Dolly (1988 - 2008)

Yesterday, a tiny but wonderfully spunky spirit passed from our lives. Dolly, our dear little spitfire of a cat, has died despite our thinking she’d be with us forever. Dolly suffered from renal failure; a common ailment of elderly cats according to the vet. Also, given her age - 20 human years - she was, plain and simply, old. Old and worn out.

She signaled her resignation from life by refusing food and water. Even cheese, her favourite. We knew it was bad when she passed on the cheese, although trooper that she is, she did make a valiant effort to taste the itsiest bitsiest piece. In retrospect, it wasn’t so much refusal as simply her not being able.

We knew it was bad when she stopped talking to us for she was a very verbose cat. Her conversation usually took the form of orders. As in “Get out of my shower!” She believed she owned the shower and my husband’s or my presence there was barely tolerated. You had to be careful stepping out for the Shower Nazi would be sitting directly at the door giving you her sternest glare. Or “Get to bed!” when I stayed up too late, the vocalization undeniably an order while she’d sit in the hallway glaring at me like an irritable old grandmother. Honestly - it was unnerving. Or her relentless “Get out of bed” at 5:29 am every morning. 5:30 am is hubby’s usual wake-up time but she’d always manage to beat the alarm by a minute which, during the week, was OK but not very welcome on weekends. Ignoring her meant a parade of paws up and down your body on the most vulnerable spots (still a welcome change from pushing things off the dresser or side tables).

We knew it was bad as she got thinner and thinner over the past year despite our best efforts to engage her appetite: freshly cooked chicken, various types of fish, special cat food. All to little avail. Her digestive system was failing and the gurgles embarrassingly loud – she’d simply ignore them. At her last vet visit, she weighed only 5 pounds and I hesitate to estimate what that delicate little skeleton enrobed in silky-soft fur weighed.

We knew it was bad when she stopped grooming herself. No doubt she knew her coat was in disarray; still, she showed her appreciation and love of being groomed and stroked with her favourite brush every day by constant circling back to ensure a good chin rub and then follow through from head to tail-tip. Until her legs could no longer hold her steady.

She stopped playing around. In July, we played our last game of Catch My Tail where she’d sit still with her back to you and allow you to pet her tail before whipping it away only to waft it gently over your hand again and again, temptingly. She had incredible control of that tail. Nor had we played Who’s Under the Door in quite a while…she loved to chase your hand or whatever was at hand from the opposite side of a shut door. Suffice to say, there was just enough leeway for her polydactyled paw to tap blindly at whatever caught her imagination, and she was faster than lightening! Thursday, in her guise as "littlest pony," I saw her take one last mad dash up and down the hallway. Maybe trying to outrun how she was feeling.

On Friday, her decline was bad, Saturday was worse and Sunday was unbearable.

I had a bad moment at 2:30 am one night when I saw a green light emanating from the bathroom. Half asleep I wondered when spirits move on, could they generate light? Had Dolly just died? I must have dreamed it. But no, there it was again, a very faint green glow. Knowing we have no night-lights in that room, I nudge hubby. “My shaver’s recharging,” the sleepy reply. Ahhhh.

We debated our responsibility. Was it better to allow her to pass away on her own or God’s timetable or to euthanize her? Neither felt right.

We knew it was bad when we didn’t recognize her voice, a few weak croaks of dissent as I picked her up, then acquiescence and total silence as we drove down the road to the vet’s. As there’d been a last minute emergency, we had privacy and extra time to say our goodbyes, to touch and love Dolly a little longer, and to thank her for being such a joy in our lives.

The vet and her assistant were wonderfully supportive, explaining what would happen, what to expect. A general anesthetic “to take the edge off,” a quick but gentle shaving of her forearm, then the vet expertly finding a vein, despite Dolly’s dehydration, to administer the heart-stopper. It was over. Her spirit and life gone in an instant.

We grieve her passing. We’re grateful for this last summer and the pleasure it brought her. We’ll miss her beauty, her other-worldly emerald eyes, her attitude and her presence, and the loss of her cheerful chirrups welcoming us home. We'll miss her touch, that gentle tap-tap on face, hand or knee to signal her need of attention, and her barely discernible purr. We feel her lack in all rooms of our house. Memories are strong and tears assail us when we least expect it. Dolly was very special, being intelligent and loaded with personality and chutzpa. She didn’t seem to know she was just a little cat. Feisty as hell, she took on those bigger and better, be it cats, dogs or people and she usually won. Just being herself, she touched our lives and those of our relatives and friends.

We pray she’s frolicking and enjoying all the mint in the Big Catnip Patch in the Great Beyond. Goodbye, sweet Smidge.

Our Rustic Arbour

I love rustic things, furniture, birdhouses, plant holders – you name it. My dream of building my own rustic arbour began while kayaking on Lake Mindemoya on Manitoulin Island. I’d spotted a vine or tree of some sort which had twisted upon itself in climbing another stronger tree onshore. And so the seed of a design began for my arbour. But step one was convincing my husband and brother to retrace my kayak path but in the boat with a saw to retrieve it. That obstacle was more easily overcome (with much explanation, of course) than expected. My brother thinks twisty wood is really tag alder…anyone know for sure?

But once you spot twisty wood once, you see it everywhere! Hubby spotted some on our cottage landlord’s land; it was even more incredible than the wood we already harvested. With the landlord’s blessing, we harvested that too with a little more difficulty. It required climbing on the roof of the car, my hubby hanging like a gorilla for the thing was hard to take down.

These several large pieces of twisty wood accompanied us home and lived in the garage over the fall, winter and spring (my deadline for creating the harbour was this summer). As luck would have it, I also found some old cedar fencing long abandoned in a swampy area. Again, poor hubby was recruited to help me load up the station wagon. And the twisty wood had the cedar pieces for company over the long cold winter.

Walking Spencer one day, I spot more “twisty wood” down by the Fire Hall. My reluctant recruit, poor old hubby, once again came to the rescue, sawing and hacking off a few more pieces to better enhance the arbour.

People were beginning to doubt my dream. “Are you really gonna build something with that stuff?” I’d be asked. Sometimes I wondered myself. In a moment of doubt, I asked a renown wood man up the road if he'd like to have it, and while he was tempted, he encouraged me. Just listen to the wood, he said, it'll tell you what to do. So I drew up a vague plan, once again recruited Old Faithful (hubby) - we listened to the wood and just did it!

It’s a pretty basic structure: four pieces of cedar standing upright, connected top and bottom by other cedar cross pieces. And the twisty wood? Well, it’s the décor down the front, down each side and across the top. I’ve added to rustic birdhouses, a couple of tin birds and a humming bird feeder. Ants are drawn to it and so, of course the birds love it: chickadees, woodpeckers, wrens, and finches. It frames my neighbour’s garden of summer flowers beautifully. There are some twisty pieces reaching up into the sky which I wanted to cut off, but hubby like them and so we compromised - now the birds have a nice tall perch with which to serenade the world.

It isn’t the steadiest structure in the world but we’ve done our best to reinforce its stance with pieces of rebar pounded into the earth and securely attached.

Maybe next summer I’ll add a creeper of morning glory or a phalanx of holly hock but for now it stands in its own plain glory, drawing the attention of birds and neighbours, and pleasing the eye of those who bathe in our hot tub.

Framing neighbour's garden



More detail (other side)

More on life and death: Road Kill

No one is insensitive to the amount of roadkill seen every year May through October. One would think a "developed civilisation" such as our's would have managed to address this problem by now. Unhappily, no, we have not. According to Mahatma Gandhi: "You can judge a society by the way it treats its animals."

The human view is: better to kill them than ourselves. The advice is standard: if one cannot safely brake, then it is better to collide with the animal than risk injury or death in trying to avoid it. Statistics are rampant throughout the Web as to the number of human and animal deaths. Human injuries and vehicular damage (and resultant insurance costs) are also tracked but animal injury is not, given those who survive the initial impact retreat to nature to either heal or die...so animal deaths stats should include a + sign.

In my family, we've hit (and obviously survived) a moose, and a deer. The moose -- hit first by another car, then us -- was toast. The deer we're not sure as it bounced off the car and then was no where to be found. In both collisions, we count ourselves lucky. The cars, not us, were damaged. My husband narrowly missed hitting a large buck as it bounded from one ditch to another, and I was lucky when a deer ran between my car and an approaching car at dusk. My brother-in-law and his co-worker recently avoided killing a bear, not seeing, therefore running over, the two small cubs following her out of the ditch. People my sister knows avoided an animal collision but were badly injured themselves in doing so.

I used to think since we paint the roads, why not put some kind of scent to deter animals in the paint? According to some websites, animals quickly become inured or "habituated" to such deterrents so they work for a little while but not long. According to the Canada Safety Council, others are working on other means such as:

• Corridors like the 8-foot high Parks Canada fence along the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park and the 22 underpasses (culverts) and two 164 foot wide overpasses built. Highway kills dropped 96 per cent.
• Designating high risk road sections may cause drivers to slow down
• The Wildlife Warning System, developed by Saskatoon-based International Road Dynamics Inc., uses proven technologies that sense approaching vehicles and then activate deterrents such as sounds or lights to warn animals in the area. The Saskatchewan government, testing the system on a stretch of highway notorious for wildlife-vehicle collisions, has published no official results yet, but its first year of operation has seen deer-vehicle collisions drop.
• Similar NASA infrared technology called NightVision (TM) is available in some General Motors cars. This helps the driver to to detect potentially dangerous situations, such as the presence of animals or pedestrians, beyond the range of the headlamps.

In CFC's words: there is still no substitute for a defensive driver.

Species most at risk are frogs, snakes and turtles. In my area, from my own day to day survey in my area, the majority of the dead are frogs, raccoons, porcupine and deer. In the case of frogs, entire species are at risk of disappearing.

For more tips on this topic, visit this wonderfully helpful site Wildlife Collision Prevention Program from the province of British Columbia in Canada. Learn to reduce the chance of a collision, what to do if you hit an animal, and where and when collisions might occur.

I stop to move slow-moving turtles out of the way (unless they happen to be snappers). I drive more slowly in high risk areas and pull over to let others pass if I'm too slow for the other road warriors.

I utter a little "God bless" under my breath everytime I see some hapless animal obliterated by a vehicle, and pray we find some way to stop this carnage.

On Managers: the good and the not so good

It's an overcast day, humid and hot, and promising rain. It's a good day for reflection which is what I'm doing instead of bringing in the washing from the line.

I'm reflecting on managers I've had in the past. Those I've loved best trusted me, and in letting me shine, they shone. Those I didn't love at all tried to bully or or victimize or stifle me...they couldn't or wouldn't let me shine and tarnished themselves as a result.

What distinguishes a good manager from a bad? Here's my admittedly simplistic take on it:

A good manager is, simply put: a good human being. She or he...

• communicates the goal, and the work needed to achieve the goal
• trusts you and your abilities to get the job done
• is not threatened by you or your abilities but uses these in a positive way to achieve the organization's goals
• advises or guides but does not to do the work assigned to you
• is constructively critical (but not mean) when necessary to help you redirect or improve your efforts
• recognizes your limitations and encourages ongoing development or change
• appreciates and recognizes your efforts
• has a healthy approach to life in general which in turn is reflected in healthy relationships with others be they above or below him or her in the hierarchy
• has the betterment of the organization at heart
• has a sense of humour to make fun a part of working life and workplace "fun"damentals.

People who work for good managers themselves improve as human beings. They become successful people in their own right, often as well-liked leaders and achievers. They develop others who continue to contribute to the health (and wealth) of the organization or to the world at large.

On the other hand, a bad manager is usually a human being still developing or needing to develop their own self to become a better human being. She or he might...

• not communicate or does communicate but on inappropriate matters, not work-related
• mistrust staff, double-check their work or re-assign work without explanation
• take steps to discredit or remove employees by whom he or she feels threatened
• take credit rightly due to staff
• bullies or victimizes staff due to own feelings of inferiority, vulnerability or importance
• gossips about staff or asks employee's opinions about other co-workers
• offers employees affection (favouritism) or gifts to compensate for his or her own destructive behaviour
• is obviously dysfunctional and lacks a healthy approach to life overall. In other words, is no fun
• creates a noxious or toxic work environment
• has his or her own goals at heart, not the organization's

People who work for bad managers (BMs) can

• experience ill health or setbacks or achieve nil to slow advancement in the workplace as their efforts focus on attending to the stress and negativity of the "bad manager experience" OR
• they become bad managers themselves, not having experienced or learned any better thus continuing to populate the world with BM's OR
• they improve as human beings in resolving not to emulate the bad manager. They too can be successful people in their own right, often as well-liked leaders and achievers, by choosing the good manager profile and rejecting the bad.

As I write this, while I've used the term "manager", I can't help but see this good/bad parallel exists everywhere: parents/children, relatives, coaches, friends, neighbours. How are YOU doing in this good manager/bad manager scenario?

I'm proud of Canada

This is about as blatantly political as I get. I find it ironic that 2 days after unanimously celebrating Canada's birthday, we're divided about celebrating Canada's choice to receive the Order of Canada.

The abortion issue has always been highly controversial and divisive in Canada, and I would add, throughout the world. Today, in Canada, people are reacting to the news that Henry Morgentaler, MD, has been named to the Order of Canada.

Some think it's an abomination, a day of shame for Canada. I think it's a day of pride for Canada and I congratulate those who decided Dr. Morgentaler merited this honour. Seldom does one see a person who puts himself and his family on the line for his beliefs.

I won't enter the discussion of when is a life a life and whether one has the right to take a life. I'm sure to get a few comments pro and con and I respect those who would argue with me.

I believe Dr. Morgentaler's work has saved lives. His work brought abortion out of the backstreets and into safe, clean clinics. His work has brought the word "abortion" into the open. It has been and will continue to be the source of much controversy and dispute, and his receiving the Order of Canada won't change that. But let it be a good thing as we, society, continue our evolution and our struggle in dealing with choices.

More on the story: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/02/f-morgentaler.html

What is the Order of Canada? http://www.gg.ca/honours/nat-ord/oc/index_e.asp