Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 —> 5˚C / 41˚F  & clear with some hazy grey hints of high clouds @ 7:00 pm in Atlantic Canada – Today is my nephew – Charles’ Birthday 🙂 –

– Moe –

— Moe sprouted his angel wings last Wednesday and left us here to wonder how do we live without him. Today I picked up his ashes from the Fredericton Animal Hospital and again, I have to rave about how wonderful they are there, especially Kate, the receptionist I’ve dealt with in these really tough moments.

— Moe was supposed to be a replacement for the very cute Calico ‘little girl’ – “Sasha” that Cathi fell in love with at first sight in a Kanata pet store ( just outside Ottawa ) when we lived in that area. Sasha sadly had a heart condition nobody knew about and died very soon after we brought her home. She had her memorable moments, hiding in the bathroom window with her fur showing through the blinds – She was probably less than nine months old when she died.

— We gave somebody a ride to the Ottawa animal shelter and while we were there I let it slip that Sasha had died before we had her very long, not even two months if I remember that right. An attendant at the shelter immediately looked up the records, said they were sorry and wrote up a voucher for a free replacement for Sasha. Then showed us Moe – They were calling him “Morris” – had no idea when he was born, but guessed March or April – somebody had stopped outside the Animal Shelter and let him out of a car and drove away. Moe was a lovable marshmallow – draped across the attendant’s shoulder, and he greeted us with one his signature strange phrases, not, “Meow” – but something more like, “Maireh-Rareh!” We asked how well he got along with other pets, we had a rescued Bengal who never got over losing his first cat-loving owner – whose husband was not a cat-person and couldn’t take having the cat around to remind him of his lost wife. – The attendant carried Moe to a couple other cat cages and held him where he could see inside. Nobody hissed or looked ready to fight it out – Moe just kind of smiled “Hi, how are you? Can we be friends?”

— We had to wait a couple of weeks. Moe got ‘fixed’ and then had to get over a case of the sniffles before they released him. But he got along fine with our Alpha Cat, ‘Domino’ – the spotted and striped Bengal. We’d been told to keep him isolated from Domino for maybe a week or two to be sure that they would get along, but when we closed the bedroom door with Moe on the inside his orange paw groped around beneath the door and he tried to open the door from his side, and said something, not quite plaintive, more like, “Hey, I know you’re out there, I’ll be good, I want to be part of this family -” a couple of hours later, when one of us opened the door – he dashed to freedom and went exploring and said hello to Domino for the second time and nobody got feisty – we shrugged and said, “Well, so much for two weeks in isolation -”

— During the first week he jumped up on the kitchen counter and started eating the pound of butter that was there in a container without its lid, and spent the next couple days leaving very messy poops around to tell us we couldn’t leave butter uncovered like that – We guessed he must have been discarded or run away and lived so close to starvation that he was afraid he might never eat again – And we rapidly wondered why anybody would not want this completely lovable character around.

— Domino actually named Moe – We didn’t think he looked or acted like Morris the cat from the television commercials – somebody suggested we call him ‘Tigger’ because of his stripes. But one day – probably a week or so after we brought him home, we were worried that we couldn’t find him. He’d disappeared on one of his exploring sojourns around inside the house and while we knew cats don’t come when you call them, we walked all around the house, calling, “Tigger – Tigger – here kitty – kitty – kitty-”

— Domino rolled his eyes and called out “Moe-!” And a happy, smiling Moe came out of somewhere, looked around and let us lavish him with love and attention. And the next time we couldn’t find him, I called out, “Moe-!” in as close a tone of voice to Domino’s as I could and he came, smiled at me and grinned –

— He became something of a very strange escape artist. Jumped from ‘out of nowhere’ and ran outside, moved about two meters, plunked down in the grass and purred happily several times. A half- First Nations guy { or half Native American – he’s from the states } friend of ours – came to visit – and walking around our yard, he felt and pointed out where ‘Ley Lines’ crossed the property and Moe’s favorite spot was exactly where the two lines crossed. That was his spot and our friend said he really enjoyed the positive energy where those two lines met. Moe wanted to go outside often enough – we got him a harness and a thin leash and he was fine with that, didn’t always want to go very far, just wanted to be outside.

— I’d never heard of a ‘Cat Run’ – a kind of outside space with strong enough fencing to protect a cat from predators. But after Cathi described the idea we went out and bought some two by fours and some strong wire – I had already built our Budgies a big strong bird-cage / habitat – 3 feet by five feet and six feet high with plywood on two sides and a decent branch from a tree somebody cut down and left at their curb – and a shelf and a door for bird food and water. We added some acrylic plastic to further protect the birds from Domino who would hide out on top of the habitat and bat at the unsuspecting birds any time they wandered close enough so he thought he just might be able to have one of our pet birds for lunch. ( Domino also used to run across the room, jump up, grab onto the wire and shake the whole cage – he was that strong. ) After we had the strategic bits of acrylic in place – the birds used to wag their tail feathers at him and kind of rub it in, coming just short of actually saying in English, “Nyaa, nyaa, you can’t touch us. Our humans built this for us right!”

— So I built the Cat run, more like eight feet tall – Um, four feet wide and seven or eight feet deep? With a ‘Free-cycled’ Wooden door and a latch. And Moe liked it in there – spent a couple of hours any chance he got – just lounging around and eating grass or just lounging around, watching the birds and squirrels – Domino wanted nothing to do with the Cat run. Domino wanted almost nothing to do with the great out-of-doors at all. We’d open the door and he’d run the other way. But he got jealous, I think, when we put the leash to Moe and walked him around the house a couple of times. So we got another harness and learned that one person should never try to walk the two cats at the same time. Domino had his agenda and Moe had his. So I often took Moe out for a fifteen to twenty-minute walk around the house a couple of times and that was enough for Moe, Domino wanted to walk around the other way, and wanted to investigate things a little bit farther afield – And I think I ended up carrying Domino home a few times, because he decided he wanted to check something out and wouldn’t take no for an answer – But he didn’t mind getting a ride back home seeing things from a couple of feet above the ground – things looked interesting from up there. And then he acted like he couldn’t wait to be let loose from the leash – Two cats with very different personalities…

— I hinted at Moe’s vocabulary before – I never knew a cat with more phrases – He stunned us, kind of grumbling and complaining “Maireh-Rareh! Maireh Rairr RUH!”

— And on one shopping journey in the dark evening around the winter holidays Cathi, who had been involved with choirs and has a beautiful singing voice, began singing, “Let there be Maireh-Rareh in this world and let it begin with me-” and we both laughed and knew that cat was getting to us on a very deep level.

— Other phrases? We think “Arrah Mung – muh,” might mean, “Thank you for the treats – There just might be hope for you yet -” and several other phrases I never heard a cat produce, but right now I’m trying very hard not to cry because I won’t be able to finish typing this and I don’t want to put it off or have to come back to it later.

— Not long after he settled in, Moe developed a fun game at my expense. I’d be dozing in my lounge chair and Moe would run across the living room, make a prodigious leap through the air and land in my lap, just to see how loud I would squawk and how high I would jump. He loved to get onto my chest when I was trying to sleep and would purr up a storm. I took to keeping “Moe-Armor” handy, a pillow to place strategically between my most sensitive parts and Moe’s claws – If he crawled up onto my chest while I was almost asleep he often reached out with his claws flexed to comb through my beard, maybe to indicate that he wanted me to pet his chin like that, maybe to let me know he could very easily reach over and slash my neck if I didn’t wake up and pet him.

— Sigh, yes, he was the world’s most wonderful cat. And I knew it would be tough to lose him. While we still lived in the Ottawa area and he was still in his ‘Escapey Cat’ phase we were terrified that he’d run out the door and keep going and run into the street and end up splattered under somebody’s wheels.

— As it was it looks like he planned this, on a holiday weekend – Acted a bit out of it and when we thought maybe we should bring him to the vet, he’d rebound and was fine. Then he plopped on the floor and looked awful and the dog came over and sat there and looked worried and lovingly attentive – Then he was up and okay again.

— For the last couple days he really wanted to get outside to his favourite spot here – but when we opened the door and showed him the snow he looked at us with his, “How could you do this to me? Make that snow go away” – expression

— We had a thunder storm last Wednesday – I went to the door to look outside to see what was happening and Moe had plopped down by the door and was gone. He was still warm when I petted him, but he wasn’t breathing. – He chose a moment to leave us when he knew we couldn’t do anything to stop him and he escaped.

— All pets should be immortal, Especially this guy – dangit.

— Sniff –

~~~~~ Jim