(I found a very pleasant greeting from my new friend, Laura, in my gmail inbox one morning last year, and I'd like to share it with all of you...again.)
Sleeping Roxy
Hi Lee:
What a great and happy surprise to get your email! Lamin and I would be happy to give some information about Sapphire, now named Roxanne, for her and Lemon's first birthday!
Rubin and Roxanne
When we adopted Roxanne, she was the cutest little ball of fur. She bounced off the walls, constantly playing with her new buddy Rubin, (formerly named Mika) who was also adopted through the VOKRA program three years ago.
When Roxanne came into our house, she was immediately curious and friendly. She was and still is a terrific snuggler when she's not playing with toys or Rubin. Roxy loves to pounce on Rubin and she races him up the stairs every night when we get ready for bed - first one on the bed every night, she always wins her favourite spot!
Roxanne
Roxanne is full of personality, and she constantly brings smiles to our faces when we see whatever she has gotten herself into or up to. She has brought so much joy to our lives and she has really helped to bring Rubin out of his shell. Our shy guy just loves his little sister's antics and the doting affection she gives him.
Thanks so much for requesting this information from us. We truly appreciate the work VOKRA does and the support your volunteers have given us through our two adoptions.
Laura and Lamin
Sleeping Beauties
(She sounds a lot like her other brother. Happy Second Birthday, Roxanne and Lemon.)
Over the course of a few nights last August, our friend Maria went hunting for kittens in the Downtown Eastside. She'd been watching this particular litter for sometime. There were three kittens around four months old in the family, and they lived behind a store in an alley near Keefer Street. Because the owner of the store had put up a chain-link fence, the kittens had no choice about their place of residence.
Their mother had been gone for quite awhile then, and as far as we know, the kittens were surviving on what they could catch for themselves. Rodents are abundant anywhere that people live, and East Vancouver is no exception to that rule. While they were probably good little hunters, they would always have been hungry. Some of the rats that they caught were likely as big as they were, and the hazards to their health and safety were horrendous.
Geordie
I'm pretty sure that the storekeeper wasn't just some heartless villain who didn't have any regard for small, vulnerable things. He probably thought that these wild, homeless little cats enjoyed living rough and eating what they could forage or kill. He might even have convinced himself that his fence gave them a degree of protection.
Whatever the case, when Maria approached him about surrendering the kittens, he gave her a very definite NO.
I suspect that their rescue involved a pair of pretty good wire cutters and a black balaclava, and I'd like to believe that Monty Norman's James Bond Theme was playing in the background. In any case, when Maria left Chinatown on August 5th, her extended family had been further extended by two boys and a little girl, all of whom Maria declared to be semi-tame. They still are.
Sidney
When they came to live with the Tall Lady and me around the second week in September, they still had no names, so we got to choose some for them.
Naming the guy with the white mark on his nose was easy - we called him Blaze. His brother, a big, handsome smylodon of a kitten, was named Wee Geordie, after an old Bill Travers movie that I've always liked. We played it safe with the smallest kitten, whom we called Sidney, because it was a nice androgynous name, and she wasn't about to let us check her credentials.
Cole
When they arrived, they came with a timorous little black kitten, about a month younger than they were, who had been abandoned at the SPCA. He had been scared and lonely, and Maria thought that he needed a family. She is a pretty good matchmaker. All three of the Chinatown Children love him, and he is Geordie's very best buddy. We call him Cole.
They were still wild and frightened for the first while that we had them. Sid curled into a small quivering ball whenever she was cornered, and she was as hard and as cold as stone when she was touched. She and Cole are our lapcats now.
Geordie fell from our balcony on Hallowe'en and shattered his right femur. Two days later, his leg was amputated. Two weeks after that, he was climbing to the top of our big cat tree, running wild in the hallway, leaping over small buildings and wrestling with his brothers and Sidney. I suspect that he's feeling better.
Blaze is a scoundrel and a bully some of the time. The only living thing that he fears in the apartment is Xena, who will knock him on his skinny little cat butt if he annoys her. But, when he chooses to be good (and it's not often), Blaze is very good.
They were put on the VOKRA adoption page a couple of weeks ago, and Geordie had his first suitors on Sunday morning. He gave them his best sales pitch. He was friendly, he was polite, he was good-natured and attentive. Now that I think of it, the whole family was. Even the Tall Lady and I were on our best behavior.
On Monday morning, our visitors adopted a cute little kitten with four legs. I guess there's just no accounting for taste.
At one time, the Russian Mob had individual URL's instead of names. Each began www.vokra.ca/cats/ and the extensions were as follows: 52-and-elliot-black-kitten, 52-and-elliot-bw-kitten, 52-and-elliot-tab-kitten, and 52-and-elliot-not-caught-yet-kitten. (Don't worry, there's not a test at the end of the posting, and even if there were, you guys would ace it!)
When Maria finally trapped not-caught-yet in June, she had the four kittens living with her for a time. Then they went to stay with Karen Duncan for a little bit while they were getting ready for their new foster home. The young woman who took them in next also gave them their names. She called them Natalia, Anastasia, Rasputin and Vladimir. The Tall Lady is undecided but I'm fairly sure that Heidi hates kittens.
Natalia
After their stay with her, these four little beauties came to live with us. Natalia (Miu Miu) was our little shy girl with her silky black coat and huge yellow eyes. Fostering her was like having Taylor back with us. The Tall Lady and I spent hours looking for the poor little fraidy cat, and still more hours trying to convince her that we didn't really believe that the best thing about kittens is the white meat. Eventually, Talia came out for meals, then for treats, next to play with the feather wand or the laser pointer, and she finally rewarded us by coming out just because we asked her to.
Anastasia
Anastasia (Ada) is one of those strange-looking kittens who will grow up to be an amazing beauty. Her black fur isn't exactly black, her white fur not really white and her whiskers kink and spiral off in all directions, as if they were embarrassed to be seen together. Ana was an instant lap cat, with a soft, wet nose and a purr like thunder. A few minutes after we went to bed every night, Ana would land as light as a feather on the Tall Lady's handmade quilt, and would snuggle down between the two of us to sing us to sleep.
Rasputin
If Talia reminded us of Taylor, Rasputin (Check) was another Tabor. He was a gentle, easy-going diplomat whose main concern seemed to be everyone else's contentment. Even Brie liked him. He was a hauntingly beautiful kitten with huge paws and a tiny, polite voice. From the moment we met him, we knew that Ras would be the first of the Russians to be adopted, and we hoped that his new family could make him as happy as he would try to make them.
He was adopted by a perfect family and had a nice dad, a kind mom and a beautiful eleven year-old human sister who were ready to love him forever. When Rasputin died on September 23, we were as devastated as they were.
Vladimir
52-and-elliot-not-caught-yet-kitten is Vladimir. I can't honestly say that I'm surprised that he was the last to be trapped - Vlad was our James Cagney kitten. He had the strut, the swagger, the timing and the attitude. Like Cagney, what he lacked was size - like Cagney, he didn't give it much thought.
We think that the other three kittens have some Maine Coon in their background - obviously, Vlad had a different daddy. In spite of being the smallest of the four kittens, his was the biggest personality, and his the most voracious appetite. When he found out that he liked Rice Krispees, the breakfast table became a battleground and I was usually on the losing side.
When Vlad's adoptors came a-courtin', he knocked them down and twisted their arms until they agreed to take him home with them.
Talia was the last of the kittens to be adopted. Since October of 2009, we'd fostered fourteen kittens, and counting our three big girls, we'd had seventeen cats in four years. Our co-op's eight paw policy has never presented any problem. Our neighbours are among our most dedicated fans. The ones with allergies just take their meds before dropping by, and they remain until their sneezing and scratching begins to upset the cats.
Yup - seventeen cats in four years, and now our friends at VOKRA had decided that it was time for a bit of Chinese...
Two years ago some VOKRA volunteers trapped a pregnant cat whom they named Maddy. She had six kittens on December 10, 2009, but Maddy had a horrible case of coccidia, and four of them died very soon after they were born.
The two survivors were a little girl, who was named Sapphire, and a boy with pale, yellow fur who was called Lemon.
Now, Sapphire seemed just fine as the kittens were growing up, but little Lemon wasn't learning how to walk properly. He used his front legs like crutches, and he dragged his back legs along behind himself. He kept falling over, but he kept right on trying. Finally, he learned to put his back feet down on their heels, and he turned his toes out so that he had training wheels (of a sort). Lemon still fell, but now he could go further and faster than he could before.
We think that Maddy had distemper when she was pregnant, and that Lemon's cerebellar hypoplasia was the result. That meant that the part of his brain that controls his motor skills was underdeveloped - or if you like, he had problems with his drive train. There is nothing wrong with his higher brain - Lemon might not pass his university entrance exams on the first try, but I bet a few of us didn't.
When the Tall Lady and I met him, his name had been changed to Lennon. Some of the people at VOKRA felt that the name Lemon implied that the kitten was a lemon, and that it would compromise his chances for adoption. But he was Lemon when we first heard about him, and that's what we kept right on calling him, much to Karen Duncan's frustration.
Lemon the Conqueror
Because Lemon was a kitten, Xena and Brie hated him. Because he moved differently, and was as likely as not to trip and fall on them, they hated him even more. He stumbled and fumbled, he rolled and he tumbled, but eventually he got where he'd planned to go - though sometimes not in a timely fashion. We learned pretty quickly that it was a good idea to pick him up and put him in his litterbox if he was headed that way. Sometimes he appreciated the assistance, other times he resented the interference. He missed the mark occasionally, but he always gave it his best effort.
Every day he was with us, he worked and played hard, and he got stronger and steadier. He also just kept on getting nicer. In time, Karen negotiated a course of physiotherapy for him. A young woman named Jacqueline Gibson had volunteered her time, talent and facilities to VOKRA. She has had wonderful success with a good number of injured and otherwise disabled dogs, but Lemon would be her first feline client. Jacqueline's company was called Aquapaws HydrotherapyInc, and thus was born the Amazing Aquacat.
The Amazing Aquacat
Lemon and Jacqueline had four sessions together. He loved her, but he hated the big swimming pool in her basement. Every Tuesday afternoon, she would put on her wetsuit, and she and our pleasant, even-tempered hero would have a half hour swim. Every Tuesday, Lemon would paddle and kick for afew minutes longer with Jacqueline's supporting hand under his chest, until he was eventually swimming like an otter as well as howling like a banshee. But every Tuesday after we left her, poor Jacqueline would rub her swollen eyes and scratch at the welts on her arms where her skin had been exposed to his fur.
You see, Jacqueline was allergic to cats, so four sessions were all that she could handle. That was quite all right with our boy - he'd already decided that he was allergic to hydrotherapy.
Lemon had a couple of people who were interested in adopting him, but when they saw him, they decided quite fairly that he'd be more than they could handle. When Mary and Percy met him, though, it was love at first sight.
Lemon is now spoiled, pampered, cosseted and adored - everything that he deserves. My friend Margo asked me the other day if Lemon was my favourite. A good foster parent doesn't have favourite children, I told her. All of them are equally loved and treated fairly and impartially.
In February of this year, Brie and Xena had very nearly recovered their tenuous grip on sanity, and the Tall Lady and I were going through a severe case of kitten withdrawal. I attended a VOKRA meeting at Karen Duncan's house, and it was there that I heard about Charlie's Angels.
Charlie
Four kittens had been trapped in Surrey and had been named Drew (as in Barrymore), Diaz (like Cameron), Lucy (Liu) and, of course, Charlie. Drew and Diaz had already been adopted, but Lucy and Charlie, who were living at Karen's, needed a foster home. They were both ready for their family planning options to be exercised. In fact, Lucy was putting on a bit of girth, and Karen was concerned that there had an excess of familial familiarity.
Lucy
Our friend Kim drove the three of us to the Killarney Veterinary Clinic, where the kittens were rushed off into their kennels to get ready for their surgeries. The Tall Lady and I were to pick them up when they had recovered. When we called the next morning, we were pleased to find out that not only had Lucy not been pregnant, but that Charlie was a little girl as well.
Charlie is a cheeky little medium-haired tabby and Lucy was a beautiful silver-grey and tortoiseshell with perhaps a touch of the exotic orient in her pedigree. I can't say that either of them was especially shy or scared, but they were distant and guarded with us.
Shortly after they arrived, we got a tearful phone call from the lady in North Van who had adopted Raja and Darcy. Both were terrified of the boys and she was afraid that the adoption wasn't working. She tried for a couple of days more, and then called us again to ask if she could bring them back to us.
Raja (aka Darwin, aka Rufus) came back first and as soon as he was gone, Darcy became the family lapwarmer. It seems that he was the shy one, and as soon as she was by herself, Darcy was just fine. When we got our tiny, terrified tiger back to the ol' homestead, it took about ten minutes for him to climb back up on our laps. After that, he was ready to meet the new girls.
Cat Nap
Charlie and Lucy already loved Xena and Brie, just like all of the other kittens had, so it was no surprise when they fell in love with Raja too. They had a great deal to do with calming him down, and we hoped that he'd have a positive influence on them as well, but no such luck. When Raja was adopted for the second time, they were still no closer to being ready for their adoption.
Sure, they loved the big girls, and they even liked us well enough, but we still could not touch them, and we began to wonder if they might not do better in another foster home - maybe one with just their foster parent and them.
Lucy was our first tragedy - after she was moved, she fell from a seventh floor window, and was never found. Charlie has gone to live with our friend Maria in what is very likely Cat Paradise. When we last heard, she still wasn't ready for adoption...but we keep hoping.
Kimball and his sister Cricket arrived at our door on the 18th of November with two flats of food, a bag of stove pellets and their own little prison cell. Cricket had an infected eye and they were terrified of everyone and everything. Of course, they escaped from the cage (I think that they had a friend on the inside) and from the bathroom almost as soon as they arrived. All of us want to foster the cute, healthy kittens, and the Tall Lady and I were really no different. We hustled them back into solitary confinement, rubbed Cricket's ointment on her eye, and gave her her oral meds as often as she needed them. I have a small scar on the palm of my right hand shaped like the letter C where Cricket tried to sign her name.
When we found out that they both had ringworm, we asked if they could be moved somewhere else, and I've always felt badly about that. Fortunately, the somewhere else turned out to be a great foster home where these two tiny terrors became pets! They were adopted together and were thriving splendidly the last we heard.
Darcy
We were given another chance, though. Our VOKRA mentor Mickey called us one Saturday morning to ask if we could drive down to the West End to rescue another foster parent from her two horrible kittens! The Tall Lady stayed in the aptly named Escape with the motor running while I went upstairs to see just how bad things were.
I found a small apartment where there was really no place for a kitten to hide, another cage and a handy cat carrier. The plan (such as it was) was to open the door of the kennel and herd the kittens into the carrier. The kittens had other plans however, and they slipped through two different gaps in our trap, and into the specious freedom of the little living room.
Raja
It took us a few minutes, but we caught the tiny, terrified tiger by the scruff of his handsome neck and dropped him into the oubliette, where his pretty little powderpuff of a sister soon followed.
Raja (later Darwin) and Darcy (Dempsey aka Squirrely) were our Christmas kittens. After the initial terror of the move, and braving Bedtroll Brie, they became gen-you-wine pettin' cats, but Raja was always a little more highly-strung and skittish than pretty little Darcy. She was the first to try out the laps, the first to sleep on the big bed, and the first to try to eat a seven-foot prelit Christmas tree.
They were the softest cats we had so far, and two of the prettiest, so it was really no surprise when the couple in North Vancouver with the three nice boys wanted to adopt them both. This time, the Tall Lady and I delivered the kittens to their new home, and it was magnificent! We wanted them to adopt us too.
Their house was everything two small, friendly cats could ever want, and this would be another happy ending - wouldn't it?
