Updates on street, cat and scammer

Work has been very busy and I'm enjoying these beautiful August evenings too much to be blogging, so please excuse the lack of recent posts. I give you a quick update.

First of all, our street is done. They finished all the sidewalks and did a very nice job. They repaved the entire street in two days, all with asphalt. It radiated heat for a day and half. What are the pros and cons of asphalt over concrete? So the work is all done. Sadly, now all the cars are backed, parked up in every possible space when stationary and racing up the street when not. It's really a pleasure riding the bike on the new asphalt, but the cars are having too much fun as well and I worry for the cats and children. I really need to work on getting the municipality to put a speed bump in place here. Personally, I'd rather use caltrops or launch flywheels into the windshield Mad Max style, but the majority of society would frown upon that.

Second, I have some interesting developments on the orange cat. The porch lady, as she has come to be known, told me that there was another guy who lived on the street who was feeding the orange cat and letting him in the house. I finally met this guy as he was standing almost in front of my house where I was locking my bike and he had the cat in his arms. His name is Louis. Turns out that he was going out to catch a bus and the cat was following him. It had done it before, followed him all the way to Mont-Royal and he was worried he would get hit by a car or lost.

We ended up talking and it turns out that the cat does have a home, sort of. The apartment next door to him is inhabited by a lot of Colombian hippy types who are living there for free while they renovate the upper floors. I guess the landlord is a bit of a hippy himself. They somehow got the cat. So we went over there and talked to them. They seemed like nice guys and did say the cat was theirs. The story goes that two cats were dropped off with one of the guys living there (who was sleeping at the time, which was 6:00 in the evening; whatever) and that one had disappeared and the orange guy was the other one. I offered to get him fixed and they were cool with that and the general notion that it had to be done, but wanted to see what the story was with the sleeping guy. So we said we'd come back tomorrow to figure it out.

In the meantime, another woman, who lives in the apartment above the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall, came by. She also has two cats that she only lets out when she is gardening so she can watch them. She said there was a young man from her church who was looking for a cat. That came by and he did indeed seem like a nice guy, but he was going to keep the cat in an apartment. Louis and I were both not feeling that idea. I told the younger guy that he can always get a really nice already indoor cat at the SPCA and he seemed happy with that idea. Actually kind of seemed like he hadn't even thought of it before.

In any case, the cat is not ours to give and if we get a good answer from the Colombians, I think we'll be happy to know he has a place to go inside in the winter. I'll get him snipped for sure as well. He's called Ali by the way, as in ali gato. I'll keep you posted. Not totally resolved yet, but definitely some good news.

After that whole incident, I got to talking to Louis and it turns out he is a Mile End VIP. He runs the art vending machines you see in Casa Del Popolo and Le Divan Orange. He is also the organizer of ExpoZine. Finally, he wrote the book A Fine Ending, which is all about the salad days of anglo hipsters in Mile End in the 90s, back when rents were cheap. My wife had read it a couple of months ago and remarked how cats had played such a thematic role (you can read her review here). So a minor celebrity and one more responsible, mellow-minded cat lover on our block!

Finally, yesterday I went across the street as I saw a woman on the balcony of the apartment where the guy had supposedly been locked out of. I spoke with her and it turns out she lives there alone. So the dude was a scammer. Nice to know.

Sidewalk repair porn pictures coming. Have a good weekend everyone!