It's a sunny, wintery day at the farmette. The world is a dystopian mess with the U.S. orange maniac threatening to take over our beautiful country of Canada.
I was going to do a rant, but instead of raising my blood pressure - and others' -yet again, I decided that we all need a cat break. So here it is.
We adopted Nick and Nora Charles from the Guelph Humane Society in early 2000 I think. Here they are. They actually did love each other this much. We named them after the dynamic duo from the Thin Man movie series played by Myrna Loy and William Powell. Still miss the little buggers.
Ten years ago, I wrote a piece for a now-defunct magazine in California about cats that had statues erected in their likeness. It was a fun bit of a story. One of the cats I profiled was Hamish McHamish, a very friendly feline in St. Andrews, Scotland, who was so popular with locals that they raised £5,000 to put up a bronze statue in his likeness in the town square. The 14-year-old ginger and white gentleman regularly spread his leonine love around to shopkeepers, tourists, students and residents.
While he did have a human - Marianne Baird, who took him in as a kitten - Hamish was a pretty smart and independent guy who was quite good at getting treats, meals, pets, and the occasional nap, at his regular stops. There was even a local legend saying that bad luck came to those who didn’t let him in and feed him when he visited.
Hamish died before the story's publication at the ripe old age of 17, but before that, he had a Twitter following of more than 2,000. He also had a Facebook page, and there was even a book out about him, called Hamish McHamish, Cool Cat About Town, by Susan McMullan.
We've had multiple cats over the years, as anyone who knows us knows. We currently are housing and loving five felines - Fred and Wilma, Calvin and Hobbes and Bea Potter, our eldest, and the last one standing from our time in Guelph. This is her in our front porch, looking regal.
Bea's 16 and still going fairly strong. She's been semi-diagnosed with cancer (the vet and we didn't want her to go through the testing, but Dr. Curtain is pretty sure). But she's still eating and drinking and jumping up on her bench, which is about twice her height. So there's that. We'll just enjoy our time with her for as long as we can.
So grateful for the felines. They are picky about their litters, beg for food and make a nuisance of themselves by rubbing around our legs when we're trying to get anywhere. But they also purr and cuddle and do lap naps. On balance, it's a slam dunk win for us. Until next week.
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