Time, as I have observed previously, is just one thing after another. So it is for all things, and so it has been with me.
I am a lad from the wilds of East Vancouver; I have never travelled very far away, and have always been impatient to return. I am fifty-eight years old today.
When I grow up, I would like to be taller.
Places, events and people have taken up space in the files of my memory that might be better used otherwise, but the honest fact is that I've chosen to save them there because of what they mean or have meant to me. I don't know for certain that I would change a single one of them - well perhaps one or two...
When I'm feeling particularly ancient and cranky I'll tell the younger among you that you are spoiled; that when I was your age we didn't have the things that you have now. When I was a boy, we had fire and stone tools - and we had to make them ourselves! Then, I will inform you that my first computer was a flat rock and a burnt stick. In my day, I might say, matters of the heart were determined with a club, and I still get headaches.
Another honest fact is that this trip has not been particularly strange, nor does it seem especially long. It always amazes me to wake in the morning and see somebody who looks like our friend in the top left corner laughing back at me from the bathroom mirror. Who in the hell invited him to this party?
You, however, were invited today, and I will ask that you bring me gifts.
I will post a link to my FaceBook wall below. You may leave my presents there. Among the acceptable offerings are photos, quotes, stories and music. If you see a picture that reminds you of me, know of some words that might brighten our day, a tale that might gladden our hearts, or a song that will bring a tear to our collective cheek, please share them there.
If you can think of something that you believe I need to know, or if you feel that my arrogant, intrusive, yet strangely handsome nose needs a bit of a tweak, go for it. If you feel the need to go for it more than once, kicking me after I'm already down is perfectly acceptable today.
What I would like most from you is a day filled with the music that you like and think that I would enjoy too. Remember, though, that I still haven't forgiven Carly Simon for writing that song about me...
Please be extremely well.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick;" advised Theodore Roosevelt, "you will go far."
Leonard has arrived. He is five months old, and he was trapped a few weeks ago at a Burnaby lumber yard. His left front paw had been injured, and was so badly damaged that it needed to be amputated. The amputation is pretty radical. His arm is gone from the mid-shaft of his humerus, and he holds his stump so tightly against his chest that it sometimes looks as if it is missing at the shoulder.
At the moment, he is living in a big cage on the floor of our living room, and he will remain there until he has grown a little more comfortable here. Leonard, you see, is frightened and angry. Mostly, I think, he is angry.
He's been through a great deal in his short, hard life, and he holds me personally responsible for all of the terrible things that have happened to him so far. I have given him my assurance that we are going to be best buddies one day, but he's not buying it yet. Leonard regards me as the face of his oppressor, and has given me fair warning that there's nothing that he would enjoy more than to tear that face away and feast upon the warm flesh beneath.
Although my proximity is not appreciated and my presence hasn't been invited, I am permitted to enter his room on occasion. I may straighten his bedding, police his litter box, and certainly, I am allowed to present his food four times a day.
Our five other cats get individual saucers overflowing with tinned cat food twice a day. Leonard gets tiny dollops of raw, ground meat for each of his four meals. Ronny and Bianca have noticed that he gets fed more frequently than they do, and have expressed their opinion that the system is flawed. While he accepts that it is not something that he can do for himself, Leonard comments on the quality of my service with hisses, spits and low, grownup growls.
I've been told that mealtimes are the best times to socialise feral cats...this is where the Big Stick comes in.
Over the years, the Tall Lady and I have bought numerous cat toys. Most of them are still in immaculate condition, since the cats prefer to play with empty cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes and Sheral's knitting. Some of those toys are attached to long, plastic wands. One morning, when Leonard was enjoying his breakfast of smashed beast, I tried to stroke him with one of those big sticks.
Quite understandably, Leonard was appalled, but he resumed his meal, underscoring his dinner music with throaty rumbles. I continued with this experiment for another couple of meals, until I thought it was safe to try something new.
Yesterday, I left the wand behind when I gave Leonard his dinner. When I thought he was settled and distracted enough, I reached in with my left hand, and began to pet him. At first, there was a loud, sharp report, like a kitten exploding. The angry growl came next, as the poor, startled, little cat tried to slap me with his missing left paw. Finally, he grabbed onto me with his right paw, and sank his sharp, little feline canines as deeply as they could go into my offending appendage, while calling me every dirty name he could remember, as well as a few that he'd just made up. He growled, he clawed, he scratched and he howled. While he never let down his defenses completely, he did relax a little, and he eventually returned to his meal, while I kept on stroking his back.
Note to the Tall Lady - we are going to need a new oven mitt...
Our friend Lilian has suggested that we change his menu to something a little less...macho. She has offered to make him little quiches, watercress sandwiches [without crusts], or fairy cakes with pink icing and candy sprinkles. I think it'll just take time for him to trust us.
Last night, my nephew Dave reminded me of the MacPherson Clan motto, which is this: "Touch Not the Cat Bot a Glove". "Bot" means "without". I've been getting the same message from our new foster kid.
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.
