They live in peace and harmony.

There is a cat around at the rancho of the Gonzales Family in Punta Boca del Salado, Baja California, Mexico.
He is there to keep the mice out and because he is not fed otherwise, he is constantly hunting.
This cat is never patted or caressed and stays away from human beings.
And he knows his place: he will never jump for example on the table as more spoiled and untrained cats tend to do.

Besides the famous dog Gorba, chained to a tree, there are two more dogs at the rancho.
There are two useful things these dogs know how to do.
One is barking at night when they believe danger is nearby.
This could be an unknown visitor or a coyote roaming near the rancho.
The other thing they know to do is assisting in rounding up cows.
For this they go with the ranchero, who is on a horse, out into the mountains until they find cows they want to bring back to the rancho.
For the ranchero to lasso a cow it must be rather close to him.
This is where the dogs come in.
They bark and run intimidating the cow to go close to the ranchero who then can lasso the cow successfully.
The dogs have a quiet and relaxed life.
They have a hobby at which they spend much time: sleeping in the shadow of a tree.
For food they survive on drinking the liquid that is leftover from the cheese making.
And the occasional half eaten chicken bone that is being thrown by a family member over the wall of the kitchen hut.
Dogs also are never patted although the people at the rancho are fond of them.

We also notice a pig at the rancho.
She lives in a rudimentary enclosure in a way pigs worldwide do.
In mud and surrounded by flies eating and sleeping only.
All left over food in the kitchen is always carefully saved and collected in a bucket. That is emptied in a truck tire cut in half that serves as the trough for the pig.
Eventually this pig will be killed at the rancho to serve as food for weeks.

Because there is water, trees, plants and flowers, around the rancho are many birds.
Including wild turtledoves.
Sometimes a Gonzales will make a trap and catch a bunch of turtledoves.
To have them for dinner.

There are at least 3 horses at the rancho kept in corrals.
Two serve to go out and catch cows.
One is a show horse.
But many more horses are near the rancho, living in the wild, roaming the mountainsides and coming only to drink from the special watering place for the horses and the cattle.

There is a special corral for a herd of goats.
In Mexico the goats are the responsibility and the property of the women.
The goats return every night by themselves to spend the night in their corral.
And in the morning they leave to spend the day eating grass and leaves in the surroundings.
Goats are not killed, butchered and eaten by the Gonzales.
They are kept in case senora Lucretia needs cash.
In that situation she will sell one or more goats.

Of course there are also chicken.
Not in a cage, but walking around freely all day.
In the night they climb as high as they can into nearby trees to have a safe place to sleep.

Finally, there are the cows.
The main reason for the existence of this rancho.
These are cows that live in the freedom of nature.
They are not locked up in barns or in meadows.
If there is enough to eat in nature and even water to drink from pools, the cows stay out for days and weeks.
When food gets low and the pools dry up, they come to the rancho every day to visit the watering place and get extra food from the Gonzales.
Or they come to see their young calves.
When a cow gives birth to a calve, the Gonzales keep the young one in a special corral.
This makes the mother cow come back to give milk to her baby.
That is the opportunity for the Gonzales to take milk from that cow for their cheese production.
Besides the cheese, the other source of income from cattle ranching is to sell the young bulls when they are 2 to 3 years old.
A herd needs one bull only, therefore the younger ones can be sold to the slaughterhouse.

What is really interesting of this menagerie of animals at the Gonzales rancho is that all these creatures manage to live with each other in a peaceful and harmonious way.
This observation excludes the pig of course as she is locked up and her only interaction is when a bucket with left over food is being thrown in her trough.

But the cat lives his life and the dogs theirs and they simply do not bother each other.
The same for the horses and the cows and the goats.
Equal for the turtledoves and the chicken.
They are there together and never have conflicts.

Recently, enjoying some time with the family in the kitchen, seeing the cat and the dogs and the turtle doves and the chicken and the goats and the horses and the cows this was strongly realized:
these animals live together in peace and harmony.