Our apartment is in chaos tonight. The Flying Fellini Sisters, Bianca and the Weebles are racing in as many different directions as five cats can run, in a state of perfect terror...The Cage has returned!
Now, Ronny and Rena have never seen the cage before, but if it frightens Aunty Xena and Aunt Brie, that's enough to discourage them! And it does no good to explain to them that I'm just making up the spare room, because we are Waiting for Leonard.
The Tall Lady was busy packing for her trip to the Cabin when Mickey phoned us last night. Once again, Sheral tells us that she is going up to prune fruit trees and to check on the house, but the cats and I suspect that she's just going to eat quiche, drink zinfandel and watch chick flicks with her mom and sister.
Mickey is the foster manager for VOKRA, and she was calling to ask if we had room in the CatHouse for one more resident. We were, of course, perfectly free to say no. After two and a half years, Mickey has gotten to know us pretty well. WE DON'T SAY "NO"!
A few weeks ago, some of our volunteers trapped a very small black and white kitten at a Burnaby lumber yard. Because one of our old-timers, Leonard, had just died, the little fellow was named in his honour. The poor kitten is now known to all and sundry as "Baby Leonard"...uggh!. They noticed that one of his front paws was injured. In fact, it was so badly damaged, that it's had to be amputated. So, Baby...uggh!... Leonard has been living at Karen Duncan's House for the past month, wearing a lampshade, and getting analgesic injections in his skinny little cat butt.
Tonight, as if he hasn't been through enough already, he has returned to the vet, to have his stitches removed, and to be deprived of a couple of his other favourite body parts. Mickey tells us that he can be a little bit grumpy. If I'd gone through what he has, I think that I might tend to be a mite owly myself.
Leonard gets his parole at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, and will be moving into the halfway house soon afterwards. We'll have to keep him isolated until we've seen how the bigger cons treat him. Ronny is such a perfect gentleman, and Bianca has come to love every cat she's ever met. Rena is a wild card, and as for Xena and Brie - good luck, Leonard! I think that, once he learns to duck, he'll be fine.
After he's been with us for awhile, and before Sheral comes home, I was thinking that there should be some sort of a bonding ceremony in honour of ...uggh!...Baby Leonard. Maybe I'll put on some Pink Floyd, break out the catnip and a few cold ones, and all seven of us could get legless one evening.
Little Mister Perfect, Schroeder the Rafter Kitten, didn't stay at our house for very long. He was here for ten days, and generated a long lineup of interested adopters vying for his favours. The couple who came to see him first rushed over to VOKRA Command Central, also known as Karen Duncan's House, signed his papers and returned to pick him up in less than an hour. The carrier that the four of us loaded him into still had its price tag and manufacturer's stickers attached to it. Our little, delightful thirteen-ball cat left us with no trouble, no complaint, and without so much as a backward glance...ungrateful little troll...
Before he came to live with us, there had been talk of us fostering three kittens who had been trapped at a busy McDonald's parking lot in Abbotsford, where they had been hustling french fries.
The three kittens are wobblers. Their mother was sick while she was carrying them, and it caused a condition called cerebellar hypoplasia in the three little ones, which also goes by the distasteful, and politically incorrect name of spastic cat syndrome.
We hesitated about fostering them. For one thing, they were already seven months old when we met them, and kittens that age are frequently very timid and hard to tame. Also, there are three of them, and one wobbly kitten takes a lot of attention sometimes.
Rena
So, when Schroeder abandoned us [the little stinker], the Tall Lady and I reconsidered the Fry Guys. Maybe we could handle just one of them. We had, after all, provided a foster home for a CH kitten once before, and as you have read here previously, we have a soft spot still for the Remarkable Lemon. Yup, one wobbly cat would probably be just fine.
When you come to think about it though, two cats aren't a lot more trouble than one. Kittens tend to be a bit less shy when they bring a buddy to their new home, and these poor little waifs probably had enough to deal with already. Dropping one of them alone into unfamiliar territory would just be mean. We thought that we could handle two.
Of course, it wasn't that long ago that we had eleven cats here in our two-bedroom apartment. Two wobbly kittens couldn't possibly be the logistical nightmare that turned into! Why, even if we decided to foster all three of them...well, you see where I'm going with this, don't you?
Sheral brought all of them home fifteen days ago. As soon as the kennel door was open, one long, black and white streak made for the safety of the hollow behind our sofa. Wobbler he may be, but Runaround Ronny is a credible sprinter when circumstances demand it.
Ronny is our shy boy. He spent his first three days here hiding in the closet in our office, phoning out once in awhile for room service. His walk is the most compromised of the three. He stumbles and he staggers when he's distracted, and he can still be startled when you reach for him suddenly. With his magnificent black sideburns, he looks like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, but he walks like a Slinky Dog.
Reba
His sister, Radiant Rena [ren-nah] has the best co-ordination of the three. Her back left leg is weaker than her right, and sometimes she tends to drift in that direction. Usually, though, her walk resembles a cat in stealth mode, because she keeps her body close to the floor. She runs, jumps, climbs and plays with no greater hesitancy than any cat her age. Sometimes, we mistake her for la Bella Bianca, whom she very much resembles.
Their other sister is Reba the Diva. Reba has a walk that is like Mae West's exaggerated bustle swing, and because her right leg is weaker, she steers slightly to starboard. If we zap-strapped her and Rena together, they would walk in a straight line. Most days, both of them would be okay with that.
Their previous foster mom, Jenny, nicknamed Reba "the Shadow". She loves people, and she follows us everywhere that she can. We took her to an adoption event three days after we got her, and her cage door was probably closed for only twenty minutes in the whole five hours that she was there. For the rest of the day, people were in the kennel, petting her, or she was out of the kennel petting them. She is a cuddler.
I fell asleep last night with her head on my shoulder, and when I woke up this morning, she was on the Tall Lady's pillow, warming the top of her head.
As usual, the Flying Fellini Sisters are displeased. Initially, Bianca was too, but her defenses appear to be crumbling, and I think that the Weebles will soon have a splendid big sister to play with.
Kitten season is upon us again - I know this because Maria Soroski put a post on FaceBook tonight asking for used blankets and towels. If it's like last year, it will be busy.
If you can adopt, foster, volunteer or donate to the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association, your help is needed and will be very greatly appreciated. If you have a cat already, please make sure that your little babe is spayed, or your little buddy is neutered. Please check to ensure that your sillier friends and relatives have been too...
Please visit Bianca, Reba, Rena and Ronny on the VOKRA Adoption Page, and don't even bother looking at any of the other cats or kittens - they're not nearly as good our Weebles. They wobble, but they don't fall down.
I stopped shaving near the middle of December. It was something that I'd been considering off and on for some time, and whichever day it was that I chose seems to have been the right one.
There are two sorts of pelt in my family. My grandfather Adam, and my brother Jim got the Diack gorilla gene, while my father Alex, my brother Don and I inherited the MacPherson coat, which looks a good deal more like a frozen chicken.
I've thought about doing this before, and have even avoided my razor for a couple of consecutive days, but I've never liked the result...or the itch. This time, however, I thought that I saw possibilities. After all, hair can cover a multitude of chins.
I never considered putting it to a plebiscite - there are only two people whose opinion matters - but for some reason, there were votes on the subject, and for awhile, they seemed evenly divided. My beard was blond, sparse and scruffy. For the first few weeks, it was hellishly uncomfortable. I went to one of my Mood Disorder Association meetings with about fourteen days growth, and managed to alarm the entire group. I had calls from seventeen people that evening, all seeking reassurance that I hadn't taken too many pills or opened a vein.
In time, the itching stopped, the whiskers evened out, and I began to look a little bit less like an abandoned Chia Pet. I still looked into the mirror while holding my neglected double-edge razor and thought maybe just a little trim. One thing, though, has stilled my hand.
Brie, our little, odd cat has come to love my beard, and she will sit for hours on my lap rubbing her hard, flat little head against my chin, eschewing all prior cat-brushes in its preference. Sometimes, I'm hard pressed to say how much of the fur on my chin is hers, and how much is my own. Last Thursday evening, there was another complication.
While I was out, the Tall Lady took a drive to VOKRA Command Central. When I returned, I discovered that our family had yet another addition. Schroeder, the Rafter Kitten is about twelve weeks old, tiny, proud and handsome. We believe that there is some British Short-Hair in his family, and as a consequence, his head occupies about one-third of his total continental mass. The rest of him resembles a number thirteen billiard ball. In sum, he looks like a tiny snowman with a few orange patches. The picture is completed by two perfect, little triangular ears and a small, stripey toothpick of a tail. When you look for the definition of "cute" in your dictionary, you may find Schroeder's picture there.
He has not yet been accepted into the Inner Circle of the Flying Fellini Sisters and la Bella Bianca. In fact, if he hadn't already had a name when we met him, we were going to call him "Cuffy". He gets thumped a lot. He was lonely. It was just a short time since he'd been trapped, and he missed his mom terribly. On his first night in his new home, Schroeder was thrilled to be invited to share the big bed with us.
At about three o'clock Friday morning, I was awakened by loud cheerful purrs as the new guy wrapped himself around my neck and snuggled into my beard. I was only a little surprised when he started trying to nurse on the whiskers.
After all these months, if my buddy Lemon were to call me from Montreal, there's a chance that I wouldn't recognise his voice immediately. It has probably changed in the year and a half that he's been living with Merripaul. There will be differences in tone and inflection that he's developed with them, and he will have learned new expressions with which I am not familiar...oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that all of the cats who've lived with us can talk?
None of them has actually learned to speak English, but all of them have spoken to the Tall Lady and me, and common courtesy demands that we reply. Some of them are shy or laconic, while others have been chatty - even a bit long-winded. Each of them speaks in his or her own individual voice, from Xena's enthusiastic "good morning" meow, as she leaps to the top of her laundry basket, and raises her right paw for a high five, to her sister Brie's long, mournful train-whistle moan, as she descends deeper into the insane, hormonal, raving babble of her monthly false heat.
Sometimes, I think that they speak to us simply because they enjoy our conversation. Other times, their sounds have a specific purpose. They seem most vocal when I'm holding the can-opener. Brie and the littlest ones run rings around my ankles, Blossom with her impatient accusations of premeditated delay on my part, while Sachi and Shisan sing me songs of praise and celebration. Xena and Bianca wait confidently where they have always seen their dishes alight, quiet, serene and beautiful.
Bianca is not a great talker. She is our big, quiet black shadow. On the occasions that she has something to say, it will come out in a soft, gentle, apologetic kitten's mew. Remember, for all of her regal, impressive stature, at ten months, Bianca is still just a kitten.
We have had three adoptions in the past three weeks, and I have to admit that our little girls have sometimes used impolite language during our exchange procedures. Blossom and Sachi were the first to leave us, and they were adopted by the same people. After fifteen minutes of classic Marx Brothers buffoonery, including stuffing the wrong kitten into two different carriers, to the accompaniment of her sisters' jeers, growls and hisses, the exchange was completed, and our good babies were on their way to their permanent home to meet their new big brother, Chewbacca, and Ella, the Big Bitch Bunny.
Shisan went to the vet on Friday morning. It was nothing serious; she came home that evening with a shaved arm, a bare tummy, a little zipper and a new tattoo. She was horribly, horribly embarrassed, and her crabby aunties did nothing to improve her low mood. Xena growled at her and ran away; Brie hissed and slapped her on the ear. The poor, wounded kitten stretched out on the carpet, solemn and sorrowful as a kitten can be. Bianca walked over, slowly and carefully, lay down beside her, and enfolded her in a consoling big sister hug. Shisan has always been her favourite kitten.
On Saturday morning, Shisan had important visitors. The came to meet her to decide if she would be a good addition to their family. Shisan was not exactly rude to them, but she was still tired, sore and sluggish. She didn't feel very sociable, and she didn't care about making a good impression. Later that evening, we got a message that Shisan had been adopted. They came to pick her up last night.
This time, all went according to plan - kitten into carrier, carrier to adopter, adopter out the door - no more finger puppets...
The Tall Lady and I were both very quiet last night. Our apartment always seems hollow and empty after the last kitten of one of our batches has been adopted, and in spite of knowing that it's for the best, we grieve for awhile. We lay in our bed, not talking, but each knowing exactly what the other was thinking. Xena and Brie may be glad to see the last of each and every one of them, but for Sheral and me, this is the hardest part of being cats' foster parents.
Out in the living room, in the still and silent darkness, a small sound began, and it continued all night long. It was the soft, gentle, apologetic kitten mew of a big, quiet, black shadow searching for her baby sister.
The Tall Lady and I stayed home for Christmas this year. Because the holiday was so far off, we didn't bother planning anything. We kept putting things off and putting things off until suddenly, it was December 23, and we still didn't have a single decoration unpacked. Having four cats, two of them kittens and the others simply loopy, the Christmas tree was out of the question again. We tried it for about fifteen minutes two years ago, but our tree was packed up again after we caught Raja nibbling on the electrical cords, Darcy eating the sparkly songbirds and the Flying Fellini Sisters up at the top, trying to peek up the angel's dress.
This year, Sheral's family have gone up to The Cabin for a few days, and we have volunteered to feed a friend's cats while she is out of town. Our plan for the day finally comes down to roasting a chicken, popping the cap on a bottle of sparkling cider and spending a quiet day at home with our four little furry girls.
Shisan and Bianca, as the elected spokescats for the sorority, woke me at six o'clock to get their breakfast ready. All of our cats have a tendency to the workaholic, and have never taken a day off in their lives. The Tall Lady doesn't take many days off either, so the girls and I agreed that she had earned a bit of a lie-in this morning.
Sunday mornings, silence and I don't do terribly well together as a rule, so it wasn't too long before I'd turned on the TV, and was flipping through the higher channels. I stopped when I reached Turner Classic Movies. Today, they were showing a selection of big, epic, widescreen spectaculars featuring Birthday Boy, Jesus Christ. By the time Sheral had finished her shower, she discovered her five movie buffs well into the chariot race sequence of Ben Hur.
Next up was the magnificent, star-studded, technicolor theology of The Greatest Story Ever Told, starring Max von Sydow as a messiah who is only marginally less wooden, upright and rigid than his cross. We amused ourselves for three more hours, making up new dialogue that was just slightly sillier that the screenwriters themselves had written for the movie.
We had only made it through half of King of Kings when Sheral snapped. It may have been something that I said. It was just after my commentary about star Jeffery Hunter's sparse, blond beard which went something like: "It's Jesus the Nazarene, fer gawd's sake - not Jesus the Nectarine!"
"These are EASTER movies", she protested, "they're not Christmas films!" She pointed out that every single one of these pictures concluded with a pretty graphic and gory crucifixion. These were hardly an invitation to a Holly, Jolly Christmas, she harrumphed!
I realised that we were long past the point at which I could remind her that most of the movies that TCM airs on Lincoln's Birthday end with Honest Abe getting shot in the box seat. No, the moment, or rather, the nine hours had gone, and she prised the remote from my still warm hand to change channels to the Doctor Who marathon on Space.
Hollywood has been making biblical epics for as long as there has been a Hollywood. Ben Hur was first filmed in 1925 with Ramon Novarro in the title role, and King of Kings was made in 1927 with HB Warner as Jesus, the Christ. After all this time, you'd think they'd hit the mark just once.
Maybe next year, we'll just just watch The Life of Brian again.
Have a wonderful Christmas, and remember - the book is always better.
I consider myself lucky to have Ayda Aly as one of my FaceBook buddies. Because of the distance between our homes and our cultural differences, it's unlikely that she and I could have any other sort of contact. I live in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, and Ayda lives in Alexandria, Egypt.
She is a young, devout, muslim woman, and I am none of those things. I have never met her, and I don't ever recall seeing her photograph, but she is my friend.
Ayda rescues cats. I don't know if she is the Egyptian Maria Soroski, or if Maria is the Canadian Ayda Aly, but I don't think that either would be offended by comparison with the other.
Yesterday, Ayda posted a photograph of the painting shown at the right of this post. She found it hanging in the window of a shop in Alexandria. It is by a renowned Lebanese artist, and Ayda was certainly impressed with its price tag. "How much?", she challenged her readers before answering her own question. It would be enough, she said, to spay, neuter and feed about two hundred of her street cats.
I like her priorities.
Mostly, Ayda posts stories and pictures of her rescued cats. Some of them have made me laugh until the tears run down my cheeks. Sometimes, her stories bring only the tears. She rescues sick cats as well as healthy ones, and lately, a number of her little ones have died in her care. She forgets that they would have died sooner without her, and is devastated by their loss.
Every day, she takes a long walk to feed her street cats, and she shares photos of them, some crowding close to her, hungry and grateful; others still keeping their distance, starving and suspicious. On her way, she takes pictures of her beautiful Alexandria, and she likes to share those too.
Egypt is unsettled these days. Demonstrators march in the streets, demanding that people have more say in the running of their country. That happens in Canada too, but here the police don't shoot them. The Egyptian government claims that forty people have died by violence in these protests; Ayda believes that it's over a thousand. She shares that news as well.
"Some times silent...", she explains, "be a crime..."
People are much the same the world over. I've never met anyone who is entirely good, and I don't think that anybody is completely evil. Most of us exist in the uneasy twilight between the two.We live our lives as best we can, and hope that we've made a difference.
People like Ayda are the difference. Thank you, my friend.
