BY AL DRINKLE
We lost Nika, our spiritual inspiration and irreplaceable canine family member, in November of 2019. Almost immediately, my wife decided that our cat, Bébert, was suffering acute loneliness from the loss. Nika and Bébert had merely coexisted, but I didn't dissuade my wife from projecting our own sense of emptiness upon the seemingly indifferent cat. By the end of December we had welcomed an additional family member into our household.
A few days prior to Christmas, I came home from work and was told that there was a new cat locked in the laundry room. He was isolated there to get used to our home little by little, and so that he and Bébert could incrementally become acquainted by sniffing each other under the door. I went downstairs to introduce myself.
Following a cursory examination of my person, the sizable tabby managed to squeeze all four paws underneath his collar and proceeded to somersault around the small room in an attempt to pull it off. He quickly succeeded, nudged the neckpiece behind the washing machine and concluded his outlandish spasm by nonchalantly collapsing into a position of languorous repose. We stared at each other for a bit, him aloofly and me on the edge of laughter. Ever since, he's almost constantly making me laugh while he's awake — and often while he's asleep. He's across the room on the couch as I write this, snoring like a grown man, and his frequent sneezes likewise belie his species.
I suggested that we name him Dave, not so much after my father, but in playful competition with him. My parents were about to come visit us for Christmas and I thought that it would be funny to have two Daves in the house. At this point I really can't imagine his name being anything else.
The morning after meeting Dave, I arose early and closed the bedroom door on my wife and Bébert as they continued sleeping. I then descended to the basement and liberated Dave from the laundry room. I watched as he curiously and cautiously explored the house, sniffing this and climbing on that, emitting hilarious moans and yelps when jumping onto or off of something, or just to break the silence when he found it unduly ominous. After a while I left him to his explorations in order to make myself a cup of tea. Upon turning on the kitchen faucet I heard a harrowing tumult as Dave pounded his way from across the house into the sink where he began maniacally swatting and biting at the flowing water. Astounded, I turned off the faucet and wondered to myself if I'd ever be able to do dishes again! Dave stared at me from the side of the sink, eagerly awaiting the next stream.
Upon awakening for the day (in part because of the racket that our new cat friend had caused), my wife shared with me that poor Dave had been rejected by previous owners, and that his Humane Society profile had mentioned an unusual interest in water. I commented that the profile had understated the situation, and that his interest seemed to border on psychosis. I wished her the best of luck with the day and left to work a busy pre-Christmas shift at the wine shop.
Every cat has a personality, but I've never known a cat to have such an outsize personality as Dave. He's like a hurricane when he's hyperactive, and he's inordinately sensitive to somebody who's feeling ill or glum. He's got the loudest purr I've ever heard, and when I'm out at night, he perches on the side of the couch that faces the door awaiting my return. When I come home, he trashes the house like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush when Georgia agrees to come for dinner… but if I'm out of town, he spends the first couple nights of my absence staring at the door in vain.
With the passing of weeks and, more so, months, Dave's obsession with water tempered a little bit. We can do dishes and clean our teeth without much problem. To this day, we treat him to daily “tub time”, wherein we let the bathtub faucet run lightly for a few minutes as he thrashes it behind the safety of the curtain¹ , and he still likes to treat his water bowl as a birdbath with some frequency. However, one change that had to happen immediately is that we could no longer leave glasses of water out and unattended. Should one do so, he's known to try to fit his head in it; saturate his paw in water and then flick it about; attempt to reach his paw to the bottom of the glass which would sometimes upend the vessel; or simply just topple the glass for its own sake.
In order to minimize effort in the case that I'm thirsty in the middle of the night, and in an attempt to circumnavigate Dave's water obsession, I began to keep a full water glass safely hidden in a kitchen cupboard — and incidentally the same one that holds my wine glasses. Needless to say, there are occasional evenings when I'm too tired or too lazy to wash and polish the wine glasses before going to bed.
I noticed long ago that the negligible residue at the bottom of a neglected wine glass can provide useful insight about the wine in question. I have a theory that in some cases, a dehydrated millilitre of a wine can hint towards its aromatic aging potential — in other words, the purity and persistence of aroma in last night's empty glass can be indicative of a positive trajectory of future development. In the case of a wine that suffers from excessive reduction, the neglected glass can provide a glimpse of the character of aromas that will unfurl once the reductive phase passes. The same can be said of a wine whose youth renders it somewhat inexpressive. Of course I lack scientific evidence to back this up, but I have many such empirical observations, and thanks to Dave, I've made an even more startling discovery.
Based on my improvised storage space for nocturnal water, I've learned that some wines have the capacity to aromatise water merely due to its cohabitating with the unwashed glass in the same cupboard! This isn't a talent of all great wines, but no mediocre wines seems capable of it. Somehow, the unwashed glass of an intense Mosel Kabinett can impart my water with a floral tinge, that of an Amontillado Sherry might whisper butterscotch when aerially transmitted, and a vivid Volnay will share a cranberry edge with the H2O.
Sometimes I'll share these early morning discoveries with Dave too, as he stands on the side of the kitchen sink, cheekily raising a paw to my glass while longingly watching me rehydrate.
¹ Please note that this piece was written prior to Calgary's water crisis.
