Spring has arrived. How we will connect the flowering, the necessity of feeling the sun on our skin and social distance?
My neighbour Susie, had her 90th birthday last month. She couldn’t celebrate this amazing achievement in community. She is always smiling, being in service of all neighbours. She goes out everyday, she keeps bringing little inspiring stories to my door.
Susie, like all of us is finding ways to keep connected with her community and family. Every Sunday morning she joins her church's community in Zoom. She laughs about this new way, about how technology is facilitating our connections.
Lately she is mailing friends and family a sweet lovely story she wrote about her two cats, Calico and Trixie. She slighted it under my door. I asked her permission to share it with you.
As far I can remember we always had two cats at home and usually a dog as well. And my brother thought we had to have a horse. That was at my home in Yarrow, about 100 km from Vancouver, just off the Freeway a few miles.
I will start with one cat, Trixie. I don’t remember how we got her but she was part of our family. One day she just vanished and we were very sad - especially my mother - she could not help crying. So when Trixie didn’t return my mother and I drove to the SPCA to choose another cat. The cats were all in separate little cages. We chose a little cat with the colouring of a calico cat – all kinds of pretty colours. When we got home I said, “I wonder what we should call her?”. My Dad said, “Well, Calico” so that was her name. We were very happy we had a cat (kitten) again and not so sad anymore that Trixie had left us.
I didn’t want Calico to be inside at night so every night night she found a place, I don’t know where. In the morning she was already on the porch, ready to come in. I took her by her four paws and washed them under the tap and dried them. She didn’t like this very much but after a little while she didn’t struggle anymore.
Then, one morning I heard this loud yowling sound outside. There was Trixie – I have no idea where she had wandered so of course she was welcome home. I didn’t have time to feed her because I was teaching and had to get going so I called my sister-in-law nearby. She took care of everything. So the two cats and we lived together quite happily although the cats didn’t get along too well but it worked.
A number of years later after my parents had died we sold our house and were getting ready to move to Vancouver. The people who bought the house were willing to keep Trixie. My sister in Chilliwack adopted Calico. The first morning on a Sunday, my sister phoned to say that Calico would not come up to eat her food. So we planned to drive to Chilliwack in the afternoon to check this out. I could not concentrate on anything in the morning service.
So when we got to Chilliwack, I called, Calico! Calico! Calico! She was hiding nearby in a sort of ravine. As soon as she heard me, she came up and ate her cat food. There was no problem after that.
But, quite a while later, I did get some sad news from my sister. Calico had been run over (They lived near a busy road). Although it was sad, I figured she had a good life.
Susie Funk