Critter Capers
by Margaret Stinson
Back in the dinosaur age (as my children would say) when I was much younger, I worked at a TV station in southern Saskatchewan. This station was surrounded by fields of wheat or oats or barley or some other cereal crop – what did I know, I wasn’t brought up on a farm. But I did find out that where there are grain fields there are mice. And where there are mice, there are cats.
With great foresight on his part, the owner of the station wisely had a feline on the payroll. For mouse-hunting services rendered, said cat had additional food and accommodations in the station – in my office, to be specific.
One spring our ginger cat decided to start a family. We made a big comfy box in the corner of the office for the mom-to-be and were all set for the birth and subsequent care of the little ones. I was in heaven – an entire litter that needed my love and attention – and at work! What a wonderful job!
The kittens grew in beauty and strength and soon were wandering all over the station. As I was the custodian, many minutes were spent looking for the little rapscallions, rounding them up and bringing them back to my office where, of course, they did not stay.
Back in the old days, our music was in the form of records played on a turntable and more than a few times the kittens would jump up on the turntable and take a ride, scratching the record and fouling the airwaves. They stole into the studio during live shows and made their debut appearances for the TV audiences. All of a sudden, a kitten would appear scaling the backdrop curtains, next an arm would be seen reaching for the cat, grabbing it, and then withdrawing as surreptitiously as possible.
One day, one of the announcers was doing an interview on a farm program, when a kitten leapt onto his shoulder. It was quite funny to watch him try to remove the cat – claws and all, as he was conducting the interview. The cameraman slowly panned away from this action, but couldn’t get the entire cat out of the picture without cutting off the left side of the interviewer. I thought this was hilarious and showed the viewers (I maintained) that we were warm and loving people. Management, while cat lovers, thought it was a little disruptive. Thus, once the kittens reached eight or nine weeks of age we advertised for loving homes. Within a week they were all gone. Once again it was back to normalcy. We still kept mom the mouser around but we all missed the kittens.
That was over 30 years ago and I still think of my TV Station Cats – back in the old days when times were not so formal and rushed and when a small television station in a small Saskatchewan city could be a wonderful place to work.
