I love untraditional traditions. In the five plus years I’ve been professionally pet sitting, I’ve adopted not only The Fab Five (or they me, depending on your point of view) - but a whole new set of holiday traditions, given that holidays are not just hectic for retailers, but for pet sitters as well. You’ve seen the pictures on the news of the jammed airports, highways, and train stations around Thanksgiving and Christmas – folks TRAVEL and their home-alone pets need the services my colleagues and I provide.
My “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner is now pizza. Like my cartoon buddy Garfield, I consider pizza – REAL pizza, not those frozen abominations – nature’s perfect food. Since pizza places around here are inexplicably closed on Thanksgiving, I order the night before and make it a large enough pie to accommodate that night AND Thanksgiving Day. Sadly, not EVERY take-out pizza translates well into next-day leftovers, so I’ve devoted much experimentation over the years to finding the perfect “next day” pizza. I’m getting close – very, very close!
By the time my rounds are completed on Christmas Day, I’m too exhausted to care WHAT I eat (though I DO draw the line at frozen pizza). Thankfully, there are many kind and compassionate folk gifted with the baking gene who take pity on their culinary-challenged friends and I’m often gifted with festive tins and plates of homemade goodies. Nothing like a thick mug (it MUST be a mug, NOT a glass) of eggnog and homemade peanut butter and/or chocolate chip cookies to soothe the weary soul!
New Year’s Eve – well, I did my share of Eve parties back in my wild and crazy 20’s (okay, a few in my 30’s and one or two in my early 40’s *smiles*). Back then though, I wasn’t struggling out of bed at 4:00 a.m. New Year’s Day to care for a hundred pet sitting and feral colony cats! Keeping my eyelids pried open til midnight just to watch a big ball float down over Times Square on t.v. is NOT high on my priority list! I can watch the highlights on the news while preparing for my day pre-dawn the next morning without loss of precious sleep time, thank you very much! Trust me, it looks exactly the same on television at 5 a.m. as it does at midnight! Ditto the fireworks. Since The Fab Five have little use for television anyway, unless it involves cat or bird features on The Animal Planet channel, they’re content to sleep through the festivities, too.
New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2008, was to be a very special day for me even without any champagne or party favors. Through word of mouth – or perhaps divine intervention? – my cat rescue group became aware of a convent in Washington, DC looking to adopt a cat to manage rodent control in an apartment building they own and rent to young women attending nearby Catholic University or on temporary work assignment in the nation’s capital. The nuns didn’t want a lean, mean killing machine, just a cat who would do what cats naturally do and provide companionship and purrs to the residents.
Our Cherokee fit the job description purrfectly. A beautiful, gentle dilute torti, she’d been living in our shelter about a year and a half, patiently awaiting just the right home to fulfill her own unique mission in life. Her photo appeared once in Catnip Chronicles’ “Cat as Art” feature, but despite her beauty, Kitty Supermodel wasn’t what she had in mind for a career. Her nature is more nurturing than posturing.
Cherokee was given up to our rescue in May of 2007 because her family was expecting a new baby and decided they simply didn’t have room/time for a cat in their lives anymore. Please take note of the extreme self control being exercised here to refrain from withering commentary – though I suppose the restraint in itself is sort of an inferred comment…
Not much more than a month after she moved in, Cherokee was adopted. Despite some reservations about the adopters – Cherokee wasn’t exactly exuberant at their initial meeting (she hid beneath an ottoman throughout their visit) - we hoped for the best, since our girl had made it quite clear she did NOT enjoy living with multiple feline roommates. Her “homecoming” was less than encouraging – Cherokee was reluctant to enter the carrier to leave the shelter, reluctant to come out upon arrival at her new home, and our “purr girl” remained ominously silent. The new family spuriously rejected all our advice on introducing a new cat into their household. They’d done this a time or two before you see, and knew much more than a bunch of ignorant rescue volunteers who’ve only been rescuing, rehabilitating, and adopting out cats for over ten years!
Cherokee wasn’t impressed either. During the first week there she developed raging diarrhea, which totally disgusted the adopters who complained about the mess and carpet destruction. Since cats don’t speak English or any other human dialect, they have to resort to other means of letting us know when they’re unhappy. It’s not the first time we’ve experienced rather dramatic measures a cat has instigated when unhappy with his/her adopted home and wanted OUT OF THERE! Two of The Fab Five (Minnie Pearl and The Raz) did this not once, but TWICE in “adoptions gone bad” before settling in with me. Within a month, we insisted Cherokee be returned to us and there were no protests.
Cherokee immediately saw a vet and was treated for the physical issues before returning to our shelter. She was a mess! Layers of painfully dried feces on her behind, pronounced weight loss, depressed and lethargic….From that point on, despite never developing a close friendship with another cat, Cherokee tolerated the others. Our shelter and her many volunteer friends were infinitely preferable to a life sentence with the wrong family.
Cherokee’s health improved and she attended almost all our adoption shows for the next year. Everyone appreciated her sweet purrsonality – but just HAD to comment on how FAT she was. Would you go up to a human female and tell her, “oh, you’re so nice, a pity you’re so fat”? Regardless of species, it’s downright RUDE! The term “fat” carries such negative vibes in our society (I prefer the term “voluptuous”) and there is nothing negative about this beautiful, sweet torti who purrs for gentle folk from infants to seniors without prejudice. Quite simply, our Cherokee is in love with being loved and sharing love – and we owed it to her to find her a home that could appreciate the special gifts she has to share.
Enter the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts convent in Washington, DC. It sounded like THE purrfect match, but we weren’t taking chances this time around – Cherokee had already been through too much disappointment and rejection. Missy, Howard County Cat Club’s president and I BOTH went to inspect Cherokee’s prospective home and interview the nuns and apartment residents.
The sisters were warm, welcoming and enthusiastic. The young women at the apartment we met were the same and eager to meet their new cat. We arrived around brunch time and a few of the young tenants were in the process of making a late breakfast in the industrial size kitchen. I recognized flour, milk, eggs, and mixing bowls being utilized in this process – as well as several utensils and ingredients I could not identify - but not a frozen waffle or box-mix package in sight! There might have been a microwave (my frozen meal cooking method of choice – except frozen pizza which I don’t acknowledge as food) around, but I was too awed by all this hands-on 19th century mixing and stirring to notice. There was a deep sense of community and warmth in this room which would be Cherokee’s prospective new home.
Young people away from home, maybe long distance, some for the first time, are often lonely and homesick. School, new jobs, can be pretty stressful, too. I could easily visualize our comforting Cherokee curling up on laps and purring away the loneliness and making a bad day better with her unconditional loving and warm spirit. Like the ladies who joined the convent, perhaps this was not just Cherokee’s “job”, but her “calling”.
Whenever Missy or I conduct pre-adoption inspections, we spend a great deal of time afterwards debating the pros and cons of the potential adoptees and the home. We had nothing to discuss this time. It was all good. Cherokee’s homecoming was planned for New Year’s Eve Day – and she would have an entourage of two to escort her there. Call us sentimental crazy-cat-lady fools (and thank you for that *smiles*!), but neither one of us wanted to miss out on Cherokee’s special day.
Weather-wise, the signs were inauspicious. It rained – it snowed – it sleeted – it hailed - we had hurricane speed winds without the hurricane – dodged drunkenly rolling empty trashcans on suburban streets, flying branches and limbs off trees on rural streets, wind forces pushing semis and cars alike across highway lines making us all look like early-party drunks well before the party…. Yikes! All this in the space of two hours, no less! Cherokee napped peacefully in her carrier in the backseat of the car throughout it all. She was going home and knew it.
Like Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmothers, Missy and I brought many luxury items along to bestow upon our girl in her new life. Unlike her last adoption, Cherokee was neither nervous nor scared and as soon as we arrived and her carrier was opened, she began purring. Everyone admired her, petted her, and respected her freedom of choice to emerge when she was ready.
Missy and I each have special moments we recall of her homecoming. One of the sisters, no doubt sensing the emotions I believed I was successfully hiding, reassured me that they were holy people and would much care for and love our girl – and she, too, was now a “holy cat”. I had to smile at the image of any cat, even Cherokee, with a halo, but was much moved by the sister’s words nevertheless. Missy remembers her farewell to Cherokee: “I'll always think of her in the carrier on the table with her catnip toy. When I said goodbye to her, she looked like she was smiling.”
My New Year’s Eve tradition involves lighting a candle – to speed the old year on its way and welcome in the new one (even though it’s extinguished well before the witching hour since this ol’ gal doesn’t DO midnight). This year the flame also burned in honor of Cherokee’s homecoming and the smiles and purrs she bestowed upon us before we departed - her way of telling us not to worry, she was happy – and home at last. From now on, my New Year’s Eve tradition will include a prayer for Cherokee with the lighting of the candle. A week later, Missy placed a follow-up phone call. We were told the apartment residents “love her, just LOVE her – and she is just so beautiful...”
Indeed she is – body, heart, and soul. Long live “Sister Cherokee”!
Visit The Fab Five and diana at http://www.geocities.com/newagecatcare. diana is a pet sitter in Carroll County, MD; Vice President of the Howard County Cat Club, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, no-kill cat rescue/adoption agency http://www.howardcountycatclub.org; freelance pet photographer, and Catnip Chronicles columnist and consultant.
These are tough times for everyone, especially rescues. More and more animals are being abandoned; dropped off at kill-shelters; given up because their people can’t afford their care or are being evicted from their homes and have nowhere to go that will allow their pets to accompany them. This is a critical time when ALL animal lovers need to reach out and lend a hand.
Foster an animal until a home can be found through your local rescue or community. Money, or lack thereof, is too frequently a contributor to giving away a pet – donations are always needed. Help your neighbor who’s caring for an animal with food and/or medical assistance. Offer assistance to your local feral colony caretaker. There are many of us already helping who could use some help ourselves! Contact your local rescue agencies to find out what you can do. Working together saves lives. ONE person working alone can save some - many working together can save hundreds…