It’s not easy to upstage the premier of a province, but it does happen. For proof, you have only to look at the front page of last week’s edition of our area weekly newspaper.
The Saskatchewan premier’s speech on the state of the province to a nearby constituency meeting was duly reported and did appear on page one but was not, as one might expect, the lead story.
Pride of place in that issue went to a cat.
Cinders the cat, to be exact.
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Cinders at this moment is alive and well and living in Elrose, a small prairie town about a two-hour drive from Saskatoon, with a family of doting humans.
Life was not always so wonderful for Cinders.
Indeed, the old Western song, “The Cat Came Back,” could have been written for it.
It did come back from the grave (well, at least a plastic garbage bag), having survived a near-death experience and used up at least one of its legendary nine lives in the process.
Cinders, a lovely grey short-hair, was living in Saskatoon last December when, in a rage, a 28-year-old man twisted its neck.
Several children apparently looked on.
Thinking the cat was dead, the man put it in a garbage bag and left it outside overnight in below-freezing temperatures.
The next morning, his sister saw the bag move and called the Humane Society which took the cat to its small animal clinic where it made a full recovery.
It was adopted by an Elrose family and renamed Cinders for the color of its coat.
Today, Cinders appears to have completely recovered from its ordeal.
The man who tried to choke Cinders, meanwhile, has paid for his actions.
He was fined $500 for cruelty to animals, a fine which an SPCA official characterized as an unusually stiff punishment.
Back at the paper, a journalist from Toronto was in the office and couldn’t get over the fact that a cat story, complete with four-column picture, was the headline story while the premier was at the bottom of the page, well below the fold and without a picture.
Why, he asked.
Priorities, the editor explained. It was important that the premier was in the area, but he hadn’t said anything that had not been said before.
Cinders, on the other hand, was new, was local and above all was a high public interest story. Only in rural Canada can a cat upstage a premier.
