Dramatic Cat Rescue Two

When Brunswick, my black furry male cat, was just a young Tom, he liked to spend his nights outside prowling around the world. He was fixed, so he couldn’t be chasing tale, but he still seemed to like the smell of the night’s air. Although he was alway amorous by nature, he made friends with the other cats around the neighbourhood and his favourite best friend lived up the block from me. I know you make think it’s crazy, and I did at the time too, but there was litterally two gangs of cats and there were cat wars around my street. Brunnie’s best friend was an unneutered male, who I can only assume was his protection. One time, I woke up from a nap to find Brunswick giving his best friend a tour of his home and his food bowl. They had crawled through the open window.

Anyway….

It was like clockwork, really, Brunswick’s inclination to go outside and come back in. At around 8:30 pm he would demand to be let out by wining at the front door. Then at 5:30 in the morning, he would appear at my side window (near my bed) and scratch his claws down the screen, if the window was open, and if not, he’d paw at the closed window like a madman.

So one morning, I woke up at a now trained time of 5:30 am. I rolled out of bed, put on my coffee, brushed my teeth and realized that Brunnie hadn’t come to the window. I thought it was odd, but figured he’d be home soon. So, I went outside, grabbing a cigarette on the way out (yes back when I used to smoke). I sat on the muskoka chair and lit up. Just as I took my second puff I heard a cat wailing. I started looking around, I knew the cry, it was obviously Brunswick but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I followed the sound of his cries around the side of the house. I still couldn’t see him. Then I looked up. There he was on the roof of the neighbours home, obviously terrified.

“Save me. Save me,” he screamed in his own particular wail (honest, I speak cat language).

I didn’t know what to do. It was about 5:45 am, and the neighbours, I was positive, we’re sleeping. I tried to shush him to no avail. I knew that I didn’t have a ladder, so I was going to have to convince Brunswick that he had to get down from the roof by himself.

I walked on to my neighbours porch and motioned for Brunswick to come to the middle of the roof and jump to the tree branch which was about three or four feet away from the roof’s edge. I figured this was how he got up. At first he cried at me then he started to try to make his way over to me, across the middle of the slope. Then he stopped, did an about face and went up the left side of the roof to the back. I couldn’t see him anymore, and I hoped he was getting down the way he came up. I started to quietly retreat off the porch steps. I noticed a couple of cats in the distance, part of the gang that Brunswick belonged to. But then I heard crying again, and Brunswick appeared on the opposite side of the roof. He steathly moved across at the top of the slope and then made his way down the middle. He stopped on the ledge. I made hand gestures for him to jump to the branch. He went around in circles, wondering why I wouldn’t get him from the roof (I can only assume, although I speak cat language, I definitely do not read their minds!). He steadied himself, hunching his hind legs, getting ready to jump, and then he’d loose heart and cry at me again. I spoke in sign language to him, “JUMP” I said. I showed him the route in the air (the roof and branch were several feet above me). Finally, after about 10 minutes of this, Brunnie got into position and jumped. He landed between the branch and the trunk. He was still too high up for me to grab him, so I spent another few minutes coaxing him to climb down the tree. Finally, he started down the tree backwards. Then he slipped, panicking he tried to get back up the tree but couldn’t. He kept slipping until finally I was able to reach him and pull him off the tree. I swung him over my right shoulder, and turned around. There, blocking my way from the steps, was a semi circle of neighbourhood cats that had all come over to watch the show. Brunnie purred into my ear. He was safe. He never went up the roof again (at least not that I knew of).

 

 

Dramatic Cat Rescue

My friends may just kill me because of this blog post. See, one of my friends, who shall remain nameless for now, thinks that I’m obsessed with my cats. I’m not obsessed, I love them, that’s all. You see, she doesn’t have any pets and I think this is why she doesn’t understand.

I’ve had cats since I was a little girl. And although I’m not stereotypical in many ways, in this way it is true; although I am a single, I caved in and got myself a cat again a few years ago which has blossomed into a few more since then. I wanted to have a reason to come home at night, some responsibility for my irresponsible life and I got comfort and entertainment to boot.

My first cat, Brunswick, I bought from an animal rescue organization that had set up in a pet shop. When I finally moved to a bigger apartment I thought that maybe I should rescue him a friend, which is how I ended up with Lexington.

Lexington was a charmer right away from her cage at Toronto Animal Services. Small, black and funny looking, I had picked up her sister who became scared in my hands, while Lexington bolted from the cage and made a run for it. After catching her, I picked her up, and her purr motored and  she licked my fingers. I was sold. It’s odd how people say cats have no personality, clearly these people have never had a cat before, because that five-minute introduction to Lexington’s personality would, if I had paid attention, accurately predict what she’d be like later in life.

They say curiosity killed the cat, and in the case of Lexington, she’s almost up on her 9 lives. When ever there’s a mysterious noise in the house, my friend will turn to me and say “Lexington’s up to something again.” And I know those words to be true. I’ve never had a cat so overwhelmed by curiosity that common sense and fear just don’t seem to weigh heavily on her mind.

So, last September, when Lexington was a year old, I moved apartments. My previous apartment had an outdoor courtyard, in which my door led into it. It wasn’t exactly an enclosed space, but it was difficult to get past the cars to get into the wide open. Lexington stayed close to home. My new apartment, however, has what I thought to be an enclosed space, but it turned out that if one were to scale the 12 foot fence at the back of the property, one would have an entry into the larger world outside. And this is exactly what Lexington did one late Wednesday night. I went out to bring her inside and she was nowhere to be found.

I searched and searched. By Thursday night I knew there was something seriously wrong. She was trapped somewhere. I scoured the apartment building stairwells and nooks. I scoured the neighbourhood apartment stairwells that surrounded me. I knew if someone opened a door somewhere her curiosity would drive her in and then she wouldn’t know how to get out. That night I put signs up all over my block. I got a phone call from a woman who said she’d seen her at a major intersection. I ran to find her. I called out her name. No luck. I called the people who supplied her microchip and reported her missing. My vet called. Then another woman called and said she’s spotted her several blocks away. “How could it be?” I asked. There was no way a cat could get across that main road, there was too much traffic. I received more phone calls alerting me to her existence farther than I thought. I woke up early Saturday morning at around 5 and walked over to that road. It was dead. Not a car to be seen. Shit. I went back home and made more signs. I went back out, crossed the road, and began placing signs up. I called in a friend to help. We placed signs up everywhere. He helped me search. I called out her name. He had no hope. People stopped me on the street and said that they’d keep an eye out for her. People called saying that they had spotted her over the week. Some knew that the cat they saw was scared and didn’t belong, but they couldn’t trap her. She had always been so wily, unfortunately for her. I received more phone calls. I zeroed in on where she kept visiting, an area of apartment buildings, that could be mistaken for my old area I lived in. I visited an old lady in the area who had called. I had several conversations with people who heard us speaking, and figured out she’d been in the area two to three times each day. I put food out. Then exhausted, I went home and worried. How scared she must be, how hungry, how dependent on me this tiny cat is, how defeated I felt. What if I come close and can’t find her? How long can I keep up the search for her? I made a promise to fate that because so many people had put forth an effort to rescue my one little cat (I had about 25 phone calls and people went searching on their own for me), that another cat deserved this kind of care if I found Lexington. And so I would adopt an older cat, one that had been in the shelter for a long time, and had little chance for adoption and a good home.

That Sunday morning, I woke up. It was 3:30 am. And I thought I must go out and search for her. Even though the rescue organization said not to put myself in danger searching for my cat, I knew I had to go now when it was completely quiet. I grabbed two flashlights (one to see and one to beat someone with). I went to the apartment complex. Looking in, I thought it was too dark and too many bushes for me to walk through, so I decided to just stick to the main drag with all the lights and softly call her name.

On the third call, I heard a faint meow from across the road. I moved in that direction and kept calling. As I got closer and closer, her meow got stronger and stronger. When I reached the other side, she appeared between two cars bellowing. I went to her and picked her up. She was shaking. She meowed and meowed and tried to purr. I left my coffee on the side of the road, so I could pet and hold her. I brought her home.

I took her to emergency vet because I could see there was something wrong with her eye. The vet told me her injuries were in line with being hit by something, although likely not a car as she lived to tell the tale (at least Brunswick could understand as he smelled her to find out where she’d been this past week). Her fang was broken, her chin and ear had scarring, and her eye had developed conjunctivitis, but otherwise she was healthy and “in good shape for being lost for almost a week,” said the vet.

A week later, I brought Georgia into my home. I knew tongues would wag, but I didn’t care. It was the right thing to do. Lexington is fine now, although, a memory must remain as she’s still a little scared of people and leaving the courtyard. Although she’s still making lots of noise around the house, after this post, I will be heading to my bedroom to clean up the antique glass dish she broke.

Sowing Roots In A Mobile Home

Mother Teresa is quoted as saying that “love begins at home, and it’s not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.”  A home is a home as long as you add a little bit of love to it. And from the sounds of it, author Sherrida Woodley has put a lot of love into the mobile home she has lived in with her family since the early 90s near Spokane, Washington.

Originally a dilapidated 70 foot trailer she nicknamed, upon viewing, “Misfit Farms” because of its colony of feral cats living in the abandoned chicken coop, the trailer had a few benefits she could see right away. It was close to a wildlife refuge and the area was in the middle of an ancient lava flow. It also had a tip-out (room extension) already in place. Although Sherrida dreamed of a double-wide home, kids, pets, farm animals and wildlife eventually came to her home to roost and now there’s been too much history for her to give it up, not that she would want to.

Her love for her home grew slowly. The rugged land, with precarious snowfalls (that have shut her in) and strong winds (that have toppled trees), but the nature is pristine. “It’s the wildness of it all,” that she loves most about her home. She can hear the birds chirping and singing daily. She can see moose and deer when she goes for a walk. One year, a squirrel stockpiled an abundance of pine cones in her back shed. When she opened the door, she found a neatly stacked and organized mountain of cones. It’s the little things that she sees in and around her home that she finds so absorbing and fulfilling. By mid-summer the outdoors becomes a kaleidoscope of colours from all the flowers. The ruggedness becomes paradise and her love.

There has been a lot of love over the years in the home that Sherrida found. Not just with her children and husband, but a neighbourhood peacock once even tried to court one of her hens. She watched as the peacock shimmered his tail feathers at the little red hen. But her hen was far too solitary, and the peacock’s love remained unrequited. Like the peacock story, there’s an underside to all this love, as there’s been loss in her home. Sherrida’s daughter died of cancer in 2010. But love is, Sherrida states, “one of the hardest critics and deepest, deepest motivators. Thank goodness for the human (and animal) heart.”

Even through her loss, Sherrida believes her home offers a magical sense of protection to her and her family. Their survival within the ruggedness of the outdoor atmosphere leads her to believe, half-jokingly, in the fairy-tale of the ’Nisses’, little beings that help to determine your fate in the area in which you reside. “Do no harm,” is the mantra and one Sherrida has followed for her love. She has never spent her time trying to tame the wilderness she sees before her. She lets it be. And in return, her home has held-up well over the years. Not one leak. Not one tree has crashed down on top of her family. The love of her home and area has given back.

Sherrida Woodley is the author of Quick Fall of Light.

 

When A Blizzard In Canada Is A Good Thing

Before Subanan became a hypnotherapist in Toronto and learned to help others with their addiction, he loved two dogs.

The first dog, Bobby, was his constant companion while a kid in Brunei. Although Subanan had a sister, Bobby was born in the same year as him and so they grew up together. But at the age of seven, opportunity struck for his parents and the family prepared to move to Canada and Bobby had to be left behind. Subanan begged and protested, but he still found himself alone, in Canada, without his best friend.  He was devastated by the loss.

As a child, not understanding circumstances and reality, he harboured animosity and lacked trust for his parents for many years because of his loss, which he held them responsible for. And by the age of 18, Subanan reluctantly admits, he was no angel. Blinded to his parents love, he felt he had to leave home. He had got his own place, albeit in government supplied housing. And he was headed down the path he didn’t want to be on. He needed to be loved unconditionally. Then he found himself a dog. And in so doing, loved something else unconditionally.

“This one’s not going to live much longer. He’s the runt and he’s sickly. We were going to put him down, but he seems to be taking a turn for the better,” the breeder told Subanan when he showed up. His cousin and him had been searching for dogs that matched the vision of what Subanan wanted.

The puppy was small and definitely malnourished; all skin and bones. Although he was an American Bulldog, his ears pointed up rather than flopping down.

“I’ll take him,” Subanan said, guaranteeing to the breeder that he was now responsible for the puppy. Discounted by the breeder for his congenial defects, Subanan could afford him. He named the puppy Blizzard because of his all white body and brown tail.

Subanan nurtured Blizzard. He researched how to heal him. He fed him a raw food diet, plus milk and eggs. At first, Blizzard was reluctant to eat—so bullied by his brothers and sisters as a puppy. But, soon he got the hang of it. And now, at the age of 11, Blizzard is far from his sickly youth, although he still has one vestige of his congenial issues: he runs sideways.

But, Blizzard has given Subanan more than the gift of laughter because of his puppy antics: he gave Subanan redemption. Without Blizzard there would be no Subanan now.  Getting a puppy made Subanan see that there was value in his own life because something depended on him to live. By connecting with another life, he could start to be good to his own. Subanan changed and began to live with respect for himself and respect for other beings, and thus strengthening his relationship with his own family.

For having done so much for him, what does Blizzard want in return? A belly rub is all he ever asks for. And apparently, Subanan is good at that too!