Cart wheels

I could really use a camel at Small Things. Having a shop with cat-themed arts and crafts, new and used books, preloved cats for adoption, and regifted items sounds wonderful, and it is, but it’s also involves a lot of hauling.

But since one camel likely requires more care than a few dozen of cats (and our landlord might come to the end of his tether over this), I have procured, instead, a blue three-tiered service cart.

The cart serves many purposes. First and foremost, it easily houses three layers of cats. It’s also good for moving things around. And it serves as the final resting place for our unsellable books. We have found that no one will buy a book that is more than five years old, so I have put a “Free Books” sign on the cart, accompanied by our logo.

At first we didn’t get many takers, but when we put the cart in our parking lot, the folks who might not venture into our shop were at least willing to risk a peek into the cart, and the books gradually get “adopted” over the course of a month.

(We would try it for the cats, but they have a tendency to wander off).

Over time our Free Books sign got a little tattered, so I trimmed it down so that it simply read “Free” and had our cat logo on it.

When you have a shop on a main drag and you have a service cart with the word “Free” on it, you shouldn’t leave it outside overnight. But it happened one Saturday evening. I won’t say whose husband left it outside, but by Sunday morning it was gone. The books were left, piled neatly in front of the shop.

Me, I just laughed out loud. Imagine, having a cart with the sign “Free” on it and wondering why it just up and disappeared when left outside on a Saturday night. I expect some lads had gone go-carting with it and just left it in a ditch somewhere.

I didn’t have much time to think about replacing these wheels, because on Monday, I met up with a friend of mine at Curves – I’ll call her Ethel. Ethel asked me, “How did your garage sale go on the weekend?” I went, “Huh?”

(We hadn’t had one.) Ethel then went on to tell me that her co-worker picked up a service cart with our logo on it at a garage sale on the weekend. My mouth dropped open and all that came out was a gasp – mostly because I had just finished my workout. And then I told her there had been no garage sale.

Ethel said, “That can’t be!” and explained what happened. This lad was walking in a suburb not so far from the Small Things shop and saw this cart at a garage sale. The sign on it said it was “Free” so he asked one of the people running the sale if it was free.

The person said, “That’s what the sign says.” Bingo! He took it home – it was going to be perfect for moving things around work! He didn’t remove the free sign with the kitty logo on it. Why bother? Besides, it was super-glued on. And that’s where my Curves friend saw it and admired his find.

Ethel’s co-worker was more than happy to return the cart to me and the three of us had a great chuckle when I picked it up, making jokes about the Sisterhood of the Travelling Trolley and the Return of the Prodigal Pushcart. And there does seem to be some sort of parable in this. Perhaps it’s as simple as the Arabic proverb…

“Trust in God but tie up your camel … er … cart!”

Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Kitty Boutique and Cat Adoptions. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.