Submission Hold

I received some exciting emails from several of my VOKRA friends earlier in the week. It seems that the Animal Rescue Site has a story contest running now, and a number of them suggested that I submit my blog post about Kenny Pawgers to be published on their page.

If there is enough positive response, the story could win VOKRA a grant of as much as five thousand dollars. It seemed like an easy task. I'd already written the piece, after all. It would simply be a matter of cut, paste and publish.

Nothing at all to it...right?

I followed their links to the entry page, read through the rules and stopped cold when I got to the part that said:  

"We recommend that you write and save your story of up to 300 words in a document on your own computer before copying and pasting it onto our site."

Those of you who have visited here before already know that I'm sometimes profligate with my words. I doubt that I could put three hundred or fewer onto a Post-It Note. Kenny's story weighed in at a respectable five hundred and eighty-four words - and, no, it's not fat, it's just big-boned!

Another thing that you may have noticed is this - I HATE EDITING! - and I do it badly. Editing has no flow, no essence, no soul. You simply chop, count, chop, count, chop, count, until finally, all of your feckin' adjectives have disappeared, like the Anasazi or corporate responsibility, and your beloved piece reads like Fun With Dick and Jane.

Notwithstanding this, I had made the pact, and was prepared to do the bloody deed. The first thing to go was the paragraph I had lifted from Maria's FaceBook posts, heartbreaking really. She had given me some fine material to work with, and I loved the flow of her narrative. After that, I found places where I thought that my prose sagged, so I spent some time tightening it up and trimming my excesses away. Fine, but still too long. I was into the muscle now, but surely a little of that could be spared. Fortunately, the edit was finished before I had to justify amputating appendages.

I was done in the wee hours of the morning, the Tall Lady and the cats long since abed. I pasted my story into the text field, chose my photo and submitted the whole lot to the contest. The site sent me a link, which I shared with my friends on FaceBook, and in two days we had scored over a hundred "likes".

On the third day, however, the story had vanished. It seems that I had left in a plea for the reader to donate to the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association, and this was a clear violation of the rules which I thought I'd read. In my defense, it was two o'clock in the morning when I finished.

So, back to the heavy hand and the bloody broad-axe. I submitted the new post today, and I'm delighted to say that it hasn't been pulled yet. Forty-three people have "liked" it so far, including Karen Duncan, Maria Soroski and me. Of course, I'm biased, and they might be lying to spare my feelings.

Kenny himself remains silent on the issue, accepting this too, with his usual serenity. He seems well, happy and unspoiled by his sudden celebrity. Perhaps his is the best perspective at all. In a world of chicken breast, goat's milk and wet, sloppy kisses, what could possibly be amiss?

FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT WORDS? It can't be!

Ah well, goodnight, all.

To "Like" Kenny's Story

Please click here

Fostering Community

There is a morning ritual among the bipedal hominids in our house that we refer to as making the bed. Our cats are of two opinions regarding this practice, and the schools of thought on the matter seem evenly divided.

On the one hand, there are those who see the exercise as an interruption of their morning routine; even vandalism of a sort. They have just settled into the warm, comfortable nest of bedding that their silly humans have vacated, and now those same foolish creatures return to rearrange the comfortable jumble which they themselves were no longer enjoying. In the process of doing so, they disturb the tranquility of any and all felines invested therein. This is the assessment of the older cats, who abhor the making of the bed.

  

On the other side of the argument are the kittens, who have infiltrated the same tangled pile of linen, but do not sleep. Bright-eyed and quivering, like children on Christmas Morning, fur bristling and tails a-wag, they slip crazily into the hollows and out of the caverns formed of the sheets, throws and comforters. Their excitement and anticipation are electric. They are waiting for the Blanket Ride.

Cats are not pack animals like dogs, but neither are they solitary, hermetic creatures. When food, safety and reproduction are not in dispute, they are quite sociable, and they will form into colonies. In a territory as small and crowded as our two-bedroom apartment, they have no choice. Here, community is imposed upon them.

Of course, there is the matter of hierarchy. When kittens are born, their mother's will is their law. As they grow, they play and squabble until they have established their own proper stations. So it is in the homes that they will come to share with us monkeys. We too have rules, doctrines and practices that the sensible cat or kitten must learn to respect, or, at least, to violate surreptitiously.

The Tall Lady and I would like to believe that the hierarchy in our home issues from us, but in point of fact, it begins with our four year-old adopted cats, the Flying Fellini Sisters. Xena is our big, perfect cat and her sister Gabrielle is the little, odd one. They accept the burden of foster kittens under the strongest of protests, and have become notorious as the kittens' grumpy aunties. They have despised and terrorized every kitten we have brought into our home. Surprisingly enough, all of the kittens love Brie - she of the snarl, the hiss and the heavy paw - but they worship Xena. They will follow her everywhere, braving her haughty disdain and trying to prove themselves worthy to learn her secrets.

This time, though, the balance is shifted. Our new foster cats do not live merely in the terrible shadow of Aunt Nasty and Auntie Grouchy. Sumi and her babies are learning about community under the gentle, kind and patient tutelage of seven month-old Bianca. All four have come to love and trust her, and she adores all of them. She is Sumi's little sister, and the smaller kittens' other mother.

Still, the kittens are little, and mistakes are made. After she had enjoyed the Blanket Ride yesterday morning, Bianca settled down at the foot of our newly-made bed for her early nap. Little, sleepy Sachi, with eyes hardly open yet, stumbled down to join her and nuzzled into the long, silky fur of the bigger kitten's neck.

As I left the bedroom, there was a loud, surprised squawk behind me. I turned to see poor, shocked Bianca struggling to pry loose the four month-old foster sister, who had latched on to one of her nipples, and was trying in vain to pull a pint.

Another lesson learned, I suppose. You get to choose your friends, but with family, y'gotta take what you're given.

To donate to

the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association

please click here

Fostering Satisfaction

Saturday, June 5, 2010
There is a loud, resounding crash from the living room. The Flying Fellini Sisters growl, spit and snarl as they try, in vain, to avoid the amiable calamity that is thudding toward our bedroom, cutting its wide, misguided swath down the hallway.  I hear a ripping sound, as long, thick, razor claws struggle to pull a small, muscular body up the Tall Lady's tattered handmade quilt to the top of our bed. Closing my eyes tighter, feigning a sound sleep, I ask myself "heads or tails?".

If it's tails, my eyes will open to a long, striped bottle-brush tail swishing back and forth across my face, accompanied by a thunderous, triumphant purr. Heads is a different matter altogether. I feel a small, heavy burden on my chest, and I look up to see the handsome, smiling, yellow kitten teetering unsteadily on top of me. Heads it is then, I think, as the hard, little skull smashes between my eyes like a small, orange rock.

A few seconds after I have been awakened by this unpremeditated Glasgow Kiss, the bedside alarm also informs me that it is six o'clock in the morning, and time for Lemon's breakfast. Whatever other problems our boy may have, there is nothing wrong with his internal clock.

Lemon has cerebellar hypoplasia; he is a wobbler, and he is our tenth foster kitten. People have come to meet him, but when they see how severe his condition is, and hear about his occasional litter-box miscalculations, they decide that he will be too much trouble for them to adopt. I'm beginning to think that he will live with us forever, and that's very much all right with me. He is one of the nicest kittens who's ever stayed with us.

The first three kittens VOKRA placed with us in October 2009 were a perfect delight; pretty, friendly, well-mannered. Mickey Carrington told me later that she had selected the fun kittens for our first batch so that we wouldn't be frightened off by a litter of their ferocious ferals.  We have had the ferals since then; we have had the kitten with a physical disability, we have had the mom with the four new babies - we have had a blast.

There is a great satisfaction to this fostering thing. Either your home is graced with an abundance of tame, good-natured kittens, who bring nothing but their trust and curiosity with them, or you are given frightened, savage, manic little balls of claw and fang, and you get to watch them turn into pets.

Our friends ask us if it's hard giving them up to strangers, after having them live with us for so many months. The answer is always yes - tears fall every single time. But it's always worth it. The strangers are always decent and loving, and, the kittens, like my buddy Lemon, leave a great, warm spot in our home long after they've gone.

If you have the time and the space, please consider fostering for VOKRA. We have a great many cats and kittens, and all of our homes are starting to feel pretty small these days. You might get the fun kittens, you might get the new moms and babies, you might get the kitten who needs a bit of special attention - or you may get the poor, sad, old-timer who wasn't allowed to come along when his mom and dad had to move.

Who knows - if you're really lucky, you might just get a Lemon!

To donate to

the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association

please click here

Dark Science

At some point in almost all of our endeavours, science rears its head.

Just this morning, I conducted a chemistry experiment, in which I created a  nonenzymatic reaction between a nucleophylic amino acid and a reactive carbonyl by the application of radiant heat.

This procedure, which people have been performing for millennia, was first described by French chemist, Louis-Camille Maillard in the early 1900's. He was attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis, and in his honour, the result is known as the Maillard Reaction.

To make a long story short, which rarely happens here, I was making toast.

Six thousand or so years ago the process would have involved placing your piece of baked bread onto a hot, flat rock, or by securing it, in some manner, in the proximity of an open flame. Usually, you did this because your bread had become stale and unpleasant to taste. Toasting made it into a different sort of thing altogether, and people found that they liked the flavour. In time, they even stopped waiting for their bread to go stale before toasting it.

I prefer whole wheat toast spread with butter and a smear of coarse-shredded orange marmalade. Some of the cats have expressed an interest in this culinary delight, but will usually retreat once they have seen me holding the bread steadfast between my teeth and heard me growling. The Tall Lady is an easier mark, and sometimes they get a share of her white toast with its Smucker's flavour of the week. This, however, is where my line has been drawn.

You can toast all manner of baked goods, from sliced bread to bagels to scones to frozen waffles - I'm told that at some weddings, the guests have even been know to toast the happy couple, but I would hope that's apocryphal.

There are several schools of opinion regarding the proper Making of Toast. At one end of the spectrum are those who place their bread onto the plate and turn up the room thermostat for a moment. Then there are those who hold that the toast is done only when their smoke detector screams in agony. Even they will concede that it might be overdone when the fire engines arrive. I maintain that when it is properly toasted, the colour of the bread will have been transformed to a dark, rich caramel, its aroma will be smoky and a little bit intoxicating. The pat of butter which is dropped onto its surface will spread, top to bottom and left to right, of its own will and volition. Anything less is mere heresy.

But you decide for yourselves - it isn't rocket science.

Image

"The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself. "
George Bernard Shaw

Normally, people don't get to take photos of me. I am the one hiding behind the camera, and they need to be both fleet of foot and quick of eye to get around my defenses.

It's not that I think my features are unusually absurd or particularly grotesque, but over the years I've developed a dislike for others' lenses, and a tendency to mug for their cameras. This serves to frustrate their endeavours, and it accounts for the great volume of horrible pictures of me on file. Oliver Cromwell is reported to have said "My image is a poor one but mine own; you must paint me as you find me, wart and all". 

When I was smaller, I became quite fascinated by the lines and creases that developed in people's faces over the course of time. I even spent long hours looking into the bathroom mirror, experimenting with different expressions, trying to impress the lines I wanted into the pale, unformed lump of dough that was my own undistinguished map. 

As you can see, it worked! I believe that we grow into the faces we deserve. Heredity, health and hazard play their parts, but mostly we wear the faces of our unique experience, and frequently, they betray our character.

My friend, Caer Weber, has a new camera and last week, she asked a number of friends to pose for her. She lined us up in front of the wall of a building where we meet on occasion, gave us a few simple directions, and snapped away. These two pictures are her result for me.

The black and white image at the top of the page is the one that she likes best. She says, " I think it's a really nice one of you. The kindness in you comes through your eyes so well." Well, I suppose that, like the rest of my face, is something that I'll have to learn to live with. 

Thank you, Caer - I am very pleased with your work. 

But the Greatest of These

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."
I Corinthians 13:13 (King James Bible)

One evening last month, our friend, Maria Soroski, called us to ask for our help. She was on her way down to the Grandview Cut, where trains run occasionally through the East Side of Vancouver, to try to trap a small, black cat who had been spotted wandering along the track-bed. Maria wanted us to stay up on the bridge above the tracks with our binoculars and one of her walkie-talkies, to warn her of any approaching rail traffic, while she and another friend set their traps below. We were official train-spotters.

People being what they are - social and curious - the exercise attracted a number of passersby. One young woman stopped to ask what we were doing, and the Tall Lady told her the story.

"Why don't you worry about homeless people," the woman snapped, "instead of wasting all of your time and money on useless, fucking cats!" At the best of times, Sheral is not confrontational, so she just stood, open-mouthed and silent, as the woman stalked away, emitting streams of indignant smoke from her lug-'oles.

A few months before, I read a column in one of our national newspapers. The correspondent eloquently derided the the work of those ubiquitous animal rescue groups (all of which, incidentally, are exclusively comprised of psychotic, lonely, single women of middle age, each of whom hoards hundreds of sick, fertile, feral cats in her single-wide trailer), which are funneling away resources that would be better used in caring for sick children.

There is drought in Africa. Crops fail, and famine is the result. Surely that is a more reasonable direction for our compassion!

 Sometimes, we believe that things are either/or. There are two choices, and we are in or out, on or off, pro or anti...black or white. This is most especially true when we are measuring the actions of others. If they embrace one cause, they must, of necessity, reject all others.

By the same logic, the carrot sticks I ate last night would make me a vegan, and the milk I poured over my Rice Krispees this morning makes me a hypocrite. I hope that neither is true.

I am proud of my friends involved in VOKRA, as I am proud of all of you who try to give until the hurting stops. Our capacity for charity is not limited to any one arena, it goes as generously as we can afford, and as deeply as we can care. And I'm not trying to disorient your moral compass - you know best who is in need and how deep to reach.

I'm only saying that this is one of my concerns, and asking that you consider adding it to your long list.

Thank you again, friends - be well.

To donate to

The Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association

please click here