Treasures

 It seems fitting that this blog that began with me talking to animals should resume after a bit of a hiatus...with me talking to animals.  The conversation began 6 days ago while I was busy cleaning and prepping our vacation home for the next guests.  As I hummed a tune and listened to my favourite murder podcast I was suddenly startled by a cat literally pasted onto the window of the main door into the house.  The cat was talking to me...alot...and describing dire circumstances of being lost and hungry and scared in the woods.  I was startled by the cats appearance as our loghouse is literally in the woods and at the end of a long long laneway...through the woods.  I do not encounter lost pets here often. Despite the beseeching of this cat, I did not let it into the loghouse but went out onto the porch to have a wee conversation with him about how he came to be in the woods, on this porch, singing me his sad tune.  This was not a feral cat.  He was clearly out of his element and clearly hungry and clearly desperate to get within the confines of a house again.  I told him that I could not let him into the loghouse because the folks showing up shortly would be quite startled to find another creature within its confines; however, if he wanted to hop into my truck I would gladly drive him over to my house and provide food and water while we contemplated next steps.  I opened the truck door and he hopped into the truck, settled comfortably on the backseat and commenced cat cleaning operations.  I had a flashback to the time I found the chicken on the side of the road and that chicken who became our Charlotte happily hopped into the truck and found a warm spot in our truck for her ride to her new home.  I wondered where this all might end for this cat and me.

It was unseasonably warm out here 6 days ago and I was concerned about potential exposure to our existing harem of cats...the great Willie Nelson and Russell...so I built a little house for this talkative cat on the porch and provided food and water.  Initially I wanted to leave him free to wander on back home on the off chance that he had merely come for a visit and to check out the quality of food at his neighbours house.  But a couple of days went by and he firmly remained in his box on our porch.  At night he would sit in his box of blankets with his back to the house wall and stare intently out into the dark forest.  He was clearly not comfortable being outside but also clearly not leaving our house to return to his home either.  I called the vets and made an appointment for a vet check and I scanned the local lost pet pages to see if anyone was looking for him...and as the temperatures dropped I reached down into my bag of tricks for covid protocols and set up an isolation room for him in the house.  When I brought him into his room with a warm comfy bed and safe walls to protect him from beasties in the forest, I swear I have never seen a happier cat.  He slept and slept and ate and slept. Grace came out to visit him and fell in love.  She called him Goose then Gus and now I call him Gusie Goose. Russell and River are very excited about this new addition to our household and they are both bouncing anxiously at the door to the isolation room wanting to be the first to meet him when he finally emerges from his two week quarantine.  Willie Nelson, apparently forgetting all about his origins as a kitten dumped in our woods, is showing disdain and declaring the house much too full for another.  Annabel Lee has let out a long sigh and requested pen and paper so she can fill out her application for a Schengen Visa so she can relocate to Germany and join her beloved Aidan.  

Today was vet check day.  We found out he is an elderly gentleman who has actually already had teeth extracted....and is in need of more dental surgery.  He has low muscle development indicating that he has been a house cat all of his life with little to no experience in the outdoors.  So this old man with missing teeth and little to no experience in fending for himself in the wild was dumped in our woods. My heart breaks for him and the confusion that he must have felt.  And I am angry at the person who felt this was a viable solution for not having the means to deal with an elderly cats' medical needs.  I don't want Gusie Goose to feel like he was discarded like trash so I tell him that even though he may feel like he was dumped in the woods that really he was hidden like a treasure.  I tell him that us strange people have a long pirate history of hiding our treasures and then the Discovery channel produces shows where other people spend years and years and years hunting for those long buried treasures.  Gusie Goose, I tell him, I am glad it did not take us years to find you and for however many years you have left Gusie Goose, you are treasured by our family.