Crazy about cats: Crazing Arizona

As we stumbled to work today, my husband said to me, “When is the last time you saw a javelina trot down the street?”

No, this isn’t the start of a very bad B movie, or the result of too much coffee. It’s his way of saying he craves sun and warmth – in short to be in our trailer in Arizona where (as of Jan. 13) it was featuring blue skies and a temperature of 20 degrees C.

And a javelina is a pig, native to South America, which can now be found in Arizona due to global warming. It’s commonly referred to as a “skunk pig” – a term you’ll understand if it rambles through your trailer park.

Laur and I didn’t used to mind the winter so much, and I’m trying to think of why. The No. 1 reason, I think, is climate change. Twenty--five years ago, when we moved here, January and February were really, really cold – but it was sunny most of the time.

Now it’s warmer, but it’s grey skies all the way.
 
We used to see snow as contributing to a usable winter. Neither of us are outdoorsy-type people, but we did – especially Laur – the requisite amount of skating, making snowpersons, and tobogganing with the kids, and we even cross-country skied one winter (1990, to be exact.)

Plus, I think we felt we had to put up a good front for our kids. The snow and cold weren’t really so bad, we maintained. No, not at all. It built character. Their poor nephews and nieces in southern Ontario – they were labouring under the illusion of winter.

Yesirree, what we had was the real thing!

My daughter, Anna, who now lives in St. Catharines, calls this “Stockholm Syndrome” – how that after a while, a captive can come to love her or his kidnapper. But in reality, she or he is just trying to survive.

Hmm, she may have a point.

Now that Laurence and I have experienced the freedom that sun and warmth gives us in Arizona, it’s just a little harder to love old man winter. I’m not saying I don’t like my life in Sudbury – I really do. But could we not just have four months of winter, rather than six?

We are three to six years from retirement, three to six years of putting off “the big decision.” The little decision is, “Do we spend four months or six months of the year in Arizona?” The big decision is when to move to St. Catharines. Do we sell this house that we love very much, move to a smaller one, and stay in Sudbury for a few extra years? Or, when we retire, do we simply pull up stakes and hightail it to the Garden City.
 
The pull in St. Kitts is that I already have a daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter living there and the rest of my children will likely migrate between the Niagara peninsula and southeast Asia. A large route, I know, but you go where the jobs are. Unless you are retired. Then you go where the sun and warmth are.

The pull in Suds is my non-biological family – the folks who are brothers and sisters to me, without ever having to share parents or a room with me. And the shop, Small Things: CATS and Books, which is reopening Feb. 1 at a new location – on Hazel Street, across from the Nickel City Hotel. This new location is a keeper – if only because of the amount of work my fellow volunteers and I are going to have to put into it (to say nothing of the cheap beer across the street at “The Nick”).

Argh! Cats or kids, cats or sun.

Couldn’t I have all three?

I suggested to Laur that when we do eventually move to St. Kitts – be it in three years or 30 – we could open a Cats and Books store there. And while we’re in Arizona I could make crafts for it. Cat-stained glass, cat hats and mittens, cat jewelry, cat pottery, and … you get the idea.

And I could write a series of Crazy Cat Lady Detective books that Scrivener Press (Laur's pet project) could publish!

His response? WHEN JAVELINAS FLY!

Just the response I was hoping for. Meet Pinking the Flying Javelina from www.rvwheellife.com. The Webster, Julianne Crane, is currently tootling around Arizona.

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