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| Finn McCool, Chief of the Fianna |
Once upon a time, there was a storyteller who lived with
the King of her Heart and two cats in Pittsburgh. One of the cats was a BIG red
tabby tom named StarFreedom Tailkinker, a former street cat who loved being an
indoor cat, and another, slightly smaller and paler red tom named Finn McCool, who had lived in a fraternity house before coming to live with
them in Squirrel Hill. Star was named after a feline character in a Star Trek novel; Finn was named after
the great Celtic hero and leader of the Fianna, survivor of many battles, games
of wits, magic, and Otherworldly encounters—but it didn’t take long to realize
that it was a misnomer.
Finnie the kitty gave whole new meaning to the words
“Scaredy-cat!” He was afraid of EVERYTHING, especially male humans, and spent
the first eighteen months in this new household mainly hiding. The two humans
could not pet him at all, despite Star’s reassurances that they wouldn’t hurt
him.
The day that they moved to another home in Shadyside was
awful for poor Finn, who was first shut up in a bathroom, then raced around
empty rooms before hiding in the corner of a closet, and yowled and panted with
terror as he was taken in a carrier to the new place. But gradually as he
explored it, encouraged by Star, and realized that all the furniture, litter
box, toys, and food/water bowls were intact, he began to relax a little…but
still wouldn’t let the humans approach too closely.
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| Finn McCool the Cat |
But Star got sick. From being a sleek, powerful, 24
pounds, he began to lose weight. A scratch on one eye wouldn’t heal, and after
trips to the vet, the woman began putting ointment on the eye—which Star
hated—and injecting insulin into the back of his neck twice a day for diabetes,
and the humans were worriedly talking about something called “feline AIDS,” at
that time epidemic among street cats in most large American cities. Poor Star
had been infected long before he came to live with them. Good cat that he was,
he did not infect Finnie.
One late November day, Star’s eye imploded. He was taken
off to the vet…and didn’t come back. He had died there, of the AIDS.
Part of what made the next few days so horrible was that
they had planned to board Star at the vet’s for most of a week, and have one of
the wife’s students from her day job come in to take care of Finnie while they
went to the wife’s family in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. The wife’s father was
ill, and they didn’t want to miss the chance to visit him, so they went anyway.
Finnie was very lonely and sad, and so were the humans,
even after they came back.
The student had left a note for them. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he
wrote, “but Finnie’s had a complete personality change! He wanted me to pet him! I even picked him up!”
A week later, the man, John, said to his wife, “I walked
by the Pet Pad on Walnut Street. They had some kittens in the window, and I saw
one who was so beautiful! She’s a little Maine Coon cat, and you know how much
I like them.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said his wife.
“I think that Finnie needs a friend to play with while
we’re at work.”
“Uh-huh,” said the storyteller.
“When you’re ready, of course,” he added. “I know you’re
still grieving. Star was your cat,
even before we got married.”
He said it again the next day, and the day after that. All
who love folk-tales know that when something is said three times, it’s
significant. So the woman went with her husband to see the kitties in the Pet
Pad window.
When they went inside, and Ginny opened the back of the
window, one of the kittens came over and stretched up, putting her forepaws in
their dainty white mitts up on John’s arm, asking very nicely to be petted.
The woman laughed. “Well, I can see that you’re completely
smitten!” she said, and they brought her home.
She was named Bride—which is pronounced breed—Cloudshaker, because that is the
Scottish variant for the name Bridget, after one of the three great Celtic
saints of Ireland (Patrick and Colmcille, or Columba, are the other two). She
was mostly black on her back, shading through brown, grey and cream to white on
her stomach, mitts and boots, with a long, bushy black tail, and when she sat
with it gracefully swept around her like the folds of a train, she looked very
elegant and regal. She especially liked sitting on top of a clock on a
washstand in the dining-room like a queen on her throne, alert for any really
good human food they might be having for dinner.
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| Bride Cloudshaper |
Finnie assured her that lap-sitting while listening
to the storyteller tell a legend or
folktale about cats was a very cozy way to spend time with humans*, and that
being groomed was a real luxury. But as a catling, she wasn’t too fastidious in
her habits, and her fur became so matted that she wouldn’t sit still to be groomed, and finally the vet gave her
a lion’s clip—shaving her body close but leaving her head, tail, and limbs
still furry. Without all that hair on her body, she was tiny! She was also very
embarrassed, so Finnie didn’t tease her (much) until after it grew back. If he
tried to sniff at her, she’d swat him indignantly. From then on, she was much
more fastidious about her appearance! It helped that Ginny suggested a new kind
of clumping litter. Bride wasn’t getting as much of it caught in the fur around
her toes or under her tail. A change in diet helped too. Ginny always gives
good advice!
The humans soon found out that like Finn, the kitten had
been misnamed, because Bride the cat was far from saintly. In true queen form,
she preferred to delegate the mischief to her willing subject.
One warm day, the humans came home to find that the cats
were out on the balcony, enjoying the sunshine. They had left the new heavy
glass door open, and Finnie had figured out how exactly how to slam his body
against the screen enough to hook in a claw and slide it juuuuust far enough to
wiggle through.
Once the humans figured out how he did it, the wife
called the door-installers, asking them to come back and put in a lock on the
screen. “But you’re six floors up,” protested the salesman. “Nobody’s going to
break in from that high!”
She sighed. “If any burglars got up that high, they’re
pros and a lock won’t keep them out. No. What we need to do is keep our cats IN,
and right now, they can open the screen door. We’re afraid that a siren might
spook them and they’d fall, and we don’t want them to get hurt. If we were more
than ten floors up, or less than four floors, they would have time to right
themselves and land on their feet, but this high, they probably wouldn’t.”
The kitchen had a doorway but no door, which suited the
cats. But the wife began noticing little pools of water on the floor. “Someone
could slip and fall!”
A day or so later, she saw where they were coming from.
Finnie was big enough that he could stretch up on his hind legs, and use one of
his front paws to tap the lever on the refrigerator door’s icemaker to drop
down an ice cube, and then he and Bride would play feline field-hockey with it.
The woman taught them to play until they made a goal under the stove, refrigerator,
or microwave stand, because if it melted under there, no one would slip.
Bride and Finn lived with their humans until the end of
their last nine lives. The humans missed them so much that they got other
cats—not that they could be replaced, because cats are as unique in personality
as humans, but because the couple had learned how sociable and loving a cat can
be. And they always made sure to fill the cats’ stocking at Christmas with new
toys from the Pet Pad, as well getting the right food and other products.
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| Manager Brad & Ginny |
During the
"Snowpacolypse" incident, there was a period where every store in the
area was closed. We had run out of hay for our rabbits but could not go
anywhere to buy rabbit food. We called Smiley's to see if they were open and
the owner said she was in to feed the cats there and that she would stay around
for a few hours so we could make it down and buy rabbit food. We have been
shopping here ever since. Definitely the best customer service I have seen from
a store.
That characterizes
Ginny’s professional, caring attitude. You don’t get that from big chain
stores! While we always like going into the store and being greeted by Tonto
the parrot or one of the shop cats, you can also shop online at http://www.smileyspetpad.com/.
Can one person buying one or two things at a time save a store like this? Well, as an old Scots Gaelic proverb says, "An lion beagan is beagan, mar a' dh'ith an cat an snadan." In English that means, "Little by little, as the cat ate the herring."
Please click
here for a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about the Pet Pad; Ms. Jones makes some good points.
I will be
posting about any special events on Facebook. Would you really like to live in a place that’s identical to every other? Bill
Peduto remarked that the Pet Pad is like a tile in the mosaic that make up
Pittsburgh neighborhoods and he’s right.
If you have pets, which would you prefer: a big box store mainly out to make a buck and with questionable ethics regarding where they obtain the creatures they sell, or someone with deep roots in the area, who genuinely cares about your pet’s needs?
If you aren’t
physically in the neighborhood, let your fingers do the walking to their website.
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| Ginny outside the Pet Pad in Shadyside Plaza |
Please help us
keep Smiley’s Pet Pad open!
Notes:
Although there are many famous folktales and legends about cats, two of my favorite folktale collections about cats are:
The Folktale Cat by Frank DeCaro (August House: 1993), August House Publishers; 1st edition (May 1993) ISBN-10: 0874833035 ISBN-13: 978-0874833034
and
Twelve Great Black Cats, and Other Eerie Scottish Tales by Sorche nic Leodhas (Dutton Books: 1972). There's also a Penguin edition (USA) with this ISBN: 0525415750. Her books can be found in libraries, Amazon and ebay.
Thanks for shariing this
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