Hm. Yes. The cat. . .

His name is Oliver, or Sebastian, depending on who you talk to, but when I met him he had no name at all, (that I knew of), and he had burrs and the smell of forest in his fur. He was an outdoor feline who had been so for some time, and he had those little extra tufts of hair at his ear-tips which mocked, "Ahh, but there is wildcat in my blood!"

Ariell woke up one morning and told me, "I dreamed about the cat we're getting." (She'd been pining for a cat to love and cuddle for weeks now). "It was weird! I dreamed that a big grey cat was looking at me with big eyes, and he said, 'I am coming into your life soon. Soon I will be there!'"

"We're not getting a cat," I frowned. My apartment was far too tiny for a cat.

Well, that evening, I'd come home to find him sitting outside the building. He was a very large, grey, long-haired gentleman-beastie of great elegance, and he sat patiently in front of the big glass doors. I walked up the steps and stood looking at him. He observed me back with the feline expressional equivalent for, "Hi. I'm here. So are you going to open up the door, or what?"

Hm. So I opened up the door and he trotting past me and parked himself in front of my apartment door. (I have no idea how he knew which door was mine, but he did.) He sat there and watched me again as I joined him before my door. He gave me his, "So, are you opening up or what?" expression again, and I figured, "Oh, sure. Why not?" --I didn't mind if he hung out with me for a while, so I opened the door, he came in and made himself comfortable.

When Ariell got home, she was delighted with our new guest and we shared some dinner with him. He spent the night, purring and snuggling and being very 'cat'. The next morning he left through the window. Over the next few weeks this became a routine with his coming and going through the window in the evenings and mornings. Sometimes he'd vanish for a few days at a time, but then he'd return to meow and lounge around, share a bit of dinner, and curl up with us for the night. On rainy days, he'd come scampering back with muddy paws which I'd wipe off and then we'd sit together watching the rain. It was all very cozy. I supposed I didn't mind so much having a cat after all.

Well, one day, Ariell and I decided that it was time to go on a road trip. We packed up our rattling little used car and took off for Ontario. We drove and explored the world, having many adventures and it was grand and all of that. --I even visited my old Jr. Highschool as part of the trip to give a talk to all the grade 8's about making comics. That was neat.

Anyway, about a third of the way through our journey, I was able to check my email and discovered a message waiting for me from the folks who managed the apartment building back home.

Apparently, the cat we'd befriended was causing trouble on the property. He'd been scratching at other people's doors, begging for food, etc. One afternoon, he'd installed himself in the corner store down the street from my place, and would not be removed. He even gave one girl a fairly bad scratch. Hmm. I was not pleased to hear this last. In any case the building management folks, knowing that I was fond of him, did not want to have him taken away, and so decided instead to lock him in my apartment. They apologized, telling me that while this was far from perfect, it was the best solution they could come up with. Nobody was very happy.

A friend of mine in the neighborhood offered to visit the apartment daily and feed the little guy, and this he did. A feral cat, however, is a feral cat, and being locked up for half a month was extremely hard for him.

When Ariell and I arrived we were utterly exhausted after a thirty-hour drive. I'd been anticipating our arrival with a sort of highway-hypnotized dread, having an inkling of what was waiting behind my apartment door. But holy smokes! It was sooo much worse! --The place had been totally destroyed. He'd peed and shat on floors and furniture, and had clawed everything in sight. It also looked as though he'd tried to dig his way out under the door, leaving the industrial strength carpeting well shredded. We were faced with such a fog of cat-stink that we both immediately choked. With eyes all a-water, sneezing and coughing, I raced around to vent the place. I spent the next hour and a half scrubbing and cleaning, changing sheets and trying to air the place out enough to be able to collapse into sleep. Good lord, but we were tired!

But no sleep happened that night. I just lay there, coughing and feeling cat hair settle into my lungs while the cat mewed for release which I could not give him. A bad night.

It was the next morning that things slid rapidly into the complete state of disaster I'd been vainly trying to hold back for the several months Ariell had been living with me. --I looked about and saw that my drawing board and desk had finally succumbed, and had drowned beneath the mountains of clothes and travel stuff and the various implements of Ariell's market-baking business, and just a million other bits and pieces of Too Much Stuff. --All of which was mixed up and thoroughly enriched with the stink of cabin-fevered cat. My once orderly life of writing and drawing comics was quite vanished.

Such is the drama of trying to cram a small family and two businesses into a single room. --And I do mean, a single room. The term, "One-Room Apartment", which I only wished I could have lived in, is actually a misnomer, being in fact two rooms. Only a bachelor apartment is truly one room; a bed and desk and a few other items in full view of the kitchen sink and front door. Just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, I tried to eat a marginal breakfast of oatmeal while the cat prowled about, going mad, knocking things over. I'd been told that I was no longer allowed to let the cat out of the apartment until he'd had shots and a collar and a variety of other government-imposed bits of regulated cat paraphernalia. The poor little guy had leaped into my arms thinking I'd come home to set him free when I first opened the door, but all I could do was tell him, "Sorry, buddy. I'm your new jailer." Oh, that was heart-breaking.

And I had nowhere to stand! Everything stunk. Ariell was asking me questions about something, the phone was ringing, my deadlines were looming and I could no longer remember which pile of laundry my drafting board was buried beneath. --My eyes and nose were running and I was coughing and sneezing like a devil, I'd barely slept a wink and suddenly, like that, I was past the point where things change suddenly and forever.

I thumped my bowl of oatmeal down on the floor in frustration and spun about, searching for some way, -any way- to improve my situation in even the smallest manner. My red eyes lit upon an ancient single-person sofa chair which I'd gotten for $15, four years and two room-mates ago in Ontario. It had been taking up too much room for ages, wasn't comfortable, was ugly, and now also smelled like cat pee. It struck me as utterly unfair that this lousy piece of furniture should sit so happily in its very own square of apartment floor while I was forced to contort my body into odd shapes in order to make my way across the room. Heck, I was the one paying the rent! So in a fit of spontaneity bordering on the scarily manic, I hefted the tattered thing into my arms and fought it out of the apartment. I dropped it half way, thanks to its awkward shape and squishy cushions, and because I couldn't see which way I was walking with my watering eyes and running nose rendering me half-blind and half-crazy). I picked it up again, struggled to the building entrance and hurled it out on to the walk way. I then discovered giddily that with a series of square kicks, it could be made to roll. In this manner, I escorted it down the long path to the dumpster.

One of my neighbors, a very tiny girl, stopped me half-way down the walk to ask why I was rolling my sofa couch. I told her that I was throwing it out because a feral cat had peed all over it and it was ugly and because I didn't want it any more. She asked me why I wasn't carrying it like normal people. I told her that my way was easier and faster. She thought about this, and then asked me why my cat had peed on it. I told her it wasn't exactly my cat, it was just one which had been accidentally locked in my apartment and that if it really had been my cat he'd have better manners. She giggled at this as though I wasn't really being serious, and thus satisfied with my answers, permitted me to pass. I continued kick-rolling the confounded couch down the walk-way and across the parking lot to the dumpster and there abandoned it.

I ran back to my apartment, eager to stand in the newly liberated spot of carpet and discovered that the cat had already done so, and that he had also relieved himself in a very rude manner right in the middle of it. I looked at this for a moment, and then stepped in the bowl of oatmeal.

Then I turned around without a word and walked back outside again and sat down against a brick wall in the grass and just. . , stopped.

The Nova Scotian sun was bright and warm and the sky was big and blue that day, and under these calming conditions, my miserable little series of dramatics was able to come to rest for the first time in many weeks, and there dry out. Ariell, who had been following me through the last ten minutes with some consternation, sat down beside me.

"Mark. Honey, are you going to be okay?"

"No. I can't do this anymore. My life has been destroyed. Everything is a giant mess. My center is in chaos. Before I met you I was lonely, but at least everything worked. Now I feel like I'm swimming in a bottle of pop which has been shaken. Everything is fizz and foam and I don't know which way is up. I surrender. I give up."

She sat down and looked at me with sympathy. "It's going to be okay."

"Oh yeah? How do you figure?"

"We'll work something out. You have a chaotic girlfriend and a wild cat living in your little space. You're extremely patient with me, and my things are everywhere and I get impatient with you. You can't get any work done and it's stressing you out. I'd also be going crazy if I was you. But it's going to be okay. I'm in this with you and it's not easy on me either, but don't worry. We can solve this. It's all going to work out. I promise. I don't tell you enough how much I appreciate everything you are to me and how much I love you."

"Oh." I felt small and tired and foolish, and totally unconvinced that anything could improve.

But we went back inside, and Ariell picked up a paper. She dropped her finger on a classified ad for a small house to rent. It was big, and was just about in our price range. We made a call, and forty minutes later we were being given a tour of the place, (just a few streets away, as it happened). It glowed inside, seeming after the apartment impossibly big. It was perfect. It had space and lots of windows and three floors and it sang to us. We sailed back home and contemplated for an intense and excited half hour and then called back, "Yes. Oh, yes! We'll take it."

So anyway, that was a couple of months ago. There have been a couple dozen complications between then and actually moving in. Lease agreements, animal control people and general moving hassles later, we made the move and are now settling into the nice little house. Minus one cat. --He got a lot bolder, bit my hand and managed to run away having, it seemed, lost all regard for the human species. (I couldn't really blame him.) He turned up a couple of times and After a lot of trouble, I managed to keep him from being put down by the animal control people, and he now lives on a nice organic farm. --The farm's operator tells me with glee that he's getting along just fine; he'd killed a couple of chickens and sits up in the rafters and swats at people as they pass under him in the barn. She tells me that he's in good company with the tough pair of dogs who otherwise run the place.

"Oh. Is he happy?"

"Yes, he's terribly happy! He's put on weight and all. Some cats don't make it when they move to farms, but he's fitting in just fine. He's not meant to be a house cat."

"No. I'd say not. Okay. That's good then. Thanks again!"

There is actually a longer story behind all of the dramatics involving Oliver/Sebastian, including stormy nights, cat fights and new owners and annoyed looking animal control people pounding on my door. But I'll tell that story another time perhaps. . .

Right now, I am settling very happily into a house which is big enough for both Ariell and me, both of our businesses, and various guests who are invited to stay. I have the most amazing studio, like the tower Heath and Rubel built, in a roomy third story attic with slanty ceilings and windows overlooking the town and harbor below. It's an old house, rather expensive to heat, but that's the petroleum business all over. I hope to actually build a proper house with real insulation and clever, off-the-grid power and water and such in another couple of years, but that will have to wait. For now, I'm writing and drawing some of my best work in a long while. This is good.

So, welcome to the Year of the Dog! --I am a Dog native, and I am already feeling myself warming to the new vibe.

Cheers to you all, and Happy Chinese New Year!

-Mark Oakley
Jan 31, 2006
Wolfville.