Yet another goodbye…

His mother was a barn cat and he was placed, with his siblings, in a free box in our lobby. He went home with my neighbour, and then friend, who picked him because he looked like Angel. Then I found out the woman who brought his cat mother to our building lived diagonally across the hall from me. A triangle of people all connected by one small kitten.

He had been named Oreo. I wanted to rename him Harlequin because he was such a clown and the black and white markings on his face reminded me of them. But there were three small children living across the hall who thought of him as theirs. I could not bring myself to rename him when he was so obviously missed. And, by the time they moved, his name had stuck.

Oreo was the quirkiest cat I ever owned. I joked that he was an down cat and not a up cat. He couldn’t stand being held in your arms or on your lap. He preferred being at your feet instead, either on my footstool or directly on my feet. He wouldn’t even sleep at the top of my bed even though all the other cats slept there (Angel and Lara even sleeping on my pillow). Instead he nestled at the bottom corner of the bed. In later years I placed a folded fake fur blanket there which he, thankfully, would sleep on.

He got along with all the other cats, except for Angel, who thought she was a person, but his favourite cat to be around was Lara. Not that he had much choice in the matter. Lara’s the extrovert of the lot who thinks that everyone is there to pet her and every cat wants to be with her all the time. While she spent more time with Blackie than Oreo, after Blackie died Lara pretty much crazy glued herself to him. He didn’t mind at first and they would snuggle together in various configurations after Lara groomed him for a while. Sometimes they’d lazy play fight, lying down head to head and softly pat their paws against each other.

When I first registered my cats at the vet clinic across the street in 2019, the receptionist looked at the three oldest cats’ ages and said, “Wow! You’re looking at a lot of heartbreak in your future, with them being so close together in age.” I was ticked at the time seeing as all three cats were healthy but then Angel died suddenly from cardiac arrest/congestive heart failure on May 31, 2022 and Blackie quickly followed her on August 29, 2022, only three months later. Considering how she rapidly lost the ability to walk my best guess is it was something brain related. And then, out of my trio of cats, only Oreo remained.

He was already on one capsule of gabapentin a day for arthritis and could no longer get onto my bed, so I’d lift him up each night and several times a day. Luckily he could still get down by jumping onto my mini trampoline so I didn’t need to worry about him falling off the bed while I slept or made dinner. Then he refused to let Lara go anywhere near him, not even to groom him. I upped the gabapentin to two capsules but his rejection of Lara continued and he began crying mournfully whenever he lost sight of me. And he started sneezing so forcefully I expected his head to spin around like the girl from The Exorcist. Then there was blood, little droplets of blood that sprayed across the wall and his favourite blanket and the kitchen mat. And he started having seizures.

I booked a vet appointment for him the next day (a Friday) and Colin arranged to have his visit extended to cover the appointment. The results were diametrically opposite of each other; he either had a cold or a tumour in his nose. We headed back to my place with antibiotics (which Oreo hated) and a phone appointment with the vet in ten more days. He never made it that far. I had a psychiatrist appointment on Wednesday and asked Cat Dad if Oreo could stay at his place seeing as I’d be gone for the whole afternoon. He agreed then, upon my return, commented on Oreo sneezing blood and having to mop the floor. I was confused but thanked him then, shortly after we got home, Oreo sneezed and the blood was definitely more than droplets. Sadly it was too late call to the vet but I had plans to call first thing in the morning.

I woke at dawn on Thursday, September 14th because Oreo’s breathing sounded funny. I hurried to him and carried him to my swing chair to watch the sunrise. He immediately struggled to get down and limped as fast as he could to his kitchen mat, he was a “down cat” right to the end. I lay beside him for hours, watching his nictitating membrane rise and his pupils stay fully dilated. The vet opened at 8am and I was on the phone that minute setting an appointment. It was made for Friday, September 15th, Oreo’s 16th birthday. Colin immediately made plans to be there.

Oreo had been on antibiotics for almost a full week and he’d only gotten worse. By the time Thursday rolled around he was no longer eating or drinking. Not with his food warmed. Not with is favourite treats. Nothing. I called the vet clinic that afternoon to ask if I could stop giving him the antibiotics seeing as he hated them and wasn’t consuming anything and was asked to come in right away. It was very obviously his time to go and I put Colin on video chat so he could be there in some way. And, like always, the end was instantaneous. One moment he was looking up and the next his head dropped to his paws. Colin thought he was sleeping, he looked so peaceful.

It was so hard walking home empty handed. It seemed like my apartment was that much emptier. Then again, just over a year ago I had five cats. Now there were two. Smudge sniffed intently around the area Oreo favoured then walked away. Lara started crying for me every time I was out of sight. And I washed Oreo’s kitchen mat and gave it to Colin. I couldn’t bear seeing it without Oreo curled upon it.

Ironically I had three cats offered to me around the day of Oreo’s passing. I turned them all down. I think it’s time for just Smudge, Lara, and myself. I hope they live long and happy lives.

Goodbye Oreo. You will be forever missed.

When Country Proud meets prejudice…

It started with a beeping smoke detector, one that kept me up half the night. The next morning I called the superintendent about that beeping thing only to discover he was away for the weekend. So I asked my neighbour for help. He came over with a huge ladder and pried the detector apart, hoping to pull out the battery. But there wasn’t one, at one least visible, there was a lithium battery tucked away somewhere inaccessible, unless you held both a hammer and rage. That was when he invited me to help him find the instruction manual. As he was rummaging through the drawer, I noticed a stack of flyers that, if a little larger, could be seen from space. They were completely red with some black text and colourful pictures. It was very “rah rah our country is the best – or it would be if Trudeau wasn’t prime minister”. There were many blurbs about our rights and how they’re being trampled, along with having Trudeau charged with treason. There are only two reasons he could be charged. One is if he physically harmed the person on the throne and two is leading a full on attack on Canada. Since I never saw him backhand the Queen during his visit or heard about him gathering an army to invade Ottawa, I think he’s safe there.

I made note of the website, which wasn’t hard, and searched it out. The website was just as red and was dotted with colourful, patriotic, primary school style cartoons. A map of Canada, Mounties, beavers, maple syrup, and hockey. They were comforting and very stereotypically Canadian. All the text was upbeat, assuring the readers that they were doing great and making a difference, before asking for donations and volunteers. I scrolled past a few links, and then I saw it, the new pride flag with a line and circle placed in the centre. Nothing like patriotism and a dose of homophobia. I steeled myself and clicked the link.

Many years ago I had a friend who I met in the tenant’s association and, when we both had Facebook, we added each other. I hadn’t realized until then that she was a huge conspiracy theorist. And her aim was to get me to see the “truth”. One day she sent me an, I am loathe to call it an article, a series of words. There were links scattered throughout, all of them from reputable sources. I clicked on the first link and it was the same topic but exactly the opposite of what they were claiming. All the other links were the same. I realized the author knew his audience would never click the links, that for all they called themselves lions, they would blindly follow anyone who said they had the truth and assured them they were on top of the pack and everyone else were sheep. This website was the same.

The whole page was devoted to fear mongering about sexual education in school. They included a link to the Comprehensive Sexuality Education. I clicked on the link and, sure enough, it was nothing like what was written. What is it about people who claim they’re leaders and know the truth? Meanwhile they can’t even click links and Google names. I’m underwhelmed with their leadership skills.

It was about what I expected. Lots of fearmongering about what sexual depravities the children are learning from 0-4 years old where they claim the children must learn about masturbation (as if they all haven’t discovered it on their own) and that they “develop an interest in their own and others’ bodies“. This escalates all the way to 9-12 years old where they should have already had sex and be browsing through online porn. It’s both sobering and frightening that grown adults could look at this codswallop and think it was real. And then I read the last piece which involves SOGI. They claimed the program is crossing into gender confusion that is harming the well being of young students”.

Whoever is operating this organization has something against the UNFPA, UNICEF, IPPF, UNESCO and the UN World Health Organization. This time SOGI was blamed on the UN, claiming it was inspired by the human rights win of “a gay man in Australia”. No mention of who he is or what the win actually entailed, they wrote exactly what their readers wanted to know, that he was gay. Because that’s the crux of the matter, that’s why they put a pride flag next to the story. Underneath the flag it says they need to “stop the segregation of students through SOGI”. First, do they even know what segregation is? And second, they’re the ones wanting to hush the queer kids into silence and to let them know, through actions, that they’re lesser than the other students.

Last year I wrote a post about a neighbour who informed me that he was fine with the LGB’s or whatever as long as “they keep their lifestyles to themselves”. He didn’t want anything rammed down his throat. This isn’t the Church of Homosexuality and Queerness. There isn’t anyone going door to door extolling rainbows and fabulousness. Nobody is wanting to put anything into any of his orifices. But there it is. An idea has permeated through our culture (and other cultures as well) that queer people are just sex, sex, sex, and perversion.

Five or so years ago I had a friend who I met through work. We got along well. She came to my Christmas party and we went out for lunch a time or two. Then I told her about an instance that happened at Canada’s Wonderland, a large amusement park just north of Toronto. Colin and I had gone to the park with PFLAG to celebrate Gay Day. It was great! Free transportation (with snacks), discounted day passes, and a bbq dinner. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard about the couple at the waterpark. They hugged briefly and parents complained vociferously that children should not be exposed to that sort of thing and the young men were ejected from the waterpark. I told my friend about the instance only to have her tell me she agreed with the parents and the staff. Things of a sexual nature should stay in the bedroom; little children don’t need to witness that. Then I what she’d think of a straight couple doing then exact same thing and she was fine with it. Because if a straight person hugs their partner it’s a show of affection. If a gay couple does the same it’s perverse and a sign they’re going to strip and do the nasty. We weren’t friends after that.

The person who wrote that page of misinformation wrote, near the bottom, that “it’s fair to note that all men and women of any orientation and gender deserve equal rights” as if this mitigated the fact they used a crossed out pride flag as the image for the post. You can’t say everyone’s equal then slap a pride flag beside a post on degeneracy. It just doesn’t work.

And SOGI was created by the ARC foundation in Vancouver, BC