Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
A plethora of felines
It shouldn’t happen to a dog.
As the month of November, 2010 began, our wonderful mutt, Lacey, had no reason to suspect that her life was about to be turned upside down. For almost six years, she had ruled our house on Reach Street as the canine queen she is, only putting up with the odd visitor, usually very odd. One of them, a daffy Portuguese water dog named Molly with a fondness for slippers, hung around the longest, about three months while her mistress was directing a local play. But somehow Lacey always knew that these interlopers would lope on, and that she would again command our hearts and minds as the principal furbearer.
Then came Montreal. The first weekend in November, we decided to pay a visit to my wife Lisa’s birthplace, to see some sights and relatives and treat ourselves to some fine restaurants. On the way, we dropped in on my niece Beth, who is taking her master’s in artifact conservation at Queen’s University in Kingston. While we caught up on her tribulations living so far from her beloved Pacific shores, I enjoyed meeting and playing with her new kitten Harlow, a delightful tabby-and-white with very sharp teeth.
On to Montreal. Whilst there, we dropped in on Lisa’s nephew Ian, a philosophy major at Concordia (I’m not sure if that’s a pre-requisite for artifact conservation, but I doubt it). As we conversed about the joys of living in Quebec, I enjoyed meeting and playing with his new kitten Hiccup, a devilish witch’s black beast with even sharper teeth than Harlow. Perhaps you’re sensing the development of a theme here.
Someone else was sensing the same theme. Kathy, a friend of Lisa’s who was along on the trip to Montreal and witnessed the Hiccup episode, swears that at some point while being unmercifully bitten and scratched, I said I would happily take a kitten in a heartbeat. I confess I have no recollection of saying that, but if I did, it was the wrong person within whose earshot to utter such a thing. For Kathy, you see, volunteers with the Etobicoke Humane Society as a foster parent to... kittens. She brings them up until they’re old enough and socialized enough to be adopted. She sometimes has up to a dozen animals in her house.
Well, sadly enough, within a few days of our return from Montreal, she tried to take a kitten back to the Humane Society, but, she reported, it went into “shelter shock”, wouldn’t eat or purr or respond at all. She called my wife and asked if, given my recent display of affection for small felines, we wouldn’t consider rescuing the poor creature. I said to bring her up on the weekend, and we’d see. Big mistake.
Before I continue the saga, you should understand that until Lacey came along, I had always been a cat man, hadn’t had a dog since I was ten, was convinced I was deathly allergic to them. Lacey changed all that, but that’s another story which I’ve told before. So back to the tale of Patches, the name Kathy had given to the wee furball that showed up on our doorstep the Sunday afternoon after Montreal. Well, I have no space to print a picture, but suffice it to say that no cuter being ever existed. She was barely a pound, fit easily in my palm, pure white with a couple of grey spots and a jet black nose. We were lost.
Kathy expressed concern about her condition, told us about her special food and medication. But from the moment Kathy went back to Etobicoke, we saw not a trace of “shelter shock” from ‘Patches’. She ate like a horse, tore around the house like a whirlwind, and showed not the slightest fear of Lacey, an animal fifty times her size. As far as that goes, I haven’t been able to find “shelter shock” on the Internet either, except as it refers to the homeless or some British rock band. I think we were hoodwinked.
Lacey, perhaps predictably, was decidedly unenthused about the newcomer. She refrained from having ‘Patches’ for lunch, but at best ignored her and at worst ate all her food. Then, when it became plain that the kitten was a keeper, she sulked as only a dog can do. Days went by. We renamed the kitten Haiku, partly because she was small and looked vaguely Asian, and partly because we wanted a two-syllable H-name in honour of her two kitten colleagues, Harlow and Hiccup.
Then, to add insult to our poor dog’s injury, Christmas arrived. Beth went home to Victoria, leaving Harlow with us. She became Haiku’s racing buddy; Lacey just sulked and watched. Between Christmas and New Year’s, we went up to Lisa’s sister’s cottage near Bala, and who was waiting there but the devilish Hiccup, as well as the resident non-kitten Satchmo? Four cats - and Lacey. It wasn’t our mutt’s favourite week; she ate a lot, including as much of the cats’ food as she could reach. But we’re back from the cottage now, and Harlow’s gone back to Kingston, so it’s just Lacey and the munchkin. To her credit, Lacey now tries to be friends with Haiku. She wrestles with her, chases her a bit. The other day, they were basking in the sun from the French doors, and Lacey was doing her four-legs-in-the-air pose, when the kitten (still only three pounds) crawled up on her belly and went to sleep. And Lacey, perhaps recalling her puppies way back when, let it all happen. Awwww. So maybe we have the beginning of a long-term friendship.
Every now and again, though, when she is trying to sleep and Haiku is creating her own special brand of chaos, the dog will look at us with her big brown eyes as if to ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”
Sorry, Lacey. Blame it on the “shelter shock”.
