The Adventures of Hayden and Shelby, ‘Welfare Cats

The Adventures of Hayden and Shelby, ‘Welfare Cats The Christmas Shelter The boys hung the last ornament on their small potted fir tree, then stepped back to look at the final results of their efforts—and those of Mom and Dad too! Their furry faces beamed with satisfaction. As you might recall, “the boys,” were actually rescue cats and that their Mom and Dad had turned their garage into a shelter for homeless cats in response to all the strays they seemed to be continually encountering. Mom and Dad had six cats living in the garage now. They are Alex, Blackie, Liberty, or Libby, as he prefers to be called, and Aaron. Hayden and Shelby, the last two, were just recently adopted from a local animal shelter. Mom and Dad kept the cars parked outside in the drive and the lawn equipment in a shed in the backyard, so, the garage was a great place for the cats to live. Why the garage, you may ask? The reasons are simple. Reason one: for Mom, who was finicky and fastidious in her own right, it helped preserve the tidiness of the house. Which is critical. Reason two: for the cats, the garage was their private apartment that had all the amenities of any other room in the house—heating, air-conditioning, rugs, furniture and even a big screen television! Equally critical. Reason three: for catdom, this arrangement made it possible and easier for Mom and Dad to take in more cats and to help more animals in need. And that was paramount! The boys’ miniature tree sat as a centerpiece on the drop leaf table that occupied their room. The table was now covered with a festive red and green plaid vinyl holiday cloth. Sometimes, cats are not very neat, especially when there are six of them, so vinyl was easy for Mom to keep clean. The tree was strung with a fuzzy long animal print “cat teaser wand” at the tip of which was a plume of feathers. Mom put the plume at the top, then twined the strip of fabric around the tree as garland and tucked the wand down into the tree out of sight. On the very top of their tree hung a golden star stuffed with catnip. Below the star various prized toys that belonged to the boys dotted the tree—things like little stuffed mice and birds and colorful plastic balls with little bells inside. Mom and Dad made sure that all the decorations wouldn’t hurt the cats if they chewed on them. Hayden and Shelby were very happy about their first Christmas with their new family. The boys were happy too about their newly found brothers. They sat in their living room listening to Christmas carols on their radio and watching contentedly out the window as Mom and Dad put up the holiday decorations outside. The boys talked about the season and all the things they planned to do. The others told Hayden and Shelby about the holiday parties, wrapping presents and about getting presents. To Mom and Dad with such unseasonable temperatures, it hardly seemed like a typical Midwest Christmas at all. But Mom and Dad loved it! A week ago, it had reached a delightful sixty-eight degrees, and the last few days and today it was in the mid and upper fifties. It was great to be out of doors in mid-December wearing nothing heavier than a sweatshirt! They didn’t have to freeze their fingers as they hung wreathes with red bows on the doors and strung fresh evergreen garland on the lamp posts and mailbox post and filled the empty flowerpots on either side of the garage with cuttings of pine, spruce and winter berry branches. Their house looked very pretty and festive, all the boys agreed. On one of Mom’s many trips in and out of the garage for decorations, one of the last flies of the season sneaked in past Mom. Immediately Blackie dove for cover in the doghouse, that had been designed just for cats. He huddled in one of the darkened corners as the lethargic fly buzzed around the room. Even pride leaders have their fears, and Blackie’s biggest fear was flies. As Mom tried to catch the fly, the boys tried to help Blackie understand he had nothing to worry about and assured him that the fly couldn’t hurt him. Hayden hunted down the culprit and popped him in his mouth. He peered in the doghouse at Blackie and said, “See, no more fear.” Blackie emerged cautiously, on the alert for more flies. “I find,“ Hayden continued, “my fears that usually seem so awful in my mind aren’t really so terrible once I face them through the worst they can do,” he told Blackie. Blackie thought about these words. Maybe flies weren’t so bad, he considered. Afterall the fly hadn’t hurt Hayden or stung him. Admittedly, they were strange looking little creatures and could be annoying. He didn’t like them on his food, not that he minded sharing, he just would rather the fly had a bowl of his own. Actually, he couldn’t really explain why flies upset him so much. Mom and Dad thought perhaps he had mixed them up with bees. They did sound like bees, and he knew from experience how unfriendly bees could be. Perhaps he had been mistaken about flies, and they weren’t the monsters he thought they were. When Mom and Dad were finished with the outside decorations, they came back into the garage and prepared dinner for the boys, then went into the house to fix their own. Later that evening, after dark and after Mom and Dad had eaten their own dinners and finished cleaning up their dishes, they put a few last touches on the live Christmas tree they had bought for inside the house a couple days earlier. Mom and Dad were late in putting up their Christmas decorations this year. Christmas was usually a hectic and bustling season, but especially so this year! Mom volunteered regularly at the local animal shelter. For the last two weeks she had been busy baking nut rolls, cookies and fruitcakes for the Animal Shelter’s annual holiday bake sale, and to give as gifts at the bank where Dad worked, and for the party she and Dad were hosting for her parents and sisters Christmas Eve. Also, Mom had been busy for days shopping for Christmas gifts and preparing for the Christmas party. Dad had been working long and hard at the bank, coping with crisis after crisis, acquisitions and the lunacy of regulators. And this year Mom and Dad decided to make a donation to the animal shelter by refinancing their house to pay for a room to be built at the shelter, so less cats would have to be confined in cages and could move freely about in a more home-like setting. Mom and Dad believed being out of cages would help the cats feel less stressed during their stay at the shelter. Mom and Dad had been very busy arranging those details. With so much going on, Mom and Dad’s days were chock full. Mom and Dad weren’t young themselves anymore, and they were findings that keeping up with the everyday demands of life was not as easy as it used to be.