YOU KNOW YOU’RE HAVING A REALLY ‘DUH’ MOMENT WHEN…

you’re standing on a virtual stranger’s porch, clutching a hell-fire cat and wondering when your knight in shining armor will show up on his white steed, or in our case, Nigel in his tan van. 

As Pricilla, me, Puss Puss, now known as Daisy Duke, Baby and Sofie The Wonder Dog, all crowd together on The Lady From The Corner’s porch, I ask Kathleen (aka The Lady…) if she has anything to put the spitfire in while we wait for Nigel, The Cat Whisperer, to get there.  Kathleen, looks around her porch and shrugs, says “No”, when I ask if she has a box, a cat carrier (since she has 3 cats of her own), ANYTHING!  You can just see her unhelpful attitude colour the air a shade of puke brown. 

Kathleen has suddenly gone from someone who seemed to care about what happens to the little ‘stray’ she’s been feeding for a year, to this ‘Why are you bothering me, I don’t want to be involved’ kind of person.  It was something I would have to ponder on later, as I desperately look around for something in which to contain Daisy Duke until Nigel can get here.  Finally and with obvious great reluctance, Kathleen unearths a beat-up plastic container which stands about 2 feet tall by about a foot across and about 18 inches long (about 60cm x 30cm x 45cm for the metric measure crowd), fire-engine red with a lid and a handle.  How did it magically appear on the peeling porch deck, wonders I but feel so relieved that we finally have something to put petrified Daisy Duke in, at least temporarily. 

As Kathleen moves toward me, she says, “Here you can use this.  I usually keep cat food in it.”   I remember thinking how appropriate that is and working in tandem, she peels the top off, I stuff Daisy Duke in, towel and all and Kathleen flips the lid on with a limp wrist.  Whew!   The lid is mostly on but doesn't close snugly where the towel spills over the side.  Of course, there is Daisy Duke inside too and I’m not sure that all her limbs are in a comfy position.  Meanwhile, Pricilla perches precariously on the porch steps, clutching Baby’s and Sofie’s leashes, one in each hand and cranes her neck around various bodies trying to see the action.  Both dogs, not too sure of the goings on, are panting in unison and hip-hopping around, anxiously trying to avoid being trod upon in the melee. 

The lid suddenly flies up a couple of inches on one end and a brown foot, with talons extended, curls over the edge of the container, getting a pretty good grip with needle sharp nails.  I absently note that Daisy Duke could use a manicure and probably a pedi, push the searching paw back inside with a little more of the towel, jam the lid down as far as I can and then, for good measure, sit on it!  Not the sturdiest thing in the world to be perched on, when I, a BBW (big, beautiful woman), attempt to balance my weight so I don’t crush the contents and topple over but with enough oomph keep the lid on. 

It’s awkward and my knees start to ache in no time.  I ask Kathleen if she could please drive Pricilla down the street to get Nigel and hurry him up to our location.  Kathleen’s face twists into a moue of displeasure and it looks like she’s going to refuse.  But she starts wobbling towards the door to put her shoes on and get her keys. At the rate she’s moving, it’s should take an hour for her to get anywhere.  Rather desperately I look around for an alternative.  I spot the man next door (rather new to SCA) but necessity is born out of desperation and I call out to him.  He looks up from what he’s working on, rather startled.  I fill him in on our situation and without a moment’s hesitation he drops what he’s doing, runs into his house, emerges wearing a jacket and jumps into his pick-up. I think it took him about 30 seconds.   Pricilla thrusts Sofie‘s and Baby’s leashes into my hand and jumps into the passenger side.

They take off with a whoosh, as I rather tiredly lean against the porch railing and plant my foot on top of the container.  That seems to do the trick, keeping the lid on, and, as I stand there, it finally sinks in, that since I have captured Daisy Duke, the likelihood of having to undergo rabies shots (a series of 8 in major muscle groups closest to the bite site), has vanished.  Yay!  Although exhausted from the night’s events and the sleepless ones preceding it, I feel better already.  It’s quite obvious that Daisy Duke is in good health and the only one foaming at the mouth, at that moment, is me.  Where in the heck is my back-up?  

I have to wonder where in the hell Pricilla and the neighbour man are, and more importantly, Nigel, keeper of the cat carrier.  I also have to wonder why in the hell I didn't think to stash a crate in the area before-hand, oh, and what about saving Nigel's cell phone number in my cell phone and bringing that along?  A double DUH!

A rumble brings my head up and sets the dogs quivering.  The pick-up truck rounds the corner and right behind, a tan van.  The Calvary has arrived!  Nigel jumps out of the van and comes up onto the deck.  He’s pretty pumped from the events of the evening already, having captured a big boy who’d been hanging out at another resident’s place, a far piece down the road.  Nigel was so excited that he started back to the van so he could show off Frankie, so named by the lady of that house.

Rather exasperatedly, I yell, “Stop!  Let’s get this one into a crate and then you can show off the boy.”  Trust a man not to notice how precarious the situation is with the wobbly red container.  My foot is sliding off and it takes all the oomph I have left to keep the bucket upright.  Nigel continues to the van, grabs a black, soft-sided carrier and comes back to the porch.  Realizing that opening the plastic bin outside is probably not a good idea, he says, “Carry the bin to the van and put it on the front passenger seat.  I’ll get in at the driver’s side and get her into the carrier.”  Well, so I do, and, as soon as I slam the van door shut, the lid pops off and Daisy Duke pops out, reminding me of a wind up jack-in-box I’d had as a kid.  She leaps onto the dashboard and crouches there, really bent out of shape, literally.  Oh, just kidding, all her limbs appear to be working fine, despite being crammed into the red bucket.

Nigel can’t reach over that far to nab Daisy Duke and says, “Bang on the window and scare her over here.”  I reach out and tap the windshield and sure enough, Daisy Duke skitters right into Nigel’s hands, and he plunks her into the carrier.  I can’t believe my eyes – boy, where is the little hell-cat I saw when I tried to get her into a crate a few days ago? 

I think she’s as exhausted as I am and finally gives up the good fight.  I have to believe that after all the months of living on her own, hungry, tired and wet from the soggy summer we’d had, she is finally ready to come in.  Being pregnant, too, might have had something to do with it.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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