When I was a little girl, every time we passed a LOST CAT poster on a lamp post or bulletin board, my dad, who was a veterinarian, would have the same reaction.
He would stop in his tracks, stare at the poster and crouch down so that he was speaking to me eye-to-eye. “Cat’s don’t get lost, Anita,” he would say somberly, as if conveying a message of great importance. “That cat knows exactly where it is.”
When we moved to Millbrook to live in the former St. Andrew’s United Church, the purchase was a two-for-one deal: we acquired both a church and a cat. Tommy the Cat was a fixture in the building – just as much as the fridge or stove – and the seller couldn’t imagine moving him. So Tommy became a welcome addition to our family, with only one problem. Our dog at the time, a hundred-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, had a boiling hatred for cats traceable, possibly, to her pedigree as an African lion hunter, but more probably, to having been ridden like a bronco as a puppy by one particularly fiendish feline.
Our dog despised Tommy from the moment she met him and made it unequivocally clear that her new home was no place for a cat. Within a short time, she had confined him to the sanctuary and not long after that, exiled him outside, where he was too intimidated by her snarling and barking to even try to re-enter. The last time I saw Tommy at the church it was raining torrentially. There was a fire in the fireplace and our dog was stretched in front of it in a state of catless bliss. Tommy was outside the window, sopping wet, staring at her through the glass with a look of seething contempt like a bedraggled swamp creature that had just crawled out of the deep. After that, he disappeared and no amount of calling or searching could bring him back.
Years later, I was living on the edge of the Ganaraska and would often trek to see a friend at her place further down in the forest. One of her cats was especially friendly and would sit on my lap during these visits, purring engagingly. But something about the cat was bothering me, and eventually, I couldn’t hold back my suspicion. “Hey,” I said one day, trying not to sound accusatory. “I think this might be my cat.” Now, how or why Tommy would have journeyed so far outside the Village and into the wilderness, I did not know.
“Entirely possible,” admitted my friend with an easy shrug. Then she dropped the catnip bomb. My neighbour, back at the church, had called her several years ago to report a stray cat in the neighbourhood and ask her to give it a home. AHA! Elementary, Watson!
Of course, I would never dream of uprooting Tommy from his Ganaraskan paradise. He now goes by the name of Timmy – which I like to think is short for, Where in Timbuktu did my cat go? – and is clearly living his best of nine lives, napping under a wood stove with the occasional howl of a distant coyote as his only semblance of a canine threat.
When my dad retired from veterinary practice, I was concerned that he might be bored without work to occupy his time. I needn’t have worried, because almost immediately, the cats started showing up. They came in caravans, sometimes several at a time, arriving at his doorstep with no explanation or human hand having delivered them. It was as if a call had sounded throughout the feral cat world: PSSSSTTTT! Over here! We’ve got a retired vet with a lot of time on his hands and a great bedside manner!
Some cats were missing ears or dragging broken limbs. Others were riddled with parasites and diseases. Eyes wept gooey muck. Ribs threatened to poke right through scrawny ribcages. And slowly, methodically, my dad set out to mend them all.
He fed and cleaned the cats and gave them shelter. He still had his veterinary licence, so he could prescribe and administer any necessary meds. He formed alliances with local veterinary clinics that would perform surgeries for the cats who needed them, and with animal adoption centres that would place the cats in new homes once they were healed. He groomed the cats for adoption. He named all of the black cats Jellybean, as apparently, black cats have the lowest adoption rates of all cats – the one exception being, when they are called Jellybean.
I was talking to my dad in his backyard about it all, while a rehabilitated tabby cat lazed outstretched in his arms. My dad went on at length about how he had diagnosed the cat’s condition, ascertained just the right treatment plan and painstakingly implemented it. His analysis was scientifically thorough and precise. He spoke a lot of Latin. I caught myself wondering, based on the impatience I see today, if any client would permit him to offer such a detailed explanation of the facts. That’s when it happened: the cat dipped backwards in my dad’s arms like a ballroom dancer, looked up at me and winked. And I realized it didn’t matter if any human being would appreciate my dad’s artisanal style of veterinary care. The cats had eliminated the middleman. They were coming to him direct.
Years ago, there used to be a fearsome dog living beside the walking path that connects Distillery Street to the Millbrook Public Library. Its menacing bark and gnashing teeth were so unnerving, even to us as dog lovers, that my kids coined the path, Barking Dog Hill. But last winter, when the boys and I would leave the library to walk down the narrow footpath in the evenings, the dog was gone, and a different kind of guard – two identical white cats, presumably sisters – waited for us in the bushes at the top of the hill. They would lead us down the path gingerly, brushing against our boots and purring warmly, then escort us all the way to the four corners at King Street and watch from the sidewalk until we had crossed safely to the other side. I found myself wondering if somehow the dog days might be over and a new kind of vigil was watching over the town, softer and a little mysterious, but no less strong.
We haven’t seen those cats so far this winter. “I don’t understand it,” I shook my head the other day as we were leaving the library. “I don’t know where those cats came from and I don’t know where they’ve gone.”
“Cat portal,” my youngest son said matter-of-factly, pointing to the culvert at the end of Dufferin Street and the top of the path.
Well, now. That would explain everything.
Babble by Anita Odessa
