Furry Friends

Upon the death of our beloved old (22 years) cat, Mittens, in 2007, my children tearfully asked 'Can we get another pet?"

After living with Mittens for so many years, I felt I needed a break to mourn her. And I was interested to see how life would be without the chores associated with being owned by a cat - litter box cleaning, grooming, and feeding. So, my answer to the children was "God will send us our next pet".

God did indeed send us our next pet, early in 2009, when my friend Sheila was desperately ill in hospital and a "temporary" home was needed for her service dog, Mentor.

We were glad to take on this duty, as Sheila was a valued and beloved friend. When it became apparent that Sheila would not likely make it, I sat down to have the discussion with my husband about whether we could keep the dog. To my surprise, my husband, who is not a fan of dogs "because they are so needy", didn't even feel the need for discussion. He simply stated "of course we'll keep the dog" and that was that. I like to think that having this piece of the puzzle taken care of enabled Sheila to leave us with one of her burdens eased.

On Labour Day Sunday in 2010, my daughter and I made a quick pit-stop at the grocery store for some coffee cream, as we were having company. A beautiful Fall day, it seemed silly to lock the car, (especially when, in my opinion, if you are going to steal a car and go to jail, you should choose something really worthwhile), so we left it unlocked and with the windows open.

We were no more than ten minutes, and when we came back, there was a white kitten in our car! A man nearby claimed that he had seen someone put the cat in (I now think he was that person), and he watched us carefully as we quickly decided that we would not leave such a vulnerable creature in a parking lot.

When we arrived home with this little, hungry, white and pink creature, my husband had to agree that we couldn't just leave him. In order not to become too invested, we all spoke about "her" as if we were going to send her back. We put up posters with her picture, and had no response whatsoever. One day, my husband said, "Well, I think we should name the cat, and I'd like to call her Zaidy".

The next thing was to take her to arrange for appropriate alteration of her reproductive organs. At that time our vet discovered that Zaidy was in fact a boy. As "Zaidy" is the Yiddish word for grandmother, it didn't seem an appropriate name, so we called him "Zed" instead.

After a little while we realized that Zed, a pure white cat with yellow eyes, was profoundly deaf, and that our hearing-ear dog had known it all along.

Zed has grown to be a handsome and courageous cat, and he and Mentor are the best of friends, often curling up together for a nap, and always tapping their muzzles together in a furry-mammal version of a kiss.

Needless to say, I've been praying to God to not send us any more pets!