TheBanyanTree: The Garden in the Sky

[Roger Pye]

(There is a Garden in the Sky where the sun shines every day, the grass 
is always green and there are paved and unpaved paths for residents and 
visitors  to walk or run upon. There is a wall around the garden, a gate 
to gain entrance and just inside there is a pool kept full and alive by 
a waterfall. The guardian of the garden, a Golden Dragon, lives in the 
cave behind the waterfall and during the day suns himself on a handy 
rock from where he can watch over the gate.)

    In days long past farmers  in the low land walked their flocks and 
herds up into the Snowy Mountains in the spring and brought them down 
again before winter set in. Local folklore from that time is adamant 
that every year a light snowfall was experienced about six weeks before 
the first proper snow was expected and the sheep and cattle had to be 
started back then at the very latest. Translated into modern times this 
means the first 'real' snow falls about the second week in June and the 
warning fall arrives towards the end of April.

Robin and I were living in her house to the north of Jindabyne when the 
warning snow fell in April 1996 towards the end of a week. On the 
Saturday we went to the recycling sectionat the local tip (landfill) to 
see whether they had any timber I could use for making furniture (my 
occupation then). As we walked across the slushy ground a very small 
kitten with saturated fur and eyes almost closed stumbled against one of 
Robin's boots. With an exclamation she scooped the shivering creature up 
and thrust it inside her jacket.

At home we cleaned the kitten as much as we could and fed it a little 
milk through an eye dropper before introducing it to Lucy, Dinny 
(Dylan), Bosun and Spot. We were sure the kitten was male and called it 
Albert - how wrong we were! Lucy took to Alberta right away, Dinny and 
the two cats tolerated her. So it was Lucy who really raised Alberta and 
after a short time we became used to seeing this big dog walking around 
with a cat's tail hanging out of its mouth!

 From Jindabyne we moved to Middlingbank nr Berridale to live in a 
century-old wooden cottage on a sheep farm. Bosun and Spot slept in the 
old disused porch at the back of the cottage and Alberta in the bathroom 
which was at the end of one of the verandas. The two dogs always slept 
in our bedroom. During the day the older cats were most often outside 
unless the weather was bad, Dinny was inside and Alberta spent a lot of 
her time on the veranda at the front of the cottage with Lucy who was 
chained there except when she was out with us (which was often).

At first we thought Alberta had been a 'dumped' kitten but as the years 
went by we were forced by her eating habits to the conclusion that she 
was 100% feral pussy cat.  Anything edible was fair game - broccoli, 
vegetable scraps, plastic wrapped bread, cheese slices, cauliflower, 
mushrooms disappeared as readily as chcken wings and (whenever she was 
ill) whatever inexpensive good meat we could buy. Her regular diet was 
dried food (science diet) as it is for the others but last year she had 
trouble eating this so we took her to the local vet hospital. "She's 
broken a tooth and one or two of her other teeth aren't so good, I'd 
like to keep her in overnight," said the vet, a young woman. We went 
back 24 hours later - they'd taken two teeth out and cleaned the rest 
and she was ready to come home. "There's a couple of things I think you 
should know about," said the vet. "Like she has a cloudy eye she doesn't 
see much out of, a heart murmur and a delicate chest." I nodded. "We 
know already, she always has had all of those. She's also lactose 
intolerant and her breathing comes and goes. But she also extremely 
resilient, very tough. Can we take her home now?"

Very tough and unwilling to give in to anything. A week or so ago she 
suddenly began falling over without any warning. Maybe her balance 
mechanism was failing or she was having mini-strokes. We kep a close eye 
on her to make sure she wasn't in any pain and didn't fall off anything 
high. Yesterday afternoon it became apparent she was having problems 
breathing and by this morning her whole body was in constant movement to 
get air into her lungs. So we took her to the city emergency animal 
hospital which opens when all the other vets are closed and asked them 
to put her to sleep.

Thirteen years and a few months Alberta graced us with her presence and 
she went on her journey with the dignity one would expect from being the 
Queen of our pet family, the role she had assumed when Spot passed on 
nine years ago. As Robin put her in the cat carrier in the living room 
Woodstock (Ginger Tom), Caspar (black cat) and Miss Ruby (Yorkshire 
Terrier) all gathered round to sniff her for the last time. Out on the 
back deck Matilda (German Shepherd) inspected Alberta in the carrier 
before she went in the pen where she stays when we can't take her with us.

(At 11.45 am today, Sunday 26th July 2009, the gate of the Garden in the 
Sky opened to admit a tabby cat named Alberta and then closed quietly 
behind her. Eagerly awaiting her was a reception party of four - Lucy 
the German Shepherd, Dylan Thomas the Australian Silkie Terrier, Bosun 
the black and white Tabby Cat and Spot the black cat - who all knew 
Alberta from the time she had gone as a kitten to the house in the High 
Country of NSW where they all lived together with their carers Roger and 
Robin.)

roger