patrols. As you might expect, the size of these territories is much smaller for females than males.
As for the numbers, take a look at this study from May of this year. They put radio tracking devices on 42 adult cats in Central Illinois for two years to see how far they'd wander.
One of the feral cats, a mixed breed male, had a home range of 547 hectares (1,351 acres), the largest range of those tracked.
Holy moly.
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Ha! I explained it on The Stephanie Miller Show this morning without the charts and graphs.
So!
So much fun to read. And wildly informative!! Thanks!!
Truly a wonder of nature this urban predator...
Is it possible he meant "bobcat" and is so far removed from that lifestyle that he forgot what it was called? A bobcat is a device that many agrarian families own that has tracks and hydralic lifts on it that have many bolt on tools and functions...a mini-bulldozer so to speak. Other than that...I got nothin. :-P
I've heard Bobcats called tomcats before too, and that's what I thought he was referring to as well.
This was my inclination too.
No, I thought that was the funniest thing he said in that video! I lived in the middle of nowhere in upstate NY. and a tomcat will travel miles and miles to get a female pregnant. If they were so far apart, the tomcat couldn't go that far to find a female, so if you wanted kittens you had to make your own. I thought the rest of his speech was really weird, but I knew exactly what he was talking about.
Me too, Willow. I once moved, with my three females, to a farm where we shared a tom with a couple of other farms. We had 22 kittens before it got straightened out. I was pretty impressed with the range that tom covered.
Yeah...i got it too, the first time...funny that i would remember that from living in the sticks...It's actually the only thing in his speach that made sense. funny how that happened. But why the recent stand-up routine. His handlers are in need of a good "spank'in". Here's some advice to the repub candidates..."Just be yourself"....we are not buying the fake and the pandering.
Tomcats are machinery used to grate, dig or lift dirt, gravel or whatever you need to move around a farm or ranch. Also known as Bobcats or front-end loaders.
In TX we do call a male cat a Tomcat, but I don't think that was what he was talking about.
What a hoot his speech was! I thought he was drunk as a skunk! Check out the bags under his eyes even when he's not showing signs of being drunk. You can tell he pulled one off the night before. What an embarressment for the state of TX. Believe me...I never voted Republican in my life and never will!
well if this was an election in Russia...all the candidates would be drunk...and no would notice a difference....although, Bachman was obviously smoking something...
Now I can sleep easier, no longer wondering what Rick Perry meant. My brain google for "tomcat" comes up with "Laura Nyro".
Ha! Love it. Bet Rick Perry never thought he'd produce that result from anyone when he quipped that phrase.
I am embarrasssed to admit that I knew exactly what he was talking about. I didn't see the whole 25 minutes in sequence, but, has anyone else noticed he's much more articulate on whatever substance he was on?
I figured that's what he was referring to, yet I still didn't understand exactly WHY, nor what his point was when he said it!! My bet is that he's "cracking under pressure"!! Dear Lord, please let more pressure be applied, this nation doesn't need another Shrub like that last one, and as rough as it's been for me lately - I NEED A GOOD LAUGH!!! Thank you.....
perhaps he made the reference to tomcat, in a metaphorical sense and as a hidden reference to his own behavior back in the day. i think this is consistent with his other self defeating and unintentional revelations about the hidden personality.
Perry means Bobcat. When you are drunker than a skunk, words just don't come out right. Spujoe has it right in that it is a front-end loader for digging, grating or lifting dirt, gravel or whatever you want to move.
Notice the look on his face when he says "Tomcat" ...like he's looking for the right words, but he knows no one knew what he was talking about anyway. He's been away from the farm for tooooo long! Time to go home, Governor Perry.
Drunker than a skunk! What an embarressment to the state of TX. I never voted Republican in my life and never will, so don't blame me!
Surely this is a goof, right? I missed the show last night so I read more than half the article before realizing it was actually ..about cats, real cats. Of coarse my immediate thought was farm equipment..tomcat or bobcat.
"So while it may be convenient for a group of farms to share a single tom as a sort of a stud ..."
Having grown up in the rural midwest, I can assure you that farmers do not concern themselves with tomcat schedules. Farm cats are generally feral. They do what they want, without regard to human concerns. This saying about tomcats is just a folksy joke; no one actually cooridnates their cats. That being said, Rick Perry had to be on qualudes or something.
You get a cookie for saying qualudes ;-)
Dude...ludes are downers...they are sedatives, tranqs, and certainly not uppers. Perry was high as a kite, so he was NOT on qualudes.
Hell, I'm a dog person - and even I know what a tomcat is- a feral male cat that defends territory and mates as often as Gene Simmons used to. They kill a lot of mice and keep other male cats away. You don't OWN it and you don't SHARE it- it goes where it wants- when it wants.
Whatever that drunkard was talking about, I find the discussion of tomcat ranges extremely interesting... this is geekformation I can relate to!
But I will say this. Tomcats will often share range, though not harmoniously. And they will also often breed with the same females. And one explanation for this is that if the female breeds with more than one tom, she protects her kittens, because each tom she's bred with willl then think her litter is or might be his.
Speaking of ... OWS really needs feline representation. Plenty of human and canine. Regardless, this crunch/crisis/toilet bowl affects the critters, too—wild and domestic alike. I can't imagine anyone donating a cat with conscious awareness it will spend the winter in a tent, so I suppose if it's meant to be, it'll be 'happened upon' much like a spontaneous, synchronous moment. I'll be waiting, while not. I'll ask for kitty supply donations later. : )
**Oh, I might add, TRMS embeds welcome.
Thank you so much for the Primus reference as well.
"Hey, baby, do you want to lay down with me? Hey, baby, do you want to lay down by my side? Hey, baby, do you want to lay with me? Hey, baby. HEY, BABY!"
More than one tomcat in an area will create fights, but any litter of kittens can have two different sires.
In the context of 'living so far out in the country that..." the only thing that makes sense would be a piece of equipment used to keep your own roads up. That would be a "Bobcat."
Which proves the point cats, dogs AND tea baggers should be neutered rather than replicating themselves unchecked!
I think this speech indicates one thing: Gov. Perry is no longer serious about the Presidential nomination. From the childlike statements about not debating the other guys to then saying (begrudgingly) that he would to now this, it seems to me that he just isn't that into it anymore.
The Koch Brothers just can't find anyone, can they?
I live in mountains of the granite state ..Where it costs $20 to bury a cat ....
Mayflower
Maybe you could have had Mrs Premise bury the cat for free ;-)
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/burycat.htm
Looked to me like he was punch drunk on Koch Bros. money.
Looked to me like he was punch drunk on Koch Bros. money.
So does that mean rural tomcats don't suffer from low-T, but the metropolitan ones do?
It's the pollution I tells ya!
To be honest, Rick Perry doesn't look drunk, and he doesn't look like he's on drugs.
He appears to be in the early stages of the manic phase of bipolar disorder.
Common signs and symptoms of mania include:
•Feeling unusually “high” and optimistic OR extremely irritable
•Unrealistic, grandiose beliefs about one’s abilities or powers
•Sleeping very little, but feeling extremely energetic
•Talking so rapidly that others can’t keep up
•Racing thoughts; jumping quickly from one idea to the next
•Highly distractible, unable to concentrate
•Impaired judgment and impulsiveness
•Acting recklessly without thinking about the consequences
•Delusions and hallucinations (in severe cases)
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/bipolar_disorder_symptoms_treatment.htm
Usually people do not slur their speech when they are having a manic episode, although this may have been Perry's normal way of talking. It is hard to tell from the montage. Additionally he did not display rapid thoughts or rapid speech. The rest may have been indicators, however, or it may have been drug induced. Remember that people who suffer from bi-polar disorder are receptive to drugs in a way that people w/o mood disorders are not. Drugs like alcohol can cause a person to enter into a manic phase if taken in too high of quantities for a long enough period of time. Other drugs like heroin can have similar effects. I personally think he was displaying the classic symptoms of prescription pain-pill or prescription anxiety pill use. This does not necessarily mean he was abusing the drug he took, but it does mean he was not wise in his decision to take it prior to the speech. The only way we'll know if it was a manic episode will be if his exuberant behavior continues for the next couple of weeks.
If I find a knot hole in a piece of wood, I think I should carve a tom cat walking away so that I may send Rick Perry a cat-ass-trophy in honor of his most recent speech.
I seem to remember Piers Anthony using that awful pun in a Xanth novel once....