Feathers & Furs

By Beulah Andrews-Greyling

I
was born in Klerksdorp, a
mining town in the
North West Province of South Africa. After High
School I completed my Tertiary studies at the
Potchefstroom University, where I obtained a B.
A. Degree, as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in
Education to become a teacher. While teaching, I
studied part-time and obtained an Honors Degree,
and later a Masters Degree in Afrikaans. When I
moved to Mafikeng from Klerksdorp, I completed a
Doctorate with a study on the Haiku in Afrikaans at
the University of North West. I recently retired after
being a teacher for 31 years.
Just before retiring I was diagnosed with Macular
Degeneration, which meant I could no longer
work as a teacher. And I was also diagnosed with
Psoriasis on my hands and feet, which meant that I
have to use a wheelchair most of the time. In spite
of these conditions I was determined to still do
something. Thats why I started writing. My motto in
life is: there are only two ways to go. Go down, or
go on. I made a decision to go on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465301970

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Beulah Andrews-Greyling.

ISBN:                      Softcover                      978-1-4653-0198-7

                                 Ebook                            978-1-4653-0197-0

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Contents

All I know is…

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part II

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

For all those who passed on:

Feathers, Furs and Family

I write to bring back what is gone,

to relive what is lost,

to make a mosaic out of fragments

—Minfong Ho (1951- )

All I know is…

As far back as I can remember I’ve had some connection with the animal world—and I don’t mean the supernatural kind of bond. I would like to think that I vaguely know what they think, but to be honest, I don’t have a clue. I only make deductions from their behaviour and react accordingly—talk about a reversed Pavlov effect! Sometimes I envy St. Francis for his supposed ability to talk to the animals.

By all standards I should have been scared of dogs after my encounter with one stealing a chicken wishbone from my hand when I was three years old. But wherever I go other peoples’ pets are drawn to me. Even some of my friends’ wildest and fiercest hounds react calmly towards me. I don’t know how it works, but it does. Cats that normally wouldn’t care to look at a human other than their owner, not only greet me, but allow me to caress them and with my next visit remember me and seem happy to see me.

I grew up in a close-knit family in a mining town in the North West Province of South Africa. When I was about two years old Gran (Mom’s mother), my parents, my three brothers and I moved to the house I will always call home. It was here that I learned how to treat our animal friends, how to be responsible, how to take care of them, and how to enjoy their company through the examples set by Gran, Mom and Dad. Each of my brothers played their own roles in the interaction. They are nine, seven and five years older than me respectively. I will refer to them as Eldest, Middle and Youngest in these anecdotes.

Part I relates to the pets I can remember from my childhood, and after I left home, my parents’ pets. To tell about my journey with the special Feathers and Furs in my own life, I have to put you in the picture about their predecessors as well. Without them my version of the past will be incomplete. They laid the foundation for the bond between me and my own pets. The memories of the Furries, creatures covered with fur, i.e. cats, dogs, of my early childhood are a bit vague; the later ones however made such an impression on me that I can hardly forget them.

Each of the predecessors has their own story, which has merit to be told. They played a role in our history, as well as in some cases each others’ lives; and each of them was significant in their own exceptional way. They form a link connecting us to our past.

Some memories are of the happiest times in my life, while others remind me of the saddest times. Inevitable this is not only about the pets, however also about my family members. But these Feathers and Furs formed the biggest part of the golden thread, namely laughter, which ran through our house and lives in the good and the bad times. They have directly influenced the tone for the treatment of animals in our home. Still to this day not one of the four siblings’ houses, nor those of most of their offspring, are without any Feathers or Furs. You could say: to have them sharing our lives is so imbedded that we can’t live without them. Or want to.

Part II recounts my own experiences. All of the Feathers and Furs, save the one in the last chapter in this section, are gone. It was actually the last Fur, Chow-May-Ay, whose antics sparked me to write this book. The others left their indelible marks on my life, shared in my joys and sorrow.

I had my first experience of having something to care for and the joy of getting pet-love in return with Purrcy. He was a ‘wild’ Fur, but we shared special moments. My personal journey with the Feathers and Furs truly started the day I took Jona home with me. He was a delight even despite the fact that he couldn’t talk like Tiekie, the budgie from my early childhood. It was not as if I wanted to recapture the Feather of my youth. This one was just a budgie, but company nonetheless.

Then I got my first Furry, Misha, a silky black Chow. After fourteen and a half years I think we understood each other quite well. The very difficult decision to let her go, kept me in agony for weeks. And afterwards I felt like Dad when Tiekie died: never again!

Until our modern society scourge met with my home: an attempted robbery on Christmas Eve. That’s how Apro, a dog from questionable lineage from the SPCA, found his short-lived stay with me. I knew I had to have a watchful eye and ear with me. All I wanted was a Chow. The only Chow-part he had, turned out was his tail. So I kept him for in the meantime, you could say ‘on Apro’ until I found another Fur. That’s why I did not refuse the offer, when my niece phoned with the news that they had found a pup for me. With her arrival I was back in the game of bringing up a Furry again. And I thought I knew all about Furries after Missy M! This new one turned out to be a challenge in more than one way.

There is no real chronological sequence in this reminiscence, other than that of the Feathers’ and Furs’ co-existence with us, their human families. Past and present got blurred a bit as I wrote down what I remembered. So don’t look for accurate chronology. With some pets there are more to tell than with the others; but that doesn’t minimize their effect on us, or me. The only residual factor is that they were the remarkable Feathers and Furs that graced us with their presence.

It is like taking separate mosaic pieces, which don’t make sense on their own, but when pieced together, displays the whole, a representation of the Feathers’ and Furs’ lives’ impact on me. This is a mosaic of all that happened in the past and now is gone; all the different miniature tiles of the long-ago, forming the whole montage of my existence today. With all Missy C’s antics daily adding to the mosaic, completing the medley of my life.

And all I know is I wouldn’t have missed their company for anything in the world!

—‡—

Part 1

The Predecessors

Chapter 1

Tiekie

He was the most remarkable pet we ever had. Tiekie, named after the smallest coin used in those days, was my first close-up encounter with the Feathers. Yes, we were familiar with the garden variety of birds, like finches, sparrows, doves. This one was staying with us, but with us in our home! What child would not be mesmerized by that? But our story was not of the Stuart Little kind.

What made Tiekie so amazing was that he was a live talking budgie. No, he wasn’t born one; it took months and months of daily painstaking sessions with Mom to get him to repeat the phrases she taught him. I don’t know where she got him, but apparently he was only a few weeks old when taken from his nest. She kept him in an old shoe box at first, but he got his own room when he was able to walk successfully. For the first few months this shoe box, lined with cotton wool, was his secure retreat. And he was only handled by Mom. We were eager onlookers, but remembered: you look with your eyes and not your hands.

Every day, for months, until he spoke his first word, he and Mom had a routine. At first, while he was still confined in his box, Mom would hold him in her hand and feed him from her mouth as his mother would have done and in between she would repeat the same phrase over and over: "Mommy’s Pretty Boy". Later on when he was strong enough to sit on her finger, she would walk around with him perched on her left hand’s index finger, talking to him. She would put her mouth close to his head and do all the birdie-talk that way. This was done every morning before she went to work and after her return in the late afternoons, until it was time for good little birdies to go to bed. Mom did not neglect any of us humans; she was just a bit limited with the budgied finger! The day Tiekie said his first: "Mommy’s Pretty Boy", she burst out in tears. Afterwards she taught him more phrases, some of which would come in handy with some Doubting Thomas later.

As the months passed and Tiekie matured, she cut his wingtips so he would not be able to fly away. This did not hurt him a bit because she only cut the feathery part, not the bones. That way he could only manage low flying for short distances and enabled him to wander inside and sometimes, under supervision, outside the house. By now he moved in to his own room, a cage perched high out of reach of the neighbourhood cats. He also regularly received pedicures, with Mom cutting the tips of his claws so they would not get stuck on any material.

Every night one of us would cover his cage with a piece of cloth in the summer and a light blanket in winter. He was so well trained that he went to bed on his own, having quiet conversations with himself about the doings of the day, until he nodded off, to sleep either on one of the wooden rods spanning the inside of the cage, or on the swing, rocking himself to sleep. Come morning, Mom would be the first in the kitchen, uncovering him and having a good talk before everyone else rushed in for breakfast and off to work or school. He would sit on her shoulder, going everywhere she went; gripping tighter when she bent to pick something up or put it away.

We had a long parquet covered passage, connecting all the rooms, which had to be polished every week. You can imagine with all the traffic in the house with three adults and four kids, that it was highly congested at times. But this was also Tiekie’s highway. When he was not trying out his wings, he would amble on the beautiful redwood floor either to his cage in the boys’ room, or the kitchen. But with this road being so crowded, he worked out his own traffic rules. By shouting his name, he gave on comers or any passerby ample warning of his presence. Sometimes he hitched a ride with whoever was going in his direction.

Of all the rooms in the house, I think he liked the kitchen the most, which was really the hub of the home. We more or less had breakfast together—sometimes in installments, because of the fact that all seven of us had to use one bathroom. It was in the kitchen that Tiekie enjoyed special moments with each one of us.

With Dad at breakfast he would usually become this little baby bird that still needed to be fed. He did not bother Dad for food