Our first mistake was probably renaming the cat. It was 6 years old, after all, and had gotten used to “Button.” We just weren’t a “Button” family. But the cat had arrived suddenly after a friend called saying that her 10-month-old son was hospitalized with a respiratory infection. The doctors had told them to get rid of pussy cat.

So Puddy landed at our house, confused, and perhaps a bit freaked out by the eager new owners (me and Jasper). And to add to the confusion, I kept referring to Puddy/Button as a he, even though she’s not. New house, new name, new gender — all in one day. And a brain the size of a half-can of Fancy Feast to process it all.

We were told Puddy was declawed (which isn’t actually a word), but apparently this practice only applies to the front paws. I found this out the hard way when trying to pick her up. Someone at work today looked at me seriously and asked me if I had “had enough.” When I asked what she meant, she said, “Of life” and pointed to my scratched-up, swollen wrists.

Puddy’s first night was an ordeal for all of us. She spent 8 hours mewing and howling at the top of the stairs outside our bedroom door. By 1 a.m. I had indeed had enough. Button was going to the basement. And “Puddy” was gone; it was fully Button again — someone else’s annoying cat that was going to be Fedexed home in the morning. But try as I might, I couldn’t get the little arse-hole (vernacular recommended by Suzy — I was going to say “Little Fucker”) into the basement.

Here are some lessons: 1) You can’t catch a scared cat with a bath towel. 2) They really don’t like being shoo-ed from under the couch with a broom. And, 3) If you approach a cat from below, coming up stairs, it may very well jump at your face. What declawed cats lack in tools they make up for with confidence.

After about 15 minutes of after-midnight mindless hysteria, otherworldly shrieking, and hissing, Button had vanished. At one point I caught a glimpse of shadow and spun around with the broom, nearly knocking Suzy off her feet. It was a surreal family moment – like some wee-hour spontaneous paint ball game, in our house. The night was clearly toast. My heart was in my throat. Suzy looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on a bad hair day. “We can’t do this,” she said. “The cat is going back.”

Button was deep in hiding. So we went to bed, hearts still pounding, wide awake. We should have taken advantage of the moment (and the fact it was still Valentines night) and had sex, but it honestly never crossed my mind at the time. All I could think of was cat scratch fever, the searing carpet burn, and irrationally how sure I was that Puddy/Button was just waiting for us to fall asleep so she could scale the baby gate and mount a cat counter-attack.

“It’s just a cat,” Suzy said. And suddenly I was so glad to be married this Valentine’s eve — she’s so rational. And she loathes pets. We agreed that we’d return Button in the morning.

Not even an hour later, the howling and mewing began again, and continued all night.

Jasper woke up just after 5am — “Mom! Dad! Puddy is calling! Isn’t she awesome?!”

See full article in Macleans.ca

This time of year reminds me of the early ‘80s in Charlottetown. I had just gotten my drivers license and was discovering mobility and sudden popularity in a province with no public transit. It was inevitable that stupid things would ensue, so mid-January weekend wee hours often included screaming through the streets of old neighbourhoods around Victoria Park, headlights off, with at least two people leaning far out the passenger window of my step-dad’s lime green ’82 Cutlass Supreme, flicking lit wooden matches at tinder dry Christmas trees that were discarded at the end of driveways.

The up side is we weren’t drunk. Honestly, I wasn’t really even aware of alcohol until I landed on the beaches of southern France for second-year university (that’s another story entirely). Tree torching was fuelled by long nights hanging with friends, drinking coffee and eating pita sandwiches with wedge fries at Cedars Eatery, which 30 years later remains Charlottetown’s best Lebanese restaurant. Back then I spent more time at Cedars than in school, yet I didn’t discover shish taouk until the mid-nineties. Shame.

As the caffeine-addled driver, it was my job to swerve close enough to the curb so that the matches would arc and drop deep into the dry needles. I’d already established myself, at least with my family, as a bit of a pyromaniac, having lit several grass fires by the tender age of twelve in the open fields behind my house in Winsloe. I used to love how neighbours would dash from their bungalows as the delicate licks of flame danced with the wind across the tips of sun-browned April field weed. One little spark could become a rapidly advancing line of fire a few hundred feet wide in a matter of seconds. Nothing brought the community out faster than a grass fire. Everyone suddenly had a flat spade beating the flames back from BBQ tanks and cedar decks. Up until that point in my life, I had felt no greater power. And I still love the smell of a good grass fire – fragrant, sweet and familiar.

Back in the Cutlass, we knew that tree torching would be sudden and violent, but we figured that needle fires would also be short. And since Christmas trees were at the end of driveways, half-buried in snow, the risk of collateral damage would be relatively low.

But we never found out. No trees burst into flame. Looking back, the fun was in the flicking. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.

A few years later, on graduation day from Colonel Gray high school, I was met in my homeroom class by two police officers. They hauled me off to the principal’s office. The plywood smoking shelter that was built to protect smokers from the cold (imagine that) had been set on fire the night before. The police had determined that the fire was started with my math scribblers.

“Why would I light a fire at school with my own scribblers?” I asked. I was released.

They never found out who did it. I really hated math.

Not only does going horizontal help show things in a new way, it’s a good stretch. And maybe the kids will love you more because for a moment when they walk into the room they will think that you’re dead. And then they’ll be that glad you’re not. Sorry, Jasper. Or if they don’t, that too will provide some valuable insights.

There’s also a great submission in lying down. Think about it: There are whole spaces of our lives where we think things are a certain way just because our eyes are a certain distance from the floor. Like the senses themselves, we accept things are the way they are because of the construction that provides the input. You and I may not be able to agree on how to define the colour “blue” but I can tell how disciplined you are with your kids by checking out the underside of your kitchen table.

To take this a step further, imagine how much better we’d know places if we didn’t just observe them from our cars. Sometimes I like to think I have a certain kinship with Pierre Trudeau because I drive a couple of times a year between Ottawa and Montreal along the 30′ wide space on the highway in a narrow physical band of space/time within which both of our bodies have certainly passed. Our roads are like fibre optic cables. We’re on the way somewhere. I’m often tempted but have never pulled over and randomly stepped into the corn fields past Casselman before the Rigaud bump. And I’m pretty sure PET didn’t either. Think of how the world might be different if people started suddenly doing things that were one slight step outside their normal pattern, their “natural” path. Do you drive the same way to work every day? Always eat the same food? Be honest: Isn’t Missionary getting a little tired?

At one of the lowest points of my childhood I was surrounded by really unhappy people. One day it occurred to me that a few of these lost souls could transform their lives by walking barefoot in the wet grass between the car and the house. Yet, every time, they always, always waited for the rain to abate and dashed hurriedly along the square paving stones. Joy was that close. The sensual delight of wet feet.

This is another reason I love Walden Cabin. The first thing Jasper, Simon and I do after we drive up that narrow winding drive to the cabin for the first time each summer is pee outside. This is not ceremony, just habit. We’re home. We’re comfortable. We’re off the path.

The last two weeks has been a relatively dark time, again, and what has kept me going is this simple perspective. No matter how bleak my mind gets, all I have to do to reconnect with joy is peel off my socks, or stare into the flickering embers of a wood fire, listen closely for the creak of ice in the trees, or lie spread eagle on my back on the floor of my kitchen.

And, bonus! There’s a gummy bear under my fridge, and I’m gonna eat it.

Here’s a scoop, straight from the mouth of my dental hygienist. Folks, you don’t have to use dental floss!

Leslie (I only know her first name) has been scraping tartar off my back molars since 1989. She’s very gentle and saccharine in all the most positive ways.

My last appointment with her was December 23. As she lowered my chair back flat she said she was glad I was going to be her last client of 2011. Apparently, the dude in who ended 2010 acted like “a jerk in the chair” and “You’re not a jerk, Stuart.” It’s funny how confident someone can be about who you really are when they only see you for 90 minutes every nine months and your mouth is agape and stuffed with buzzing metal instruments. Still, I found it hard to believe that anyone would be a jerk to Leslie, or how acting like that would be smart considering how much power she has in her hands. Leslie is a kindred spirit in a smock.

Anyway, after the usual scrape and swish, she told me I was in good shape. There was very little build-up, and the crack in my mandibular bicuspid hadn’t widened. Maybe this is TMI, but I chew nuts on the left side to avoid pain.

As she was packing up, Leslie also volunteered that she thought red wine was probably my biggest current oral foe (something I’m painfully aware of lately). Then she ripped off her mask and declared that my gums were “the healthiest they’ve been in 15 years!”

“Stuart, there was that blip in 2008 when you came in all puffy and inflamed after that bad flu, but right now you have awesome gums!”

I felt a surge of pre-Christmas pride. And then I blurted out: “Yeah, and I don’t even floss!”

She rolled her eyes. This confession was no news to Leslie. She had stopped hounding me about using the tape back when Paul Martin was PM.

Apparently, I’ve inadvertently discovered a better way, based on a hunch that Leslie confirmed. Sort of. The new thinking is that if you use a motorized toothbrush properly, you don’t have to floss. This is not the official line of the dental industry. When I asked if she agreed that people could toss the floss, Leslie did that demure little avoided-gaze-but-nod thing. Maybe the Dental Association lords it over the hygienists to keep quiet. I’m sure there are a lot of deeply vested interests among floss manufacturers. Who knows what kind of torture techniques they would use on anyone who threatened their bottom line. They are dentists, after all.

But you heard it here first. If you’re among the 15% of people who actually floss, I’ve just handed you back a few days of your life, plus an end to the off-putting job of picking gunky strings off the nightstand. And for the rest of us who never touch the goddamned stuff, this news means there’s one less thing to feel guilty about.

And that makes me smile.

I love my in-laws. They’ve always welcomed me like I’m their own son. George is a terrific guy, and Freda and I are very close. On several occasions over the years since Suzy and I married in 1999, Freda has put her arm around me and told me very seriously that she’d like to remain my friend if Suzy and I ever get a divorce. I can think of no more flattering a tribute – even if it makes me wonder. But after six weeks of sleeping on an air mattress in their dining room, by the time we left the in-laws’ for our new place, they were glad to see the tail end of us.

Six weeks with my wife’s parents. Yep. And it was only as we approached the sunset of that long autumn stay that I realized that Freda and I had been using the same toothbrush – the whole time.

Apparently, the reaction to this kind of sharing is not universal. By talking about this, I have discovered that several people I thought I knew well always share a toothbrush with their spouse. One couple even keeps a “toothbrush jar” with several in it that they randomly grab when the need arises. This also conveniently services surprise overnight guests. You never know whose you’re gonna get.

What awesome randomness! Don’t you just wonder: If you have a “toothbrush jar,” what does it indicate about your other choices and preferences? Do people who share a toothbrush also do joint chequing? Is the inverse true? What else do they share?

It just goes to show that we take a lot at face value in our society. The streets in my new neighbourhood are uniformly straight; the walkways are all tidily shoveled. But you really only have to scratch the surface (or notice what’s on the back of the sink) to discover fascinating differences that can make life more interesting and rich.

So here’s some advice I’d like to share: 1) Tonight, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Trying new things is good for your brain. 2) The next time you’re in Shoppers, go all crazy and buy several toothbrushes that are the same colour. Imagine what this simple action will do for your marriage. Oh, and toss the dental floss. More on that tomorrow.

It was only my fourth scuba dive, and my second time in the clear aquamarine waters of the Red Sea at Aqaba. I couldn’t wait to revisit the colourful corals and experience the feeling of flight in schools of darting clown fish (a la Nemo). As we walked backwards on the sandy bottom in our gear and flippers deeper into the water, Alison said she had taken the plunge over 200 times. She was an advanced diver. This didn’t surprise me; the brilliant photos on her Web site and her stints with National Geographic were a testament to a lifetime of adventure as a skilled travel photographer. So here we were on the same press tour in Jordan, getting deeper. It was day 3 of our week-long tour, and I had been impressed by Alison’s calm and warm personality. She had spent a few months with the Dalai Lama, and it showed. This made her nervousness about this dive (and the fact that she had suddenly picked me as her dive buddy) even more peculiar.

The water was at our waists. We were side by side. She turned to me with a look of urgency in her sharp blue eyes.

“I had a bad accident in Laos a couple of years ago, and I’m not sure how my body will cope with this dive. Can you keep an eye on me? My doctor told me not to do this. I could hemorrhage.”

“Ah, OK. Sure,” I said, “how bad was it?”

We were now floating.

“Well, pretty bad. My heart and lungs were ripped out and now my organs are held together by a mesh bag.”

“Oh.”

Then we were under. We descended to about 100′ – the maximum depth for a recreational dive. Every few metres we exchanged a glance and a thumbs up. I kept expecting to see blood seep from her ears. Hello, sharks!

The dive was beautiful and remarkable only for its sights, not its tragedy. Alison emerged intact and relieved. She’s a good buddy. Until I found a published account of her accident on-line today, I didn’t know just how serious her accident really was. She wasn’t kidding, and now I can understand why she was nervous.

>> Check out the incredible photo collection of Photo Journalist Alison Wright.

I have to say that I was shaken by this today. I mean, I know that “from concentrate” means “including the peel and the seeds in your morning beverage too” (something my wise wife has drilled into me in 11 years of marriage), but the notion that oranges are green — THAT shook me today, to the pulp.

Could it be true that something so obvious could be false? How could it be that all these years I’ve thought oranges were orange, that they would hang all cheery and plump and warm and inviting from branches — that people with sun-kissed skin would meander calmly through rows of trees and reach up to gently twist these little ripened orbs to place them lovingly into baskets destined for tissue-stuffed boxes  to be sent to my local Loblaws.

Don’t take this away from me, Andrea. I have to look into this some more.