(Originally published Nov 3, 2011)
Let’s backtrack a couple of years to around the
time that Cheryl & I moved into the house, into the suite beneath Laura
& Immanuel. It’s a nice little
ground level suite with mostly good neighbours, near a school, close to highway
access, the bus stop, and near my work.
Sounds like a great place to hunker down and spend some time living,
huh? So of course, Cheryl & I have
been doing that without issue since 2008.
Let’s take another look at the qualities I just mentioned, particularly
“mostly good neighbours”. That’s pretty much true, but the one
consistent exception had always been a couple that lived in the basement to the
west of us.
I’m a little iffy on the details but as I
understand it the house was owned by what somether have termed a bit of a
slumlord. He rented the place out as a
low income housing option or kind of a half-way house (without actually being a
half-way house), but seemingly didn’t take care of repairs, of neighbourly
complaints, or the well-being of the tenants.
The tenant who lived upstairs had some mental issues and was a great
super nice guy. We’d chat in the front
on occasion and he’d tell me about his day, tell me about work, tell me about a
movie he saw. Just a super nice
guy. I think his name was Jeremy (I
swear that was how he introduced himself to me and Immanuel). Cheryl on the other hand had been given the
name Trevor. His true name was an
ongoing debate in our house that we never did resolve be actually asking his
name… like some eternal mystery.
The 2 who lived downstairs, though, were another
breed altogether. They were your typical
crackhead couple who had serious addiction issues, money troubles, relationship
explosions, and never really seemed happy.
We would often catch them coming home drunk as hell and yelling. They would often fight out in the backyard
(Laura had the worst of it since her bedroom overlooked the yard and she would
hear the night-time fights that I always missed). The would crank the music and sing wildly…
which is fine, I guess, but super annoying when you’re trying to have a nice
quiet dinner 20 feet away. Occasionally
he would be kicked out by her at night, and the dude would just go into their
open-air carport to sleep… and by “sleep”, I mean drink beer and smoke meth and
stay up all night yelling at her to let him back in to get his
smokes.
Being the concerned neighbours we are, we of course
didn’t do much and never really complained.
But our hearts sank when we realized that they had 2 cats. One hefty big guy I nicknamed Tubbs, and a
tiny little kitten I had taken to calling The Little Ninja. We all knew that the home that these cats
were in was not a safe or stable household… they probably weren’t fed regularly
and were often just kept outside and ‘mew’ed for hours at the back door to be
let in from the west coast wet winters we have.
Little Ninja was quickly a favourite of mine, and most of my concern was
towards this little kitty. Just a tiny
little thing. She (at least we think
it’s a she) was this sleek, obsidian black, cool s.o.b. who could hide anywhere
and you were never able to catch her.
She was likely afraid of people and would tear off just at the sight on
anyone approaching her. She could
disappear before you even knew she was there… like a ninja, right? So awesome.
After some time and our concern grew and grew, we
watched Little Ninja and Tubbs grow up and quickly learn to fend for themselves…
as best they could in our alley and with the inconsistent affection the
neighbours gave. Last year, though,
there was rumour that the 2 crackheads were being kicked out. Not sure why… but I heard it was a rent
issue, as in they weren’t paying it. Not
quite sure when, either though. Our
first worry was “What happens when they don’t take the cats”? And “How do we
catch and adopt the cats”? And “How do
we become the owners they deserve”? And
“How can we possibly make them indoor cats”?
These were questions that bothered us for weeks and we were always
waiting for the hammer to drop and we’d have to act quickly to be some kind of
kitty heroes. We were waiting for the
crackheads to be kicked out.
The hammer never fell though. We started to notice a change in the
behaviour of the crackheads. Things got
really quiet. We didn’t see the girl for
a long time. There weren’t many
fights. The cats weren’t seen too often
either… perhaps even kept indoors often enough now. One day the girl came home in a wheelchair
and the guy seemed to have his act together a little bit. We never did find out what ‘officially’
happened. They would be out in the
backyard with their music, but there was more laughing than fighting. Maybe this was the change everyone wanted to
see… maybe the tide shifted (and hopefully in favour of the kitties). We stopped worrying as much about the cats
and started to worry about our own lives (this was the time my dad’s health was
declining, and so was Cheryl’s mom’s).
One year later… one month ago… the landlord, I
believe, realized he could get more money if he rented to people who weren’t
living on low income restrictions, and evicted all the tenants… even the nice
guy upstairs. I’m not sure if he evicted them per se, but I know rent was
increased above an affordable level for everybody. And as quickly as the news hit, everybody was
gone… except Little Ninja. The
crackheads left a phone number to be reached if there were any issues with the
cat, and they left a bag of food out of the back doorstep. Immanuel called them a couple times to let
them know the Ninja was at the home and waiting for them (the place was still
vacant), they said a couple times that they’d stop by… but they never
showed.
We realized the poor Ninja had been abandoned and
we’d have to the right thing and bring her into our house. It’d be in her best interest, right? And so a quick & simple Save-The-Kitty
Operation was put into effect. Much
easier said than done.
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment