Happy Tail: Merry and Pippin (formerly Pope and Murphy)
Cats. Is there anything they can’t do?
While their preternatural abilities to traverse miles of hardwood floor to vomit on a teensy square of carpet and shed half their body weight in fur on precisely the sweater you planned to wear have been meticulously documented, other attributes are perhaps less chronicled.
Namely, cats can heal a broken heart. And they can spark the zeal of a bona fide cat worshipper. No small feats, those. But witness the sister-brother combo of calico Merry and grey boy Pippin, formerly Pope and Murphy.
Our story begins in March 2023 when superstar ACR trapper Rosary was contacted via the org’s feral-stray outreach line by staffers at a plumbing parts manufacturer in the Jane and Steeles area. A tiny female cat that had been living there and fed in the manager’s office was noticed to be “venturing further into the building.”
“One day,” Rosary recalls, “they found a litter of kittens in a box up high on the shelf. They had to use a forklift to get the box down. Smart mama!”
The mama, a semi-feral named Demi and her three healthy kittens — Pope, Murphy, and Ripley — were placed with Michelle, her first but not last foray into fostering. “The kittens were itty bitty and still being cared for by their mama when they came to me,” she recalls.
At first, Michelle couldn’t get near Demi. “She was so scared.” But, after she was spayed, Demi did an about-face, bonding with Michelle’s cat Maze. She was eventually adopted herself. “Demi became super-sweet; I could hold her and pet her. I was so grateful to be able to show her love.”
Before long, Michelle was fostering another litter of six kittens, which were adopted out, and then another litter of three, which weren’t. “I foster-failed the final litter,” howls Michelle, who also sits on ACR’s board where she serves, mightily, as treasurer.
Ripley the kitten eventually went home with adopter Allison. And in June 2023, Pope and Murphy went to self-described “cat guy” Justin, mending a hurt he wasn’t sure could be healed.
In 2019, Justin’s longtime buddy Gollum, with him since kittenhood, died age 17. That relationship capped a lifelong bond Justin felt with cats — “I really don’t know how to live without them” — that began at age three with Caddy. “She and me were like Calvin and Hobbes, inseparable,” Justin laughs.
When Pope and Murphy — renamed Merry and Pippin in keeping with a Lord of the Rings theme — entered Justin’s life, it was a game-changer. “ACR provided me with love. My heart and my house were empty and you guys gave me these two lovely scamps,” he says. “When Gollum passed during the pandemic, it was just the worst. Now I’m looking forward to many more years with these guys.
“This is my first time having two cats at once. It’s fun and chaotic in the best way,” Justin adds. “I love that they’re brother and sister and were bonded right from the start. They snuggle, then they scrap, then they snuggle again. They’re very different personality-wise. But they are just a joy.”
Add yet another notch to the wonderous feline scoreboard.
-Kim Hughes