Cats

Cats in In Cold Blood are more than incidental farm and town animals: they mark Nancy Clutter’s affectionate daily world, become part of the investigation’s uncertain reconstruction of events, and give Perry Smith an image for his own experience of survival. The narrative moves between cherished pets and anonymous scavengers, making feline life a recurring measure of both personal attachment and exposure to loss.

Farm Animals and Nancy’s Companions

At River Valley Farm, cats belong to the practical, familiar setting of the family’s life. The livestock corral, which held ailing steers and a few milking cows, also contained Nancy Clutter’s cats. Their presence places them among the domestic animals cared for within the farm’s working landscape, rather than apart from it. The account does not describe them as a single uniform group: the farm cats appear collectively, while particular animals acquire individual significance in Nancy’s routines and memories.

One such cat, Evinrude, ranks above Nancy Clutter’s gold watch among her most valued possessions; only Bobby Rupp’s signet ring stands higher. The comparison locates Evinrude within Nancy Clutter’s intimate hierarchy of attachments. It also connects the cat to the small personal details through which the narrative characterizes her: her affection for animals is not an abstract trait but part of the ordered, emotionally vivid life she has built around people, possessions, and daily habits.

In the garden, that attachment appears in motion. As Kenyon Clutter and an older man tie up the plants, Nancy Clutter’s cat plays among the tall chrysanthemum stalks, catching its paws in the twine. The cat’s activity unfolds beside a quiet household task and the changing light of evening. Soon Nancy Clutter returns across the fields on Babe, accompanied by Teddy, and later sits on the grass to lift and kiss her cat. The scene binds animals to the rhythms of the farm: work in the garden, a ride back from the river, and an affectionate encounter at home.

Boobs and the Unanswered Question

Nancy Clutter’s bedroom preserves another kind of feline presence. Alongside photographs of horses and other cats, her desk holds pictures of animals who had died but were not forgotten. Among them was Boobs, whose recent death had remained mysterious to Nancy Clutter. The dead cat survives in the room through its image and in her recollection as a loss she had not resolved.

That unresolved death enters the investigation through Nancy Clutter’s five-year diary. Alvin Dewey reads the entries, which begin on her thirteenth birthday and end less than two months before her seventeenth. The last entry records ordinary events from the evening before her death, but a separate entry from about two weeks earlier notes that she found Boobs dead in the barn and suspected that the animal had been poisoned. She also recorded that she had buried him in a special place. The diary supplies no explanation for the suspicion, and the account does not establish that the cat was poisoned; what it establishes is Nancy Clutter’s belief that the death might have involved a poisoner.

For Alvin Dewey, that possibility gives the cat’s burial place investigative importance. He wonders whether a malicious act against Boobs might have preceded the murders and decides to search River Valley Farm for the place Nancy Clutter had marked in the diary. The inference remains a question rather than a solved link: the cat’s death attracts attention because it might illuminate the killings, not because the narrative confirms a connection. Through this episode, an intimate bereavement becomes one of the investigation’s leads, while the diary preserves the ordinary personal detail from which that lead emerges.

Pets and Loss After the Murders

The surviving cats become part of the practical and emotional aftermath. Susan Kidwell recalls that Nancy Clutter loved riding Babe down to the river in summer, where she and Nancy Clutter would play flutes and sing while the horse waded in the shallows. In remembering what became of the animals, Susan Kidwell says that she has Evinrude, while Babe may be sold. Her concern about the horse’s future is bound to the absent Nancy Clutter: she imagines how angry Nancy Clutter would be at the prospect. The cat’s new home and the horse’s uncertain fate register the dispersal of the life that had gathered around the family.

The memory is set against further disruptions. Kenyon Clutter’s dog, Teddy, is taken by a woman from Garden City, runs away and finds his way back to Holcomb, and is then collected again. Susan Kidwell’s account of Evinrude, Babe, and Teddy does not treat the animals as incidental property. Each carries a different consequence of the family’s absence: a friend takes the cat, the horse may be sold, and the dog’s return to Holcomb cannot restore the household. The animals remain connected to Nancy Clutter through the memories and choices of those left behind.

Stray Tomcats in Garden City

A separate pair of cats appears in Garden City: two gray tomcats who travel together and search parked cars for birds killed in collisions. At twilight they move along Main Street, inspecting the grilles of cars, especially those near the Windsor and Warren hotels, where travelers’ vehicles offer likely places to find prey. They extract the remains with their paws, then turn at Main and Grant and continue toward Courthouse Square. Their repeated route makes their feeding behavior part of the town’s daily pattern rather than a one-time incident.

Their routine coincides with the public return of Dick and Perry to Garden City. On Wednesday, January 6, a crowd gathers in Courthouse Square as newsmen and local spectators wait for the accused men to arrive. The two tomcats also appear in the account of the square, moving through a place crowded with county vehicles and people. The contrast is understated but pointed: the town watches the prisoners’ arrival as a major public event, while the cats continue their habitual search around the parked cars.

Perry Smith’s Recognition

During his imprisonment, Perry Smith learns why the tomcats examine the cars: Josephine Meier explains that they are looking for dead birds caught in the engine grilles. Afterward, he watches them with a painful sense of recognition. He connects their scavenging to a pattern in his own life, seeing in their repeated search an equivalent of what he has done. The comparison comes from Perry Smith himself; it does not make the cats responsible for his actions or turn their behavior into a complete explanation of him. Instead, it gives him a compact image of a life organized around finding what survival leaves available.

The cats therefore recur across markedly different settings and meanings. Evinrude belongs to Nancy Clutter’s private attachments and to Susan Kidwell’s account of what survived the murders; Boobs becomes the subject of a diary entry and a tentative investigative lead; the gray tomcats embody a repeated, resourceful search that Perry Smith recognizes as resembling his own experience. By moving between beloved pets and strays, the narrative links ordinary animal life to affection, bereavement, inquiry, and Perry Smith’s bleak self-understanding without collapsing those distinct roles into one symbol.