Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Cat show - Jim and Molly the Cat

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

"Galway began flushing the toilet again in the autumn…"For all you cat lovers out there, today is your day. Today on the show we’re all about our feline friends, with two hilarious stories about the cats in Dave & Morley’s neighbourhood.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. It's been brought to my attention that I have been displaying an unfair bias in this podcast. Up to now, we have had not one, not two, but three episodes. devoted solely to talking about dogs. And as a dog owner and someone who is allergic to cats, I can say that that is exactly as it should be. But the cat lovers among you have pointed out the imbalance. And you are right. Of course, Stewart wrote some fantastic stories about cats.

Whenever life in Dave and Morley's household seemed to be rolling along on a relatively even keel, you could rely on Galway to liven things up. So for all you, cat lovers out there, today is your day. Today on the show, we are all about our feline friends. We're going to start with this story. This is Stuart McLean with Jim and Molly the Cat. On New Year's Day, Dave's neighbor, Jim Schofield called his mom in Nova Scotia. Conversation was brief. Jim's mother gets anxious when she's speaking long distance. She's old enough to believe that long distance is a shameful waste of money. As usual, they talk just long enough for Irene to give Jim an update on her sciatica

and a report on the price of bananas at the Lawrence Town grocery store. And as usual, pretty soon after that, it was time to say goodbye. And Jim and Irene slipped into the same exchange that they have had every New Year since Jim was in his 20s. Happy New Year, said Jim. It'll only be happy for me, said Jim's mom, if you find yourself a wife and settle down. Now, Jim is what people used to call a confirmed bachelor. It's a designation and a life with which Jim is entirely comfortable. He's had girlfriends over the years and various relationships,

but he's never met anyone who could convince him that he would be any good at marriage. Marriage, Jim suspects, is something that is not in his genes. Jim grew up as an only child, the only child of a single mom. He lived alone with Irene in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, South Mountain. When Jim was small, Irene told him that his father had died from a wound he received in the war. She said, his father died shortly after Jim was born. Discretion was not a skill possessed by many of Jim's extended family. Jim learned the truth from his uncle.

Learned after one too many glasses of punch at a Thanksgiving dinner. It was the Thanksgiving that Jim turned nine. One night when Jim was only a few months old, his father had apparently sat up in bed and announced, matter-of-factly, that marriage wasn't at all what he had imagined it to be. And before his wife could wipe the sleep from her eyes, he had packed a small bag and was out the door. never returned. Despite her insistence that Jim should marry, Irene never remarried herself. I've had my

kick at the can, thank you very much, was all she'd say if anyone asked. But it wasn't just his parents failed marriage that convinced Jim to avoid nuptials of his own. It was his grandparents' reputedly happy marriage that really put him off. Married for over 50 years at the end, Lloyd and Ed Hittcox ran their marriage like an ongoing siege. The happy part of Lloyd and Edna's happy marriage came from the occasional victories they scored in the war of their lives. The happy part was the small acts of torture they inflicted on each other. Every Sunday night, for example, Edna produced the only dessert of the week, a warm pineapple upside-down cake. She made pineapple upside-down cake because Lloyd had once said he hated it.

In the summer, after everyone else had eaten their dessert, Lloyd would take himself down to Miller's General's store and buy an O. Henry Bar as a consolation. In the winter, however, he'd remain indoors and wallow and self-pity. But he never wallowed for long. Because at precisely 8 p.m. each evening, just as Edna had finished the dishes, just as Edna was sitting down to relax for the night, Lloyd would produce his bagpipes and serenade her for half an hour. Serenade was not a word that Edna would have used to describe it. Edna said the sound of Lloyd playing his bagpikes each evening was like having fingernails drawn down a blackboard. Down the blackboard of her brain.

As Jim grew older, he grew to admire his grandparents' combative creativity. But he knew that he didn't have the fortitude to engage in that kind of. of marital bliss. So Jim is content, quite happy, in fact, to find himself on the far side of 50 and living alone. Well, that's not entirely true, because Jim doesn't live alone. He lives with Molly. Molly is Jim's 20-year-old ginger tabby cat. Now, most people who meet Jim wouldn't peg him as a cat man, and he isn't. In fact, Jim never had any intention of having any pets at all. And then one afternoon he went out to the garage to find his step ladder, and it was while he was rummaging around back there that he heard a pathetic mew from the back alley.

And when he went out to investigate, there was Molly. Tiny, dirty, thin and sad, perched tentatively on top of a garbage can. When she saw Jim, she began to mew with such intensity that Jim did something completely out of character. He went to the kitten and he picked her up. He took her inside and he gave her some canned tuna in a bowl of water. After a few phone calls and visits to the neighbors, Jim printed up some handbills and he tacked them up on telephone poles and at local businesses around the neighborhood.

He called the Humane Society. No one came forward to claim Molly. In the end, Jim figured it was for the best. In the short while that they had been together, Molly had made herself thoroughly at home. And despite her forwardness in the alley, she turned out to be more or less self-sufficient. She expected her food dish to be full and her litter box to be empty. But other than that, she seemed to expect nothing from Jim. When she was feeling particularly friendly, she might sit next to him on the couch and allow herself to be petted.

And sometimes, especially if the house was cold, she'd sleep at the foot of Jim's bed. but most of the time she ignored him, or at least gave the impression that she was just tolerating his presence in her house. That was 20 years ago. It's been 20 years since Molly showed up in Jim's life. So it shouldn't have been such a surprise to Jim when, at their last checkup, just before Christmas, the vet announced that Molly was failing. Her thyroid, said the vet, it's underactive. She'll need medication every day. And then he added her kidney functions down too, but there's nothing we can do about that except keep an eye on her.

Jim came home from the vet with a bottle of pills and a sense of foreboding. He set the little cage down that he used to carry her to the vet. He set it down on the kitchen floor and he opened the door, and Molly stayed put. Jim got down on his hands and knees, and he peered into the carrier. Molly was lying at the back of the dark box. Why didn't you tell me you were sick, he said. He stuck a little butter on the end of his finger and he wiggled it in the front of the door of the cage.

And Molly stood up uncertainly and she licked up the butter. And when she finished, they both curled up on the sofa and had a nap. Jim gave Molly her first pill that evening. It was a battle of heroic proportions. The only instructions the vet had given Jim were to put the pill at the back of the cat's tongue. You try that sometime. Vet didn't mention how you're supposed to get yourself near the tongue of an angry cat. By the time Jim managed to get the pill into Molly, his hands were covered in tiny bite marks.

He looked like somebody had been trying to staple him to something. The two pills a day, Jim figured he'd be shredded by the weekend. By the third day, however, Jim is he. figured out how to get the tiny pill thoroughly engulfed in a glob of butter right down Molly's throat. And I don't care what it does to your cholesterol levels, Jim Tolbert. By the fifth day, his shirt sleeves were stained with butter and his arms with scratches. And an ugly thought occurred to Jim. He had booked a flight home to visit his mother. He was supposed to be leaving in less than a week.

Now, usually when he's away, Jim gets dead. Dave's kids, Stephanie or Sam or sometimes Kenny Wong, to come in to take care of his cat. But he didn't feel right asking them to subject themselves to this pill routine. He needed to find somebody who could wrestle a sick cat and get the bed over her. He got Gwen's name from the vet. Gwen was a part-time veterinarian assistant who did cat sitting on the side. She's great with all animals, but she's passionate about cats, the receptionist.

What arrived at Jim's door a few evenings later, she came to meet Molly and receive her instructions. She didn't look to Jim like the sort of woman who was passionate about anything. She was wearing a tired wool tuk and a dull blue parker with Applicate penguins marching around the ham. She appeared to be in her early 40s,

earnest looking with a broad forehead and a small mouth. The only remarkable thing about her was her shock of orange hair. As he took Gwen's coat and hat, Jim stared at her hair and wondered if it could possibly be her natural color. So, said Gwen, as soon as she had kicked off

her boots, what's Molly's routine? Jim stared at her blankly. Routine, said Jim. Her day, said Gwen impatiently. What does she like to do? What does she like to do? Jim realized he was repeating

everything that Gwen said. She's a cat, said Jim. As if that explained everything. It didn't seem to explain anything to Gwen. Gwen was still staring at him expectantly. So Jim tried again. She's a 20-year-old cat. She sleeps.

She eats. If I'm lucky, she uses her litter box. What about exercise? Said Gwen, undaunted. What do you do about it? exercise? Well, I go to the gym, said Jim. Gwen was glaring at him. Okay, fine, I used to, said Jim. I was asking about Molly, said Glenn. Sometimes, said Jim, apologetically, she goes outside. Gwen looked horrified. Gwen looked as if Jim had just said that he used his cat for

scientific experiments. She goes outside, says Gwen. Don't you know that the average life expectancy of an outdoor cat's only two years? She's 20, said Jeff. She's just been very lucky, said Gwen. She could get hit by a bus any time. 20 cat years are about the equivalent of 95 human years. Jim was thinking, by the time he reached 95, the idea being run over by a bus might be the best of the alternatives. But looking at the alarms streaking across Gwen's face, Jim decided not to voice the thought. He offered Gwen a chair instead. I'd rather meet Molly, said Gwen. Gwen spent half an hour with Molly and Jim that night, and she made it abundantly clear that she felt Molly was being taken for granted, under-stimulated, she said. At the door, pulling her

toot down low over her orange hair, her expression towards Jim, softened slightly. You know, Jim, she said quietly, cats are people too. too. Well, actually, said Jim. And then he saw the softness disappear from Gwen's face like butter on a cat's tongue. And for the second time, Jim decided not to finish his thought. Instead, Jim said, thanks for coming. And Gwen headed down the front steps. Jim got the call at his mother's an hour and a half after he arrived in Nova Scotia. Thought you'd want an update, said Gwen. Huh? said Jim.

Jim had hardly been away from his house longer than he was on an average day. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder about Molly. She seems relatively perky, said Gwen, but I think she misses you. Oh, said Jim. It was all Jim could think of saying. I do hope that woman is calling from her own house, said his mother. She's not calling long distance on your phone, is she? Gwen called Jim every day he was away.

At the end of the week, Jim knew more about the state of his geriatric cat than he would have if he'd been living with her. He knew how much water she'd consumed. He knew if and when she used her litter box. He knew how long she played with her new fur mouse. Not long. And how long she'd been sleeping. Hours. Jim couldn't believe how Gwen went on.

But if he were being honest, he'd admit that he was great. grateful for the calls, because after a couple of days, Jim and his mother had reverted to the relationship that they had shared when Jim had last lived at home. That was when he was a teenager, and when Irene focused on the myriad of ways that Jim could improve himself. And Jim responded to all her helpful suggestions with a sulky silence. You know what would help you out? Irene had asked three days into his visit. A nice pair of slacks. I think we should go out and get you a nice pair of slacks. And then later the same day, Irene plunked a small box on the kitchen table. I bought you some green tea, she said. Betty says green tea helps with weight loss.

I imagine you've already tried everything else. A few days after that, she got down to the nitty-gritty. You know where you could meet some nice ladies, she said? The bingo. I meet the nicest ladies at the bingo. By contrast, Gwen's suggestions about Molly, and she had more than a few, didn't seem so bad. I've taken the liberty of making a few changes, said Gwen cryptically on Jim's last day away. Jim didn't ask what the changes were. When Jim got back home, Molly was standing expectantly at the front door. When the cat saw it was him, her tail dropped and she turned away as if in disappointment. Hey, said Jim, following the cat.

cat down the hallway. Wasn't that he was expecting a warm welcome. Usually when he came home, Jim found Molly curled up on the couch. Usually if she gave him any response at all, she lifted her head with an air of bored indifference.

But she had been standing at the door. And Jim was surprised to realize how hurt, he felt, that Molly had obviously been expecting someone else. Hey, he said. In the kitchen, Jim found a two-page-type memo taped to the fridge.

Gwen had logged all of the medication and food that Molly had consumed each day. She had switched Molly to a more expensive cat food. The feline geriatric digestive system requires some dietary accommodation she had written. She had bought her a sheepskin sleeping mat. She had introduced her to organic catnip. And Jim had to admit that Molly looked better for all the changes. Her coat had a shine. Her fur seemed brighter, so orange in fact that it looked like Gwen's hair.

It was two nights after Jim got home that Molly had her seizure. Jim had opened a beer and was about to sit down to a bowl of homemade chili when Molly suddenly got up from the sofa, stumbled over to a corner of the living room and began to pant. Her sides were shut. her small mouth was open. Her eyes looked glassy and strange. When Jim put his hand on her back, she growled softly. Jim felt a mix of panic and dread wash over him. He watched the cat shaking and heaving in the corner for a few more seconds, and then he dashed to the phone. Gwen, he said,

when she answered, something's wrong with Molly. By the time Gwen got over to Jim's place, Molly had settled. She was still in the corner, but she was lying down. She was still breathing heavily, but her eyes had cleared. Gwen crouched down and she put her hand out. Before long, Molly was sitting on Gwen's lap and Gwen was stroking her ears and whispering to Molly, their two orange heads as close as if they were sharing a secret. Molly began to purr. And then suddenly with a flick of her tail, she leapt down and she headed into the kitchen to her bowl. Gwen, sat alone on the couch, looking thoughtful. You might want to bring her in to see the doctor for a checkup, said Gwen,

but there probably isn't much that she'll be able to do. Jim nodded. You know, Gwen said kindly. Twenty years is pretty remarkable. She's not going to last forever. Yeah, said Jim, I know. There was a moment of silence, and then Gwen said, That sure smells good.

Jim asked Gwen to stay for dinner. It seemed like the only polite thing to do. So Gwen and Jim sat at the kitchen table and ate chili together. And after a few mouthfuls, Gwen put her spoon down. And she said, I think what you just did is terrific. What, said Jim? Spending a week with your mother, Gwen replied. Oh, said Jim, taken back a little bit.

Looking after cats, said Gwen, even sick cats, that's easy. Looking after parents, that's hard. They're both quiet for a few minutes then, and then the conversation began again. Gwen told Jim about her divorce, and Jim told Gwen about Brenda. My neighbor Dave's cousin, he explained. She drives a taxi in Cape Breton. She hooked up with a mechanic from Sydney last spring, so that was that. Gwen nodded sympathetically.

Yeah, it never would have worked out, Jim added. She hated cats. They both looked at each other then awkwardly. And it dawned on Jim that he didn't know if Gwen had cats. I had two, said Gwen, but I just have one now. How come, said Jim? Oh, laughed Gwen. I can't have more than two cats at a time.

if I had more than two, I'd be one of those crazy cat ladies with a smelly house and bright orange hair, wouldn't I? After Gwen laughed, Molly came up to Jim as he stood at the sink, washing the dishes. She purred around his ankles until he bent down and scratched her behind the ears. She looked smug like a cat that had swallowed a canary. You big fake, said Jim. In the days and weeks that followed Molly's seizure, there seemed to be, plenty of reasons for Jim to call Gwen. He wanted to tell her about Molly's vet appointment and about how

much she enjoyed her new sleeping mat. He called a laugh with her about his mother's latest advice, and eventually he called to invite her for another bowl of the chili that she'd like so much. As the year unfolds, Gwen and Jim will see more of each other. Most of the time they'll hang out at Jim's house with Molly. Sometimes they'll leave her sitting in the living room window while they make an evening stroll through the neighborhood. Despite all the time they'll spend together, despite his mother's New Year's request, Jim won't be thinking of marriage anytime soon. Yet when spring arrives, Jim will realize that he and Molly are approaching the 21st anniversary of their meeting in the alley. 21 years with anyone is no small accomplishment

even if that someone is a cat and one day in May as the leaves of Virginia creeper green the garage walls along the alley Jim's going to find himself thinking that maybe he's finally ready to let another person into his life he'd never met it to anybody but Gwen but the thought has occurred to Jim

that this is exactly what Molly was trying to tell him and as he and Molly shed their winter coats and seek out sunbeams in the backyard, Jim will stare at Molly and see not an old tabby in her last days, but the unpredictability of life itself. You befriend a hungry cat. Who wouldn't do that? And 21 years later, your life is totally different. Twenty-one years later, you find yourself thinking about something you'd never have dreamed. Thank you very much. That was the story we called Jim and Molly the Cat. We recorded that story in Whistler, British Columbia. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another Dave and Morley cat story. So stick around. Welcome back.

This one's a classic. This is Stuart McLean with Toilet Train. the cat. Galway, the cat, arrived in Dave and Morley's life, as you might remember, courtesy of Dave's sister Annie. Annie left Galway with Dave when she returned to Nova Scotia after she had lived in and around Boston for almost a decade. The cat, Lean and beige, arrived with an ominous warning. I don't like to say this out loud, Warren Annie, but whenever the cat's around, things seem to go wrong. Annie had named the cat Galway after the American poet Galway Canal, a gesture of affection for the poet's work.

It didn't take long, however, for Dave to recognize that the cat, whether by coincidence or some quirk of destiny, had a poet's sensibility, being shy to the point of mutinous and failing in any real sense to make connections in her new family. She terrorized Arthur, the dog, picked on Dave, and largely ignored Morley and Stephanie. Only Sam, then nine, now ten years old, seemed able to meet Galway on equal ground. Galway had been living with Dave and Morley for maybe two years before she began to over-groom.

Dave isn't sure when it began. It was two years ago in the middle of the winter when he first noticed she had licked the hair off both of her front paws. It was not long after when he noticed there were also bald spots on her hind legs. the vet suggested the sleepers. Those little one-piece pajamas, he said, the ones you put babies in. With the snaps.

You cut out the legs and a bit at the back, you know, so... Dave said you're kidding. The vet said it'll stop her licking. Sam thought Galway looked cute in the pajamas. She looks like a monkey, he said. I've always wanted a monkey. Galway thought otherwise and disappeared. She was somewhere in the house.

She emptied her food dish during the night, and you could sense her shadowy presence, but no one saw her. It makes you wonder, said Dave, if there are other animals moving around the house you never say. Galway reappeared abruptly after a week one evening while Dave was watching television. He had the uneasy sense that someone was watching him.

And when he looked up, there was Galway, in her jammies. sitting on top of the bookshelves, staring at him with disdain. She was still around the next morning, but she didn't acknowledge anyone. And she started grooming again. She started with the little balls on Stephanie's bedspread. In two days, Galway licked Stephanie's bedspread flat. Then Morley got up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom and caught Galway grooming her toothbrush.

She didn't do that again. Instead, she moved on to Arthur, the dog. One afternoon, Dave came home and found Arthur splayed out on the floor with Galway perched on his back, grooming his ear. Arthur usually bounds to the front door whenever anyone comes up the walk. This time Arthur looked up at Dave self-consciously,

but instead of getting up to greet him, he sighed contentedly and dropped his head back to the floor. I don't think she's necessarily crazy, said, Dave, maybe not even neurotic. I think she's bored. I think she needs a challenge. And that's when Dave decided to toilet train the cat. If I'm going to take the time to teach her things, they might as well be useful things, he said. And anyways, it's a skill that seems to dovetail with her interests. Dave had seen something on television about a cat who could use a toilet. actually what he had seen on television was a promo for an item about a toilet-trained cat.

He hadn't seen the item itself, but he saw the cat sitting on the toilet, and he thought it couldn't be too hard to figure out how to do it. Like teaching any animal a new trek, the most important part would be to move slowly. The most important part would be patience. Dave decided he'd begin by moving Galway's litter box out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. He decided he'd do it in stages so he wouldn't have. upset her. He started by moving the box from the corner of the kitchen, out into the hall. He set it at the bottom of the hall stairs. At dinner time, Galway wandered through the hall,

stopped abruptly and stared at the litter box for a full minute, and then slowly and deliberately walked into the kitchen and dumped on the floor where her box belonged, staring deliberately at Dave while she did it. I was moving too fast, said Dave. I tried to take it. I tried to take her too far, too fast. He brought the litter box back into the kitchen and placed it a couple of feet away from its original position in the corner. It took him two months to coax the box and Galway out of the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs, and into the upstairs bathroom. By April, Galway was doing her business in the cardboard litter box in the bathroom right outside Dave and Morley's bedroom. The next step was lifting the box from her.

the floor to the top of the toilet. If he could get Galway to use the box while it was perched on the toilet, Dave figured it would be nothing to cut a hole in the bottom and eventually get rid of it all together. No more kitty litter, said Dave, this is actually going to work. He believed that. Not wanting to repeat his early mistake, Dave decided he'd moved the box up to the level of the toilet seat by imperceptible degrees. Once he got it to the right level, he could slide it over and onto the toilet. He chose May the 1st for the beginning of the ascent.

On May the 1st, he balanced the litter box on a couple of books and waited to see what would happen. What happened was Galway looked at her litter box and then dumped in the bathtub. You have to expect setback, said Dave, the optimist. Not in my bathtub, I don't, said Marley. But Dave kept at it. By mid-June, Galway had stopped grooming.

By the end of the month, most of her hair had grown back, and to everyone's surprise, she was jumping, albeit resentfully, into her litter box, which by then Dave had perched on a stack of books beside the toilet at seat height. We're almost there, he said one night. First of June, I'm going to tie the box onto the seat. I didn't really believe we'd get this far. He sounded like a figure skating coach.

When July began, Dave had the box resting on the toilet seat with a hole cut in the middle, and to everyone's amazement, who would have believed it? Galway was actually climbing into the box and doing her business through the hole. As much as possible, Dave would try to be there to flush as soon as she was done. A cat has an instinctive need to cover up her business. It seemed to be the least that he could do. He tried to impress this on everyone else to be there to flush when he couldn't.

And then one evening, they were downstairs having supper, And the upstairs toilet suddenly flushed, and everyone stopped eating, and they looked at each other and Morley said, who was that? And Dave said, sweet Jesus. And he dropped his cutlery, and he lurched upstairs, and there was Galway, standing in her litter box with her head at the hole, watching the water swirling around and around in the toilet below her. Who would have believed it?

Dave was ecstatic. He was home-free. He'd keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all it was left. He'd keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all it was left was a cardboard toilet seat cover. Eventually he could do away with that and then maybe he'd write a book. Get rich. And then out of the blue, disaster struck. It struck at 10 one night while Dave was watching the news on television.

The toilet flushed. And Dave looked around, Morley was beside him, Sam was in his room, Stephanie was out, the small smile that was tugging at the corner of Dave's mouth widened, pride before the fall. As Dave sat in front of the television feeling prideful, a hideous shriek filled the house. A piercing shriek of desperation unlike anything Dave had heard in his life. A howling, yowling, wailing wall of terror. Morley reached over and gripped Dave's harm. The shriek was so horrifyingly loud that it lifted the hair off both of their necks. Dave thought there's a maniac loose upstairs, hacking Sam apart with an axe.

Except it sounded worse, worse than that, worse than murder. So desperately worse that it was no longer the sound of murder, it was murder itself. Come to life on his second floor. Murder was in his house and it sounded just like, someone trying to flush a cat down the toilet. Dave said, oh my God. He pried Morley's hand free and he flew up the stairs. Sam, who was already up the stairs, was on his way down, his eyes as wide as saucers. There's a huge sewer rat climbing out of the toilet, he said. He pushed past his father and went right out the front door. Dave threw himself into the bathroom. He had to look twice to be sure it was Galway.

The bottom of the cardboard litter box had given away just as the toilet had flushed. Galway had fallen into the toilet at its fullest. She had plugged the hole so the water and the bowl couldn't escape. She was drenched, her wet, matted hair pressed to her rat thin body, the toilet slurping and sloshing and overflowing, Galway yowling and clinging to the rim of the bowl, as the centrifugal force of the water slowly drags, her around, Dave watched her make one complete rotation, and then without thinking, Dave reached

out to pull her to safety. He had heard all the warnings about going near drowning people. He had missed the ones about drowning cats. When he reached out with his arms, Galway sunk her claws deeply into his wrists, and Dave screamed, and he flung the cat over his head. the whiplash effect launched her the length of the hall. She landed in a soggy and pathetic pile of wet fur in front of Sam's bedroom door. Then she hit the ground running and they didn't see her for another week.

Now this, as I said, all happened last summer, the summer before the one we've just come through. Dave put her litter box back in the kitchen and you would have thought she would have never ventured back into the bathroom again. Strangely, she did. she began flushing the toilet again in the autumn. She didn't use it, mind you. Wouldn't even get on the seat. She'd get onto the bathtub and then jump onto the sink, and from there she could reach over and with her front paw,

push the lever on the toilet tank, and stare at the water as it went around and around. She always liked that part, said Dave. Now, this seemed harmless enough until Arthur started to get into the at. Arthur and the cat would get in the bathroom together. Galway would flush and then Arthur would bark his approval. Callway started knocking things into the toilet before she flushed up. Lobby pins, toothpaste, bottles of nail polish, hair brushes. They had the plumber in three times before they figured this out. Once they did, they cleared the top of the tank,

and then Arthur began bringing her things. Dave caught Arthur mooching towards the bathroom with one of Sam's Warhammer figures concealed in his jowls. They began closing the bathroom door for a few weeks Galway sat and stared at the closed door in indignation. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would sit there and yell, but they didn't give in. And eventually she forgot about it, and so did everyone else. Which is why no one thought to tell Dave's cousin Brenda she should keep the upstairs bathroom door shut. The one night she slept in the house, alone this summer. She came to Toronto for the first time ever this summer against her will. She wouldn't have come to Toronto on her own accord. Brenda gets nervous whenever she has to go to Halifax.

But she won a return ticket in the Elks meat raffle. Third prize. Whenever Brenda thought about going to Toronto, she started to sweat. All the traffic and people pushing around you, you could get swallowed up in a city like that. and never be heard of again. Brenda imagined there were people from Cape Breton who had gone to Toronto, walking around aimlessly, looking for a way home.

Too shy to ask directions. One night she was lying in bed, worrying, tossing, and turning, and thinking of all the things that could go wrong when the worst of all possible thoughts occurred to her, she phoned her mother in a panic. What if I like it? She wouldn't have gone if she could have got out of it,

but everyone knew she had won the ticket. She arrived at the end of July at 9 in the morning, exhausted from the effort it took to get the plane off the ground. Had no idea flying was so tiring. She arrived so exhausted that the next morning a Saturday when Dave and Morley said they had to deliver Sam to camp, Brenda said she'd stay at home alone. She wasn't crazy about the idea of being alone at night,

but she wasn't crazy about getting back into a car either. The drive from the airport had been fearsome cars and trucks, hurtling at them from every direction. There were 18 lanes of traffic. She listened politely when Dave gave her directions to a neighborhood cafe. Yeah, sure. Like she was going to go out at night.

As soon as everyone left, which was two in the afternoon, Brenda locked the doors, checked the windows, closed the curtains, and then she got out the little neighborhood map Dave had sketched for her and she ripped it into pieces and flushed it down the toilet

in case she lost her mind and was tempted to use it. She made her own supper, craft dinner, and she went to bed at 9 o'clock, which was really 10 o'clock, her time. And she got up once to make sure the stove was off, and again to check the back door, and then she lay in the back bedroom with her eyes screwed shut

and her fist clenched, following each police siren to see if it was heading her way, monitoring the strange noises of the strange house. She fell into a restless half-sleep shortly after 11, and then she woke up with a start, her heart pounding just after midnight when the toilet flushed. Brenda had read how some burglars leave unspeakable things behind them when they leave the scenes of their crime. She had never read about burglars who used the toilet before they began. Just her luck to get a weird one.

She lay in bed, motionless, everything clamped tight, Maybe he'd go away. Maybe he didn't know she was there. If he came into her room, she'd try and scare him away by snoring. The toilet flushed again. And suddenly she understood what was going on. Of course he knew she was there. This wasn't a burglar in the bathroom.

It was a killer. He wasn't going to the toilet. He was sending her a message. He was going to kill and dismember her, and then he was going to flush her down the toilet. Brenda did the only sensible thing she could think of doing under the circumstances. She jumped out of bed, screwed her eyes shut, and leapt out the bedroom window. Dave's neighbor, Jim Schofield, who happened to be sitting in his backyard and saw it happen,

said it was the most remarkable thing he ever saw in his life. I thought it was morally, he said. I'm sitting there, and there's nothing. No noise or bang. or anything, not a thing, and then all of a sudden out she flew. Brenda landed on the roof of the gardening shed in Dave's backyard. She landed on her feet, like a cat. And she stood there in her nighty looking around, a few cuts on her arms,

a big bruise on her shin, a sprained ankle, but nothing serious. Jim looked at her across the fence. They made eye contact. And then they both looked up at the same time at the broken window that she had sailed, through, Galway standing there on the window ledge, flicking her tail at the moon. They looked back at each other again. Still, they haven't said a word here. And then Jim, who comes from the Annapolis Valley, said, nice night. Dave tells me he's talking about visiting Brenda in Cape Breton. And there's even talk of Brenda coming back at Christmas.

Brenda's told everyone that Toronto wasn't so bad that it's easy enough to meet people as long as you go out at night. That was toilet training the cat. That is so funny. I've heard that story so many times and it always gets me. I loved listening to that one again. It reminds me, every year we used to get these amazing bundles of drawings

delivered to the vinyl cafe offices at CBC. We knew a bunch of teachers used to use Stewart's stories in the classrooms. I think they still do. and toilet training the cat was a huge favorite, especially with the kids in elementary school. You can see why. Some of those teachers would have the kids draw pictures based on the story, and then they'd send them to Stewart. And he loved them. They were brilliant pictures, and it was so funny to see the way those kids pictured that scene.

All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with more from Dave and Morley. It was a summer that Jim Schofield had his heart attack. The episode, said Jim. It was an episode. Except it was more than an episode. Jim went to the emergency room and three in the morning with all the classic symptoms. Indigestion.

A pain that started in his chest and radiated down his arm and up into his jaw. And a general sense of doom. Well, I always have a general sense of doom, said Jim. It wasn't a serious attack. I didn't lose any heart function, said Jim. But it was serious enough. It was a warning shot, said Dave. I guess, said Jim.

Anyway, summer is done and dusted. The leaves are dying, but Jim is fine. He had bypass and went through rehab, stopped smoking, started exercising, a walking program. Whatever work, said Dave. The idea of losing Jim was intolerable. It's not clear who thought up the defibrillator. You're joking, said Jim. Well, not for you, said Dave.

It's for everyone. It's for the neighborhood. This is a high-risk neighborhood. Lots of men, over 50. The idea was they'd all chip in and then store it somewhere central. If they could get 10 families, it'd be less than $200 each. Well, in the end, there were 12 families who chipped in, so there was money left over, and they used the extra money to hire a trainer,

and they organized a barbecue, and they sat around eating burgers and fries and studying CPR. You know it's true. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer is Greg DeClude. He also really enjoys flushing things down the toilet. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeClute, and me, Jess Melton.

Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.