Won our first game yesterday and lost our second, so out of the tournament. M reversed it her team lost first game and won the seconsd one so are playing again.
Cool again last night but supposed to be up to 21/72 today. Watched a funny Chevy Chase movie last night.
I can't believe (although I guess I have to) how many visitors from Taiwan yesterday/today - 104!

This was our street the other day during the storm.

 

 

 

Mop

 

Like Uncle Jerry[1], Mop wasn't really a person either.  Yet he also had some very human traits and was well loved by a number of people.  Mop was a cat, a quite large long-haired ordinary looking black cat.  However it was only in his looks that he was ordinary.  He was originally just a barn cat, but was lucky enough to be needed to fill a mousing role in Maryann's house.  This luck allowed him to fulfill his role and destiny.

 

I didn't get to know Mop until 1985 and at first he was very distant and aloof, as only a cat can be.  But gradually he came to accept the fact that I was around and it didn't look like I was going away.  When Maryann first moved to Invermere Mop couldn't go as she had to live in a motor-home for a while, so he stayed on the farm by himself for about a month but being fed by the neighbors.

Finally we were able to go and get him.  Now most cats do not take well to moving, particularly if they have never had much turmoil in their lives.  Not so Mop!  Moving was just a yawn for him; he fell asleep in Salmon Arm and woke up in Invermere.

A year and a half later he moved with us to Sidney, again for him it was no big deal.  But I believe he really came to enjoy coast living when we installed a cat door and he could come and go as he pleased. He did have a setback when he got infested with fleas, something he had never been exposed to before. He got so bad we had to have all his hair shaved off which put a terrible stress on his dignity. When his hair grew back he became two-toned; black head and shoulders and sort of auburn the rest of him.

 

After we moved to White Birch Road I had to go to Mexico for two months on a project, and of course Maryann went too.  Mop stayed at home and looked after the house with visits from Cheryl one or two times a week.  This was the beginning of a new life for him.  For the next couple of years we traveled a lot.  When we were in the camper Mop went with us and when we traveled abroad he stayed home by himself.   The one change was that whenever we were at home or in the camper the only place he would sleep was in our bed.  When we bought the Salmon Beach property he was probably even happier than we were.  He made all the trips back and forth and occasionally stayed at the beach for short periods on his own.  It was here that he became a true lover of raw fish.  One of the things we remember the most and miss the most is whenever we returned from fishing there would never be a sign of him when we drove up.  But when we started to back the boat into the yard his cat door would fly open and he would go straight to where the stern of the boat always stopped; the moment we got out of the truck he would go directly to the fish cleaning station and wait for the tid-bits he knew would follow. Occasionally we did get skunked and that was one thing he never understood.

 

Over time I think I can honestly say, Mop shifted most of his friendship on to me, it wasn't dependency, it wasn't loyalty and it wasn't quite friendship but it was some combination of all of these.  He never forgot Chad, whose cat he really was. But Chad wasn't home anymore.  Maryann he treated more like something he owned and everyone got their share of his royal regard for short periods of time.  Although he had never been around small children he was excellent with them and would put up with more abuse from them than he would anyone else.  He did allow small indignities such as at Christmas time, things like having to wear a small set of reindeer horns or ribbons tied to his tail.  After all it was Christmas!

We finally had to have him put down in the spring of 1996. It wasn't easy, but it had to be.

 

We had him cremated and we buried his ashes at his favorite corner of the sundeck at the beach.  The spot was marked with the cedar block he always sat on at home and several years later when we put in a concrete deck I made a circular ‘in-deck’ fire pit right over where he was buried. That way he would always be with us when we had our many evening campfires.

 

 

 

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[1] See Author’s book: “It’s A Dog’s Life”.