building bridges

A very sad day. The world lost a genius.

I went online for the first time in january 1996. In those days, at least in Brazil, the Internet was still limited to government institutions and a cousin of my cousin worked for the WHO and had Internet through his job. We browsed a couple sites (one on the castles of Ireland), which was ok, and then we went on mIRC. It blew my mind. The idea of being able to meet people from other parts of the world, so easily, was life changing for me. I remember getting home and telling my dad “we have to get Internet.” It took us a few months – our computer was too old, didnt have a proper modem – but in June 1996 I was logged on and have been ever since. I’ve met a lot of people on the internet since then – including my husband.

While at the beginning it was all about meeting new people, learning new things, practicing language skills, now it has become a lot about keeping in touch. Having moved to a new country thousands of kilometers away means I don’t get to see my family all that much. I’ve also made my best friends in university here in Canada but the reality of grad school is that eventually we all graduate or quit and move away. And let’s not even mention our friends in Barcelona.

Lately, the best part for me has been rediscovering old friends or distant relatives with whom I used to be close but haven’t seen in many years. Having them on Facebook means we now feel like we are part of each others lives once again and although in some cases you might find you’ve grown in different directions, in others it can be the opposite – I’ve been finding out how incredibly fascinating and interesting some of my cousins and old friends are. And to me, that’s what’s all about. Making connections.

One of the things I love about Toronto is the streetcars. Not sure why I like them better than other forms of public transit, but I do.

Today one of them derailed at a very busy intersection.

When hubby and I moved from Montreal to Toronto back in 2003 all our friends reacted predictably each giving us a long list of why we would hate Toronto. Top on that list was the “fact” that Torontonians are unfriendly and don’t know how to have fun. In a recent Toronto Life article, Philip Preville discusses the trend of people leaving the city to live in the suburbs. The piece is problematic in many fronts and thoughtful reviews and responses can be found on Spacing and The Grid.  I won’t rehash them here. The interesting phenomenon generated by this debate was that people began to spontaneously share on twitter their stories of friendliness in the city under the hashtag #UnfriendlyToronto. Here are some of those:

I would probably not be able to write long posts on my cheapie smartphone but if I could post images, it might revive this blog a bit. Writing this from CRRS.

This blog is quickly running the risk of becoming a cat blog. I apologize to those who haven’t had the pleasure of living with don’t like cats. There’s much else I wanted to blog about: the beautiful summer we’ve been having here in Toronto, the Jarvis ride protest (we were there!), the current controversies over our mayor and proposed cuts, including the marathon meeting at city hall, the plans to go to Brazil in December, my new job, and so much more! Unfortunately, all my creative energy in the past few weeks have gone into planning two new courses for the Fall, endless meetings, and finishing the dissertation (it’s done!). In the midst of all that, there are the cats. They have become part of the family and we are quickly becoming those parents that can talk about nothing else… Although I haven’t had time to chronicle much the development of our own cats – Tigger and Casper – I feel I should document the fosters we get since they are with us for only a brief period of time. So meet Coco Chanel.

Little Coco was found with her siblings in the streets of Toronto at 5 or 6 weeks old. They stayed with the foster coordinator at ACR and while her brothers grew by leaps and bounds, something seemed amiss with Little Coco. She just wouldn’t grow. Since the coordinator had too many fosters in her hands and Coco desperately needed closer attention, she sent her to me. She arrived at our place on Bastille Day – July 14th. She was nearly 12 weeks old and weighed only 630g. To give you an idea how little that is, our guys weighed 1kg at 8 weeks. Gigi, who was a small kitten, weighed 800g at 8 weeks. Coco is definitely skin and bones and looked pretty sad. The day after she arrived, Casper, our five month-old kitten got sick with vomiting and diarrhea.  It was unlikely that he caught something from Coco since there hadn’t been enough time for something to incubate. It was likely a virus and I was immediately concerned for Coco because if she caught *anything* she would probably not make it.

After a few days of uncertainty during which Casper had to take fluids under his skin to keep him hydrated and we struggled to get him to eat and little Coco’s weight didn’t seem to budge, things started looking up. Casper suddenly began to eat, neither of the other two cats seem to have caught what he had, and little Coco suddenly began to put on weight. Fast track to today, August 6th, and she weighs a remarkable 1.1 kg! Except she is not a she, turns out little Coco is a boy, a fact that was discovered when we sent her him to be spayed neutered. And he loves his foster siblings!

About a week after Gigi was adopted, ACR contacted me about Winston. One of ACR’s volunteers trapped him while feeding a colony she maintains. She has fed the colony for years and knows well each cat in it so when this little grey ball of fur appeared from nowhere and butted his way through the big cats to get to the food bowl, she trapped him and took him home. She estimated he was about 7 weeks old but I think he was probably a bit older. Either way, he came to us needing socialization about a week ago. He’s medium hair, possibly even long hair is full of energy. When he first arrived he just hid from us and when we tried to get him, he hissed. Unlike Gigi, there was no growling though and once you have him in your hands, he stays there because turns out Winston LOVES to be petted and rubbed. He immediately relaxes and starts purring. He has made a lot of progress in a week – he’ll sleep in our bed with the other cats, will come to us to play, but his first instinct when you walk towards him is still to run and hide. But he’s coming around!

Here’s a video of Winston playing with his foster brothers:

Little Gigi came from a litter of 7 kittens who were saved from a rough life on the streets. While her siblings were placed in pairs at foster homes, she came to us by herself since we had two 9 week-old kittens that could keep her company.

She was only 6 weeks old and so tiny but boy was she feisty! She spent the entire subway ride meowing loudly and trying to rip open the door of her carrier. Luckily, she is also one of the prettiest cats I’ve ever seen. And you know how it is, it may not be fair but looks does let you get away with stuff. Alan and I were a bit concerned about how Casper and Tigger, our 9 week-old kittens, would react to Gigi and became very worried when a plethora of hissing and growling ensued upon seconds of meeting one another. I worried about poor little Gigi feeling lonely and scared and promptly added a hot water bottle to her box. But despite the hissing and growling, she didn’t seem afraid of her much bigger foster siblings and would follow them around even if she growled loudly every time they looked at her. I locked her up in the bathroom the first night so she wouldn’t get lost. At one point she started meowing pitifully so I went into the bathroom to check up on her. As soon as I sat down she started rubbing herself against my hand, tuning belly up, purring… she wanted to play!

The next day we let her loose around the living room (which is really a giant cat playground at this point) and she was happy to run around playing with the boxes. After two days of hissing and growling, Casper and Tigger took to playing with Gigi and now the three of them are constantly together. We have no doubt Gigi would adapt well to another household with cats. She continues to be extremely playful and curious, always running around chasing toys or her siblings). She seems like the Duracell bunny at times!

She doesn’t like being picked up but she is very affectionate and will curl up on your lap.

Gigi and the boys:

I knew that once Gigi was posted on the website, she would be adopted in no time at all. I was convinced the first person who came to see her would want to take her home. Sure enough, she didn’t last 24 hours when she was put up for adoption. She left last night and seems to be doing well in her new home. The boys (all three of them) seemed a bit out of sorts but have started to adjust.

I wanted to have a cat for a while but wasn’t sure I was ready to commit long term. Since Alan never had cats before, he was also unsure about it. So I started fostering for Annex Cat Rescue back in December to gain some experience with these wonderful animals and test the waters. Readers of this blog may remember our first foster, Patchy. After a rocky start, Patchy settled in nicely in our home and we were sad to see her go back in March. Alan was visibly upset when she left. Annex then lined us up to foster two very young kittens and we felt that would probably be easier and we wouldn’t have so much trouble letting them go. Boy, were we wrong on that one. Look at these guys:

They slowly took over and not only were clearly good buddies from the start but were extremely affectionate towards us.

So when we realized they might be adopted separately, we started considering keeping them. I knew from the beginning I wanted to get my own cats but I also did not want to stop fostering during the busiest time of year for ACR. The kittens won out at the end, I just filed the paper work today but we’ve decided it would be good for them to meet other cats so we will continue to foster. Meanwhile we welcome Tigger and Casper to our family!

Wow, has it been over two months since the last picture post? The nature of blogs have definitely changed in the past couple of years as more and more bloggers (myself included) choose to post on Facebook or Twitter content that once would have been shared on the blog. I noticed I changed a lot in how I interact with this blog. I used to vent some of my frustrations in here or simply write a quick comment on something I read/heard on the news. A lot of that happens within Facebook or Twitter these days. I’m not the only one, of course. Many of the most prolific blogs I used to follow have slowed down as their authors have began to similarly split content across different social media sites.

Is blogging dead? I don’t think so. There’s still a space for it between Facebook and Twitter. I often want to talk to people outside my circle of friends but don’t want to open up my Facebook profile to the world. I also want to use more than 140 characters and have the ability to index and organize my posts. In my case, this blog has slowed down not because I’m currently split across the web but because I’m on the final stages of dissertation-writing. The creativity I pour into that often robs from other venues such as this blog. But the end is in site and the blog will definitely find new life in the following months, particularly as I transition to a new phase in life, with a new appreciation for the city in which I live.