Stinky the Cat – Killed in the line of duty

Submitted by P. Burpee

Anybody who’s bought a stick of lumber at the Co-op in the last ten years will remember the little four-legged yardie par excellence known as Stinky. She worked that beat 24/7, day in, day out, month after month, year after year – never took holidays and never went on strike. She was skinny as a stick (till she got fixed a couple years ago and chubbied up a bit), but in her time she had about nine thousand kittens (give or take) and certainly knew all the local toms on a first-name basis.

Stinky was hell on varmints, and personally saw to the annihilation of more mice than you could shake a stick at, along with a squadron or two of miserable, squawking English sparrows – and rumour has it, she wasn’t at all averse to dragging home the odd gopher that made the foolish mistake of trying to hustle some action on Stinky’s patch. She was always good for a comment on the nature of the times and weather, typically offering a good-natured mmrrreooowww prooooot…and never a visit to the lumber yard went by without checking on Stink, who in latter years was like as not to be seen catching a few zees up on the desk just inside Bay 1, one eye slightly cracked to make sure things were moving along as they should.

Stinky was run over and mortally wounded as she crossed the lumber yard the other day – apparently the victim of a hit and run. All who knew her will be greatly saddened, especially Georgie and Jack and Lawrence. Stinky was a class act, and she had a thing or two to teach us all about duty and commitment and simple dedication. She met her end doing the thing that came naturally for her, in the place she called home, amongst the people she knew as friends and family, working her beat till the last. Give ‘em hell in that big lumber yard in the sky, Stink. You’re workin’ the long shift now.