SmokeyBob

“I fed a stray cat that I found in our back yard.”

“Why would this be bad?”

“Once you feed a stray cat, they stay.”

I only viewed the situation as problematic because logistically, I couldn’t see how we could have another cat in the same house as Phoebe The One-Eyed Siamese Wonder-Cat due to her various chronic and contagious ailments (uveitis, feline herpes, feline leukemia) and any cat that came into contact with Phoebe would suffer the same fate. Other than that, I was in no way surprised or nonplussed. Feeding and caring for a stray animal was entirely consistent with Lara’s character. Indeed, one could argue that I was Exhibit A...

When I arrived at our home in Mississauga, I went out to the back deck to find large long-haired grey tom-cat sitting on the step, looking for attention. Based on the size of his head, paws, and frame, he probably should have weighed 14 to 15 pounds; he looked to weigh about half that. He was very dirty, his long grey fur matted or in some places missing altogether.

Despite all of this, he was still very handsome. An air of confidence and serenity was reflected in his luminous green eyes.

He had the most expressive eyes I had ever seen.

He meowed at me, as if to say, ‘Yeah, so I live here now.”

Through the bottom corner of the French door out to the back deck, Phoebe glared at him with her one eye, seething with rage. How dare that so*******ch show up on HER property!

At this particular point in time, Lara was at home on stress leave from a company that shall remain nameless, because I can’t remember what name the company went by at the time. There’s an old joke-- well, maybe not that old-- about how you can tell it’s the 21st Century when you've worked for four different companies in seven years, and you’re still sitting at the same desk. This was exactly the case for Lara. Worse still, one of those companies as being asked by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States to re-state the last five years’ earnings. If you’re the only person in a legal department with no lawyers or clerks, this can be a stressful situation. On top of this, the company was desperate to reduce the head count, they were trying the constructive dismissal routine on Lara, and she was taking it personally.

Not a good situation for an introvert with a heart condition.....

This had been going on since the beginning of the year. and at the end of April, I had said to her, “Look, just put in for stress leave. Your benefits will cover ten weeks at full pay under short term disability, and when you come back, they’ll buy you out within the first two days. They’ll give you a month’s pay for each year of service because it’s dismissal without cause. It would look bad on them to try to fire you with cause right after coming back from stress leave, so they’ll give you the max.”

Lara had understood full well that the situation was toxic, and probably wasn’t going to end well whether she was able to keep her job or not. We had put our home in Mississauga on the market a month before. Lara had been looking at real estate prices in the Greater Toronto Area, and figured out that we could cut our monthly mortgage payment by about 35 per cent by moving to Oshawa, so that was the plan. At that time, I was getting full-time hours from the CBC, plus freelance work, and I couldn’t work any harder than I already was. Together, it still wasn’t enough in the event that Lara couldn’t keep her current job. She would have had to take a lower-paying job, or be unemployed altogether, until she was able to complete the required courses from the Institute Of Law Clerks of Ontario. This would be more than a year away.

So, at the beginning of May of 2006, Lara opted for stress leave.

A week into stress leave, her angel appeared. A skinny, mangy, dirty, highly affectionate angel with irritable bowel syndrome, but Lara’s angel nonetheless.

Lara didn’t care about any of that. All she knew was that this creature needed her help, and she was happy to oblige. This cat gave Lara a much-needed distraction from the spiral of negative thinking which leads to depression, and in return, she got love and affection and the satisfaction of knowing that she was helping a lost creature who so badly need it. She began feeding and caring for him. Under the shelter of the awning over our back deck, she put one of Phoebe’s old pet-caddy crates out by the back door and filled it with old blankets so that he would have a warm place to sleep.

The next day, we took him to Phoebe’s veterinarian at Royal York Animal Hospital in Etobicoke, to see what was the state of his health. Dr. Allen informed us that he was, in fact, a tom-cat, neutered. His breed wasn’t obvious by looking at him (Norwegian Forest? Russian Blue?A Nebelung, I later learned...), so he wrote down “grey domestic long-haired” and we let it go at that. A little over a year old. Ten pounds. Dr. Allen scanned him for a microchip; no such luck. The bald patch on his throat, it turned out, was nothing to do with illness, but was a shaved patch where blood work had been done, probably about a month before. He was microchipped, and given a regimen of vaccines. The diarrhea would probably clear up once he was on a steady diet of proper good-quality cat food, instead of mice, goldfinches, and whatever he was scrounging out of trash cans.

What about the bald patches on his tail? Was it mange, I asked?

Dr. Allen told us that there were no other symptoms of mange. He told us that when domesticated cats are deprived of human contact, they will over-groom themselves to compensate, and that's why he has bald patches.

We both teared up at the thought of him missing his human family. At the thought of him being lost and alone for up to a month, based on when the blood work had been done.

It was at this moment that we decided that we wanted to keep him. And by “we”, what I really mean is “Lara”.

I wasn’t so sure. I said that based on the blood work, it was obvious that he wasn’t feral, so he probably had a human family who was looking for him, and missing him. I had grown up around dogs and cats, and I had vivid memories of grieving losing them. I felt that we had an obligation to try to find his human family.

Lara agreed, and we made an effort to find out if anyone was looking for him.

We registered him with the Mississauga Humane Society and with Mississauga Animal Control. I made up some posters, and put them up around the neighbourhood and at local pet stores. We took his picture around to local veterinary clinics. Did anyone recognize him? No, said the vets and their staff, never seen him before. The Humane Society and Animal Control had never had any enquiries about a cat matching that description.

Anyone familiar with the weather patterns in the Greater Toronto Area knows that the weather in May swings from sunny, warm, and dry (usually Monday to Friday) to cold and windy with heavy driving rain (usually Saturday and Sunday, doubly so for the Victoria Day long weekend). The long weekend in May of 2006 was no exception, and Lara didn't want to leave this poor guy without shelter. I was worried about Phoebe infecting him with her various ailments. Lara’s solution was to bring him into the enclosed front porch of our house, where he would be sheltered from the weather and separated from physical contact from Phoebe. We set up a litter box and brought his pet-crate/house inside.

I brought him around to the front door, and brought him into the front porch area. He sat down, waiting patiently for what would happen next. Lara put his food down, and he had dinner, and settled into his little house for the night.

As all this was going on, Phoebe was in high dudgeon. She would ignore Lara because she could smell another cat on her, but quickly outgrew such behaviour. The two cats could see each other through the glass of the French door, but Phoebe went out of her way to ignore him. A sort of truce was reached.

Spring wore on into summer, and Lara continued to bond with this cat as she continued to work her way through her stress leave. The silly basket-weaving-style therapeutic exercises prescribed by the mental health professionals paled in comparison to the effort that she put into looking after this stray cat who showed up out of nowhere. I was grateful, as he was doing what I, or her family and friends, or mental health professionals were unable to do: get her back to a place of happiness during such a trying time.

And, the cat took to Lara, looking after her as much as she was looking after him.

At the end of June, Lara went back to work. Two days later, she was dismissed without cause, and given seven months’ pay in lieu of notice, one month for every year of service.

(This prescience on my part forever cemented in Lara’s mind the idea that I was some sort of evil genius. However, this was just a case of me being someone who reads “Dilbert” cartoons on a regular basis.)

Lara called me at work and calmly broke the news, had her broken-down car towed home from the office, did some last minute studying, and went out that evening and totally crushed the final exam for the Estate Law course.

Lara spent the rest of the summer looking after both Phoebe and the stray cat, working on her next course towards her Law Clerk qualifications, and-- when she felt like it-- working through a temp agency.

We decided that he needed more indoor time, especially as he was perturbed by loud noises in general and thunderstorms in particular. So, we closed the French door between the dining room and the kitchen. This meant that he could have the kitchen and the basement, and Phoebe would have the living room and upstairs to herself. This was a tricky arrangement, especially with the house being shown by real estate agents who had to be informed in advance of the rules requiring the two cats to be separated, but we made it work.

We assumed that Phoebe was still pi**ed at the situation, because whenever this interloper appeared in the window of the French door between the kitchen and dining-room, she would hiss at him. However, the real estate agent who was representing us told us that whenever she was in the house, she observed that the two cats were practically kissing through the glass panes of the French door.

As this was going on, his health was improving. He was gaining weight, his lanky frame began to fill out and the bald patches in his coat filled in. He still ate like every meal was going to be his last. We suspected that if we put down an entire ten-pound bag of cat-food, he would eat all ten pounds and then ask, “So, what’s for lunch?”

Beyond the instinctive concern for food security, he developed a self-confidence nurtured by Lara and I. He seemed much happier, he developed an almost leonine strut as he walked about his part of the house. Whenever we sat down at the kitchen table, he was immediately in one lap or the other. If Lara sat down at the kitchen table to do her reading for an ILCO course, he would instantly jump up onto her lap, and settle in. Not in an “I demand attention” fashion, but in an “I’m gonna snuggle in for a nap while you study” kind of way.

At the end of September, we received an offer to purchase our house with a closing date in mid-November. It wasn't an ideal offer, but with me still being freelance and with Lara still not having a steady job, we felt compelled to take it, and we were just glad to get the hell out of that money-pit. Six hours later, Lara received an offer for her dream job as a law clerk reporting to in-house counsel at St. Marys Cement, at a salary that would have allowed us to stay in that house, but whatever....

The first question to come up: what to do about that grey cat living in the back yard?

Nobody ever contacted us to claim him or ask about him. And, he had bonded with both of us. Neither of us could bear the thought of not having him as part of our little family. So, we picked out a house that could easily be divided so as to keep the two cats apart. Phoebe would have the upstairs, and the latest addition to our family would have the downstairs.

The decision made to keep him, the next question was what to name him.

I asked Lara what she wanted to name him, and she immediately said, “Smokey”.

My immediate response was, “Oh, every grey cat seems to be named Smokey, we should go for something more original”.

“OK, fine, what do you want to call him,” Lara replied.

“Bob.”

“Why Bob?”

“I dunno.” If pets are going to be part of the family, I believed that they should have people names, as Phoebe did, as most of the pets in my family did when I was growing up.

We compromised by combining the two names.

His name is SmokeyBob, which is, of course, an awesome name.

Phoebe was okay with the situation. However, she had bigger problems.

Phoebe’s health began to deteriorate, and needed a veterinary hospital stay over the course of the move because kidney problems were beginning to manifest themselves. And, again, we did everything we had to in order that she would still have some quality of life.

We settled into our new home in the very south end of Oshawa in November of 2006. Our new home was across the street from an expanse of green space on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The first morning, we were greeted by the remains of a jackrabbit on our back deck. The surrounding green space is home to jackrabbits and white-tailed deer, but also to predators like foxes and coyotes. This led us to the decision that SmokeyBob would not be allowed outdoors without supervision, which meant that with our busy lives, he would be, to all intents and purposes, an indoor cat.

We all settled in to our new home, and settled into our new life with the latest addition to our little family. SmokeyBob became more and more affectionate with both Lara and I as he became more domesticated. He insisted on being a part of our family. Eventually, he stopped wolfing down his food like it was the last meal he would ever eat. His weight filled out to a well-proportioned sixteen pounds. The bald patches in his coat eventually filled out, and with regular brushings, he became very handsome.

Lara continued with her Law Clerk studies, with her new fur-baby curled up in her lap as she studied at home. If one or both of us sat down to watch television, SmokeyBob would jump up on the sofa and aggressively snuggle. And, no dining experience was complete without him begging at the table. This, combined with his voracious appetite, his pathological craving for attention, and his audible flatulence, led Lara to declare, “He’s not a cat. He’s a dog disguised as a cat.”

As SmokeyBob worked his way further and further into our family, it corresponded with the slow downward trajectory of Phoebe’s life. By February of 2008, her kidneys had failed completely, and after the third week of having fluids injected subcutaneously, we were forced to admit that Phoebe wasn’t going to have a full lifespan. So, in early March of 2008, our veterinarian made a house call, and many tears were cried by both Lara and myself, as well as the vet.

We washed the bedding, I took down the gate that divided up our house, and that night, SmokeyBob came up to look after us in our grief.

Phoebe’s passing was particularly hard on Lara. Phoebe was the baby that Lara never had. Also, Phoebe’s manifold health challenges were something that Lara could identify with because of her struggles with Marfan Syndrome, so she was loath to give up on Phoebe. I never questioned the situation, because I fully understood all of this. So, I had learned to administer eye drops to Phoebe’s one remaining eye.

Also, when Lara and I first met, Phoebe took an instant liking to me, and I needed a wingman.

We wouldn't admit to ourselves or each other that day-to-day life was easier not having to attend to Phoebe, so we never spoke of it. We simply paid the new cat’s health insurance premiums without complaint, and were grateful that he was in excellent health.

We grieved, we survived. SmokeyBob was a big part of that.

We moved forward with our lives. Lara earned her Law Clerk’s designation in 2010, and I continued to work as hard as I could, both freelance and with whatever opportunities the CBC continued to offer me. And, every night, our grey kitty sat at the front door waiting for one or the other of us to come home. In the spring of 2011, I went to Halifax to swing boom on the Comedy Network sketch-com series “Picnicface”. I instructed SmokeyBob that his primary responsibility was to look after Lara, but every night for ten weeks, he sat by the front door waiting for me to come home. Eventually, he would go upstairs to look after Lara, but only after it was obvious that I wasn't coming home that night.

Two thousand kilometres and one time zone away, I was having fun working with one of the best crews I had ever worked with, on one of the funniest shows I had ever worked on. However, I missed home terribly. I did feel better knowing that this big grey cat was looking after Lara.

Late one night in July of 2011, I backed the car into the driveway of our home for the first time in over two months. I opened the front door of the house, and there was SmokeyBob, waiting for me at the front door. He stuck to me like Velcro for the next two days, but eventually things got back to normal as I returned to work both at the CBC and freelance film and TV work.

The year 2011 turned out to be an excellent year for Lara, and for me. She continued to excel at her new job, her employers loved her and treated her exceptionally well. I continued to stay busy with my career, working six or seven days a week on good projects, moving from strength to strength.

We were comfortable, we were secure, we were happy. Together.

Then, on January 4th, 2012, we lost Lara.

No warning. Only three weeks before, the cardiologist had read the results of an MRI scan, no signs of a second aortic dissection caused by Marfan Syndrome, no reason to be worried.

We left the house early that morning to have Lara’s back pain attended to, and sixteen hours later, she was gone from a massive rupture of the descending aorta, meaning that the cardiologist had been looking in the wrong place.

I came home very late that night, with three of my best friends in tow, one of whom stayed in the spare room to make certain that I was OK.

SmokeyBob knew that something was wrong. Instead of simply sitting by the front door in silence as he usually did whenever he awaited the return of one of us, he wailed pitifully for about two hours. Then, he came upstairs to visit with Tim in the spare room. SmokeyBob was snuggled up very hard against me when I woke up in the morning.

He sat in my lap as I was on the phone with our benefits provider, arranging for counselling.

He followed me everywhere I went in the house during the sporadic periods that I was home.

Every night for the two weeks after Lara’s passing, SmokeyBob would sit by the front door and wail for a couple of hours, then check on the friend who was staying overnight in the spare room, and then would jump up on the bed and snuggle very closely with me.

After two weeks, my support network decided that I was doing okay enough to survive on my own, so nobody stayed over in the spare room.

That night, instead of sitting by the front door, SmokeyBob came up to look after me.

He has been looking after me ever since.

Much to my dismay-- and to the dismay of everyone else around me-- recovery from the sudden and final loss of my beloved Lara has not been easy. Being widowed, as I have said many times, is a metric tonne of suck.

At first, I spent enormous amounts of time traveling from friend to friend to co-worker to in-law, visiting people in an effort to prove that I was “okay”. I was so busy trying to prove that I was okay that it interfered with the journey to becoming okay.

The only reason I came home was to look after our kitty. Otherwise, I would have just couch-surfed my way to.... where?

So, SmokeyBob became my reason for staying mature and responsible.

In return, SmokeyBob became my therapy animal.

SmokeyBob is, and always has been, very empathic. He could always read Lara’s moods when she was anxious or depressed. He always knew when to jump up in her lap and snuggle, or in extreme cases, provide comic relief. He has always been a very playful cat; he loves to interact with people. If you’re standing in the kitchen, and there’s something he wants from you, he just walks up and gently taps you on the leg. Another favourite trick is to jump up on the bed, walk up to me, and suddenly fall over. Makes me laugh every time....

SmokeyBob can read my moods seemingly without effort. So far, this brief essay has taken over a week to write, in fits and starts, as much as I’m able to do at once before I have to stop because even the good memories are tough. Particularly difficult were the paragraphs where I have to tell you about Lara’s passing. This one passage took three or four brief attempts to get through over two days (including a spare moment at work, which was a bad idea because it threw me off my game and the tape I shot immediately afterwards was almost useless). Based on that, I now work on this essay at home, so that SmokeyBob can sit in my lap as I write this, so that I may be “more” okay.

More than five years after Lara’s passing, SmokeyBob is now twelve years old. At least, we think he’s twelve. Nobody’s too sure; we based that guess on the vet’s assessment of how old he may be when he first showed up and took over. He is a healthy fifteen pounds, very well proportioned on his frame. His eyes are still a lustrous and luminous green, and still very expressive. One friend described him as the George Clooney of cats, another as the Dos Equis Guy of cats. He doesn’t always barf up hairballs on the bed, but when he does, he prefers that you are in the bed, trying to get some sleep.

SmokeyBob is my therapy animal. He originally came to our home to look after Lara, and after her passing, he stayed on to look after me. I will always be grateful for this.