Ottawa: Canada's Catman ( from the
Telegraph, UK )
In Ottawa, Nicholas Roe meets the man who has been sanctioned by the
Queen to look after stray moggies - and there's a sting in his tale
If you want to see the sweetest
tourist attraction in Ottawa, here's what to do: make your way to the
grand Parliament buildings at the top of the main hill in the city
centre - an imposing collection of fat rotundas, nobbly turrets and
gloomy towers - walk around to the side and head for the fringe of
trees. You are looking for The Catman. Be prepared for a shock, however.
He is not what he seems.
Surrounded by a perpetual band of trippers, cameras and cats, he seems
to be just another cranky old guy in a baseball cap weighed down by too
many carrier bags. He is, in fact, one of the most enduring and
best-loved tourist sights in the city, protected by the government and
sanctioned by no less a person than the Queen.
Intrigued? You should be. Renee Chartrand's story of dedication is a
lesson to us all and, if you ask, he will tell it to you. There is a bit
of a joke in the tail, but you have to wait for that.
First, here is the man himself. Renee is standing inside a line of trees
at the top of a vast, jungly hillside that cascades all the way down to
the Ottawa River flowing 200ft below. This is government land, all of
it. Less than 50 yards away, providing a curiously formal backdrop to
this encounter, Parliament's huge west wing presents an imposing façade
of mottled brown stone.
It feels almost as though Robin Hood himself has crept to the edge of
his woody domain and is peering out at the sheriff's castle. Indeed, The
Catman was once a renegade who functioned here outside the law - but
these details come gradually.
He is 78 years old, thin, sparky and as weather-beaten as an old stick.
"Don't eat chocolate," he warns me within minutes of my first, hesitant
handshake. "Only a little fat. Not much alcohol. That's why I can lift
things."
I say: "Tell me about the cats, please." The moggies mew and butt for
attention. A black squirrel hops boldly down from out of the leaves and
allows Renee to stroke it. He leans against a low, green hut where his
beloved wild creatures have found safe haven and, surrounded by Blackie,
Fluffy, Coco, Blanchette, Boy Brownie and Charlie - they all have names,
all 22 of them - tells his story.
Renee has known this city since he was a French-speaking child running
through these woods. Wild cats were around then, but he took little
notice and no one else bothered either, certainly not the government.
The cats of Parliament Hill were a largely unseen part of faintly cruel
city life, surviving on scraps and living like robbers among the trees.
Renee grew up, got himself a series of local jobs - papermill hand, care
worker, aluminium smelter. He married, had five children. His wife
passed on. And the cats went on breeding and dying, too.
A woman called Irene Des Ormeux finally took pity on the poor beasts and
started feeding them, until it became something of a habit - but it was
rather a secretive one. "She was not all that friendly," says Renee, as
he picks up Blackie for a cuddle. "And the cats were much more feral
back in those days."
One day, Irene had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital. Who would
feed her beloved animals? She begged for help from her cat-loving
neighbour Renee, who had four animals of his own - and in that balanced
moment of uncertain compassion a city institution was born.
"I said: 'Don't know how long I will do it, but if you are not well I
will try for a while,' " says Renee. He pauses. "A few weeks after that,
Irene died." He shrugs. "I have been doing it ever since."
For 13 years, he means. Seven days a week, every week, non-stop, never
missing a day, carrying as much as 10lb of cat food in carrier bags,
busing or walking in from his little flat two miles away on Ottawa's
edge, through the heat of summer and the bitter -40C temperatures of
winter.
It's an almost laughably gentle preoccupation in a city with a history
like Ottawa's. When this once-small backwoods logging town was chosen by
Queen Victoria as the capital in 1857, it was known only for its hard
drinking and fighting. Real men lived here, and animals were for eating,
beating, skinning or riding. Renee's ancestors would be spinning in
their frozen graves if they could see what he is up to nowadays and how
times, and values, have changed.
Two years ago, when a ferocious ice storm brought the city to its knees
and offices stood spookily empty, Renee somehow made the journey to the
hill, carrying loads of cooked chicken thighs for the freezing cats. He
helped to build a long row of four, thickly insulated huts where they
could shelter from the worst weather, complete with mini-verandas on
which to place their feed trays.
"I bring the food we eat at home," he says. "Ham, chicken. Some I eat,
then I get six or seven containers and I carry a bag weighing 10 lb. I
stay all afternoon until suppertime. I feed them, comb them and, if they
are sick, I know right away and call the vet."
Gradually, because Renee is a charming man and did not scare off the
visitors, he began to attract sightseers. The local papers carried news
of him. "The Cats of Parliament Hill" became famous throughout Canada.
More people started arriving - as many as 300 a day make their way to
this spot in summer, their small donations meeting much of the £4,000 a
year Renee reckons to spend on his animals. English trippers, by the
way, give the most; then the French. Many write to him.
Faced with such attention, the government finally took notice of an
institution that was, according to an official I spoke to later,
"totally illegal". Renee and his cats could have been banned. In some
countries, they would have been. Instead, a couple of years ago, the
government went the other way entirely. Today, when winter snow piles up
around the trees, government workers clear a path so that Renee can get
through. They have put up a sign (in two languages) to allow visitors to
find him more easily.
When open space at the front of Parliament is closed for public
functions, a special walkway is constructed to permit cat-loving
pilgrims through to Renee's fiefdom. The government bus that brings
staff to Parliament now brings him in, too. A local veterinary practice
has been persuaded to give its services free, spaying and neutering the
animals and treating sick ones. Renee has also been given something far
more important: a formal licence to be here, on this land, doing this
crazy, unpaid work. "Look," he says, rummaging through a battered old
bag lying at his feet, "here it is . . . "
Standing amid a scatter of cats, I find myself staring at a creased and
ill-used document that solemnly formalises in dense legal language a
five-year cat-tending agreement between Renee and "Her Majesty the Queen
in right of Canada" - in the sum of one dollar. It is all beautifully
silly. It is comforting and strangely pleasing, too. But why exactly?
The question nags as Renee chats cheerily about his life."No, I don't
get tired. I have a girlfriend and every night I go and see her.
"She lives in the same building as me. She is pretty near my age, but
she doesn't look old and, when I am all dressed up with my hair cut,
they don't guess my age at all, either. I can still run. I am still in
shape . . . "
Renee is no PR creation. He does what he does because he wanted to help
a sick neighbour and likes cats. Then he went on doing it over an
extraordinary period of time and now the world hurries to see him, a
government bends to his will, and it all seems rather lovely. After all,
how often do you hear of tourist pressure actually doing good?
But now for that joke. The sting in the cat's tail. It comes up by
chance and makes me laugh, and it is just this: if you spay and neuter
all your cats and have looked after them for 13 years, but you can still
point out that the youngest animal there - Garçon - is just five years
old, then something is a bit weird, yes?
Yep. When I put this point to Renee, he breaks off and says simply: "Oh,
if I want one, I go to the place where they kill them and bring them
here."
This show will run and run.
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