Getting closer to my young neighbor, I noted she held a forlorn paper bag of Cat Nip pellets, her pale face and red-rimmed eyes testified her grief. “C’est la deuxieme journee” she whispered and then in English, “My cat is lost!”
“Viens,” I replied to Myriam, new to Verdun. “Let’s look together. “Je connais le coin tres bien!”
We sleuthed down Rushbrooke, up around May and then on to Wellington where our first stop was at the home of passionate feline lovers, Janine and Andre Veronneau.
The long-time Verdun residents opened their front door to lovingly console their new neighbor and then announced that yes, they’d seen her cat yesterday! They advised we check out the garage area of the building a few doors down and said they would call us as soon as they saw the cat again – not if but as soon as.
Myriam smile, but just a tremulous little.
“I got her in France, in Bretagne, seven years ago and brought her to Canada with me six years ago,” she anguished, wringing her hands. “Oh! I can’t lose him now!
She added “Dharma wears a red neck band”.
As we left, we saw a young man and his daughter out on their back deck and showed him Dharma’s photo. “You will give birth soon, right?” he asked Myriam “It’s not good for you to be upset, is it? You’ll find her! He encouraged. I’m Fabian, he introduced himself and I’ll bring Karma to your house when I see her, I promise! Not if but when. Hopeful words.
Next, close to the church, we saw a woman raking leaves in her back yard. She smiled a calm welcome as we approached with the flyer. “Hi, I’m Eleanor and this is my neighbor, Myriam whose cat is lost”, I explained.
“It is important that you find your darling pet, dear young mother”, she said noting young Myriam’s belly. My name is Huldah Joseph, she said. “Would you like me to say a prayer for Karma’s safe return?
And so the three of us, all neighbors, formed a close circle in a back woodlot we’d never been while an ardent request for the speedy return of this black, orange and white pet to her distressed young mother was made. “Everything will be okay,” consoled Huldah, the cool, lacey shadows of her yard’s brambly trees nodding full assent.
Next we rang the front doorbell of St. Athanasius Church on Wellington St., but no answer, so I climbed the iron stairwell in the back where I know the sexton resides, and knocked on Ed. Brown’s door. A surprised young man appeared instead. “I’m David” he said “I’m a house guest here – and I’d be very glad to help you. “Yes!” he cried “Yes, I’m sure I saw that cat in the basement last night! I recognize the red collar!”
Upon hearing we might be getting a little closer to Dharma, or Karma, (I couldn’t remember the cat’s name again and did not want to keep asking – as though it was not memorable ) I heard the clatter of David’s feet, racing down several flights of stairs, to open the basement door for us.
“She was in that room”, he said breathlessly, pointing to a dusty storage space filled with old boxes of paper and some broken church benches, “The cat just tore out of here when I opened the door”, said David.
Myriam, returning from her preliminary inspection of the garage, said that it might be better if she was alone to call her very shy pet, so David continued checking the kitchen area and I went back into the garage.
“Karma, I whispered, “Karma or Dharma, how are you today?” I sing-songed in a baby-gentle voice, the same one I use for young children.
‘Mew”, I heard.
I stood very still and sang again, “Dharrrmaaa, karrrrmaaa, do you hear me?”
“Mew”!
Oh! What blissful monosyllabic sound emerged from the dusty darkness!
I called Marian and David. “Come! Come! …arma’s here, I said, (carefully omitting the initial consonants).
Myriam came trundling in as fast as her heavy body would allow, her sweater riding high over her tender belly now, like a tea cozy over a watermelon. She shook her little paper bag of cat food and called her beloved’s name.
She too heard the wonderful, immediate reply: ‘Mew!”
Myriam’s face, pinched in grief, opened like a flower for the first time.
Intense and anxious for she so wanted the promising sound to be Dharma’s, Myriam desperately searched around the dozens of heavy bags of broken bits of cement while David and I hauled more sacks away from the grey stone wall.
“We need a flashlight” breathed Marian anxiously and so I quickly left to find one.
I whipped to Fabian’s who looked over my head, laughed and said, “You won’t need a flashlight now!”
I turned to see, framed in the background of Maxi’s open air market of summer fruit, jubilant Myriam hugging her precious furry bundle in her arms, rocking back and forth with a consoling motion she quietly made. Dharma’s long tail descended to outline her pregnant roundness, perhaps her way of including the baby soon-to-be-born, in this ecstatic moment of rich reunion. Myriam sunk her face into Karma’s neck and for the first time, tears rolled freely, easily absorbed by feline fur.
Huldah leaned on her rake and smiled widely while Janine and Andre opened their front door. David, Fabian, his daughter and I respectfully witnessed the ecstatic moment.
On Saturday, we gathered once again for chocolate cake in my back yard, to thank Dharma for her clever method of getting her Verdun friends together!
Dharma Found in Verdun!
Dharma Found in Verdun!
Last Thursday morning in wide-awake Verdun it was easy to identify Myriam, a beautiful, Francophone maman-to-be just in front of my red brick house on Rushbrooke Street, her sad round profile telling the tale of some loss.
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Commentaires
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- SonOf TedBundy
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:57
No really, this is Verdun, not some small mythical little American town where the big news is "lost cat." The piece is actually offensively bourgeois, making light of poverty, crime and desperation by ignoring it so willfully. This is a disgrace, it should never have been published. Terribly written by the way, not a stitch of credibility.
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- Brenda Chiasson
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:57
"I got her in France." "Oh! I can’t lose him now!" ??? Is the gender of this cat wide open to interpretation?? Do put me out of my misery. I need structure in the worst way!
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- Chaz Macintosh
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:56
This piece betrays all the signs of advanced anecdotage. I'm surprised the mayor didn't volunteer to join the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker lugging their nets and tranquilizer guns in the cat hunt of the century. Priceless!
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- Denis Cleroux
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:55
Ah yes, it is written that a cat and an egg-bellied female shall lead them. Look next for the chameleon named Karma.
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- Barbara Flaherty
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:54
I want to add that this yarn also turned my life around and drunk on its epiphanic fumes, I fully expect to save the world. You'll hear about it if...oops! NOT IF BUT WHEN!!!! I accomplish my task. Oh puhleeeeeeeease! Human lives are abandoned in Verdun everyday and I don't see anyone waxing lyrical over search and rescue operations. Maudlinness on crack!...never a pretty sight and always guaranteed to embarrass.
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- Ronaele. Nawoc
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:54
i'll do <b>better</b> next time
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- John Tremblant
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:53
Kismet, I say, rich kismet! You people, by the way, are beyond redemption! Can't you see that that cat is some kind of trickster figure who like the writer suggests engineered the whole disappearance and resulting search to bring the entire neighbourhood out into the biting winter night together?? I don't know about you philistines but I'll be singing, "Kumbaya meow, kumbaya, kumbaya meowww, kumbaya" til the cats come home.
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- Grace Flynn
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:52
This was such a beautiful article. Thank you for writing it. It is so touching to see a pet reunited with it's owner, especially in Verdun, where we have such a large pet-abandonment problem.
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- David Blackburn
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:52
At the sound of the mellifluous voice coming from the glowing Ebenezer, the critics paused and reluctantly dragged their blood spattered beaks away from the cowering yarn. "Behold, I say unto thee. Judge not this tale in the event that one day ye also be lost, catnipless and bereft of beneficient human stewardship. It is in the finding that the losing is vindicated so that that which is found shall not be lost on you... and vice versa...as it were...so to speak." Mouths dropped opened in unbounded incredulity and in one accord a great explosion of mirth rent the air as the critics collapsed on the grass, incapacitated by paroxysms of laughter. The words meanwhile, sensing the briefness of the reprieve that had been afforded them, lifted off the page like saccharine powder and singing paeans of praise at their unexpected deliverance, urgently sought the camouflaging sanctuary of the vapid clouds. "Amazing grace how sweet the sound...'tis grace hath brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home!!" P.S. Do try submitting this piece also to "Granny Lorna's Weekly". It should fit right in after "A Remedy For the Poll Evil In Horses" or even more snugly in between "Crafts from Nature's Oddments" and "Mountain Joe's Hickory Smoked Squirrel With All The Fixin's."
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- Mister LaRue
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:51
And Greg was found waltzing along with a candy cane in one hand and a sunflower in the other, merrily whistling the favoured songs of the elders of yesteryear...until he arrived at a lovely, small town Verdun trash bin, where he proceeded to violently disgorge the contents of his oh so pink little tummy onto a copy of this article crumpled up ever so delightfully at the bottom of the bin.
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- Conchi Vegal
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:50
Ths stury maeke me cwy. U rite pratey an u rite naice to. i hed a cat one time but it ded now. i want go luk for it to but i tink meybe it got wurm for shur, so i leve it in grong for hongree wurm. Meybe u rite nex stury bout my cat? how wurm ete him an wurm get ballyake an u mek der lil wurm sum chickin sup for it soul?? who nose, meybe u git pillsbury prise for such story?? surry for bruk inglis
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- Dr. Cannibal Lector
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:50
Do I sniff the scent of a budding Nobel laureate here? Perhaps, but I often confuse it with the odour of smug self-indulgence oozing out of pustules of literary ineptitude. And dear madame, I do believe you were gazing upon that young lady in a manner not too wholesome. Kudos to you, for we share similar perversities!
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- Condoleeza Rice's Sock Puppet
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:50
Oh my goodness! This is the triumph of the Western imagination right here in this story! To the author: we have a job for you here in Washington, as we do for any one with a silver tongue who can turn wretchedness into idle coziness.
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- Jana Muchachet
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:49
Oh, the humanity!! We need more stories like these in this cold, cold world. That lost ferret was sent by the universe to lead us back to where it all began so that we can truly say...yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he really does love his home in the dumpster behind KFC on Rue Regina.
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- Nina Brossard
- - 25 Mars 2010 à 16:54:49
Karma Chameleon? Oh, he'll be back. Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon, he comes and goes, he comes and goes.
