Pedaling Pets

“Oh God, it’s Pam. Hit “ignore.”
I am sure that is the internal dialogue of most my friends in the past year. Ever since joining the world of animal welfare with Kauai Humane Society, I’ve become the dealer of dogs, kittens, cats and the occasional rabbit.
“Shari, do you know anyone looking for a sweet 6 year-old Lab? What about an Airedale mix? She fetches, knows “sit,” “heel” and “huli.” She is a rock star when it comes to fetching and returning. What about two little red kittens? I’ve bottle fed them since they were a week old.” And on and on.
“Petaling,” is what my friend Kim calls it. I’m a “Petlar.” I can’t help it. It’s the hazard of working in a building filled with orphaned animals.
My friends are afraid to answer my calls. Even my family cringes from a distance. The other day my sister e-mailed me from Chicago concerned about our 82 year-old, wheel-chair bound, mother’s request for an ancient Chihuahua – my ancient Chihuahua.
I’d been laying on the couch talking to mom on the phone as I stroked the silky head of my 15 year-old rescue, Javali. We adopted her from the shelter in February 2010.
It wasn’t my idea.
Swear.
I was doing a stellar job of ignoring the purple sweater clad, grayish-brown quiverer. Pleading, moist Chihuahua eyes are not my weakness; well, weren’t my weakness. That said, my husband Wes dropped by the shelter on his way to the South Shore to do a plumbing job. I wasn’t around so he made the grave mistake of taking a tour of the small dog room near the lobby.
When I returned later, one of our veterinarian technicians greeted me.
“Hey Pam, I saw this big, handsome guy flirting with an older woman in the kennels.”
Ellen recounted the scene: Wes, in work boots, jeans and a predictable neon orange t-shirt was crouched and peering into a kennel.
“Hi there,” he cooed. “That sweater looks really nice on you. You sure are pretty.”
When we met 16 years ago, a deal maker for me was Wes's innate kindness towards the elderly and animals.
When Ellen caught him on bended knee with Javali he blushed, saying, “I’ll only adopt her if she comes with the sweater.”
When I returned home that night from work I told Wes he’d been spotted. He smiled for a moment, then his expression changed.
“What’s that dog’s story? She’s ancient. Did someone actually leave her there?”
“Yep. And it happens all the time,” I said. “Her intake card said the reason for surrender was because she was old.”
A few weeks passed and then Wes asked about her again. We were in our bedroom and he was sitting on the edge of the bed looking slightly vulnerable, so naturally I took full advantage; I am the Petlar after all.
“Poor thing. She’s still there.”
“Really?” He said. “Will anyone ever adopt a dog that old?”
Pausing, I let his question ripen, then I moved in for the kill.
“Want me to bring her home?”
He said nothing.
In our marriage, silence is acceptance.
That was 13 months ago. Even Wes admits adopting Java was one of the best animal rescue missions we’ve made. At nine pounds and now 16 years-old, this crooked. stick-figure of a dog barely makes a ripple in our pond. The four cats each out weigh her by at least 4 pounds and she barely dents the pillow where she sleeps between our two other dogs.
I grew up in a house where small dogs were never part of the animal population. When I talk to my mom about Java, she gets slightly befuddled.
“Why would you want a dog that small,” she asks.” Aren’t they yappers?”
I have my legs stretched out on the couch with a pillow under my head. Java is on her back on my chest making gravelly, muttering snores through her gray lips. I describe the scene to my mom.
“Mom, she’s a little old lady looking for a warm lap to retire into, just like you.”
That’s when mom said, “I want her.”

Just visiting

I thought I understood what the word ‘ohana meant until this week.
My husband and I went to the Mokihana Festival event, “Under the Palms at Maka‘iwa,” at Resort Quest on Tuesday. I’d spoken to Malie Foundation’s founder Nathan Kalama about the festival last week and knew I wanted to attend some part of this week-long celebration of Hawaiian culture. I confess, I chose Tuesday’s show because it was close to my house – and it being a work night I was tired.
I could not have chosen a better night to go. After seven years of living here I thought I knew what ‘ohana meant, like “aloha” it’s a word I hear daily.
My husband Wes and I sat at the rear of the room at an empty table. From our vantage point near the door, we watched family after family glide into the tent in their brightest aloha wear – all the women and girls wearing lei and fist-sized bunches of flowers in their hair. Hugging bodies and joyful greetings swarmed us. We felt like voyeurs, but not unwelcome ones.
My husband and I are both from wandering clans, neither having grown up around extended family: no aunties, uncles or cousins; no grandmothers, no grandfathers. Wes’ parents immigrated to California from Brazil in the 1960s for political reasons. He only knew his extended family in snippets of month-long visits. As for my family, our wanderlust is connected to the sea. My great grandfather on my dad’s side was a sailor and when his wife died during childbirth in England, he gave his children to an orphanage and disappeared. My grandfather immigrated to North America and wound up in Iowa where my dad was born. When my dad was 17 years old he headed for the coast to join the Navy. Meanwhile, my mother is from a family of ship builders in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has always felt a deep connection to the sea. So when my dad showed up in Halifax on a Navy ship, she pretty much married him on sight – their courtship consisting of one date to a ship party and another to Peggy’s Cove lighthouse.
“Till death do us part,” and they did.
As Wes and I sat there listening to family after family take the stage to make music together and to perform hula, we said very little to each other. We were like sponges soaking up the aloha. Until that night I don’t think I fully understood the word “aloha.” Two Hawaiian words I hear more than any others – aloha and ‘ohana – and I didn’t “get” either one. The family reunion atmosphere we’d happened upon turned into an education on what these two words are on an experiential level.
We ran into Shiloh Pa, whom Wes has worked with in construction. He shared how he’d won awards at the Composers Contest the night before and that he’d be performing “Be Like You,” that night, the song he’d written for his father. I remember reading Sam Pa’s obituary in July and marveling at the number of his descendents: 42 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren. Wes had often praised Shiloh as a fine and kind man. So while reading the obituary I thought how fortunate for the world that Sam Pa had been the vehicle for all these compassionate people. I was filled with a mixture of awe and envy. A tiny fissure formed in that moment – I considered how little I knew about my own extended family.
On Tuesday that hairline fissure grew into a crack that allowed a stream of light to break through. I understood that I could never really comprehend ‘ohana, and surprisingly, as Wes and I stood in the dark parking lot after leaving the show, neither of us felt sad about it.
We ran into Billy, one of the Swain clan, who had performed that evening with his family. We stood between rows of cars telling Billy how honored we were to be there, that we’d observed something powerful and still couldn’t quite believe our good fortune for having stumbled upon it. He just laughed and told us that this night was indeed the heart of the Mokihana Festival – a backyard party Hawaiian style.
Then he asked how long we’d lived on Kaua‘i and I responded, “Only seven years.” He said, “Oh, that’s long enough, you’re kama‘aina.”
It was my turn to laugh. Having witnessed the ‘ohana and aloha we found under that tent, I realized that I could appreciate but never fully understand the roots that join the people of this island.

Try Share

With buffalo grass to the eaves, plywood covering the windows, a rusted out Mercury in the backyard and a mattress in the carport, we took possession of our house on December 26, 2001.
Within a week a 70 year-old neighbor knocked on our front door holding a bag of dried shrimp and a bowl of poi — her favorite way to eat poi she told us. Around six months later another neighbor appeared on our porch. This time it was to inform us that the 20 foot hedge sharing his property line belonged to us and asked us to cut it back. That weekend my husband and I brought the hedge down by over 10 feet with Henry standing in his yard chatting with us the entire time.
That unruly hedge was the bridge to a friendship and our first lesson in Kaua‘i hospitality. A month does not pass without Henry calling to me from his yard to hand me a bag packed with akule he’d caught or some of the bounty of his orchard — avocado, wild mountain apple or mango. And more recently his daughter has taken up the baton and calls to us from that same hole in the hedge to deliver homemade fig jam, tapioca and eggs from her laying hens.
Try as I may to match their generosity with baked goods, after eight years I’ve learned that it is impossible — Kauaiians are unrivaled in their gift giving tenacity.
Last week another neighbor showed up with boiled breadfruit still warm from the water.
“If you don’t like it,” she told me, “just fry it in oil.”
We loved it just as it was. She swears she only boiled it and added a little salt, but Wes and I are convinced there is some secret ingredient she is not divulging. Her 16 year-old son told us how his grandpa, who also lives on our street, used to fill five-gallon buckets with peeled and sliced breadfruit he’d deep-fry and give to friends and family.
Having grown up in a migratory family with no relatives nearby, this is just one more lesson on what it means to share in Kaua‘i. Families don’t just make what they can eat, they make enough to give away to potentially a dozen other families.
It may be another decade before we have much to share from our land. The buffalo grass still rockets up in big tufts around the yard and although we’ve planted fig, lime, tangerine and lemons, they barely fruit yet.
I may not have much of a green thumb, but I can bake. It’s high time I learned to expand my recipes.

House training house guests

There are two guarantees in life: death and taxes. There are three for residents of the Hawaiian Islands: death, taxes and house guests.
We didn’t live here two months before the phone started ringing and our in-box filled with the itineraries of friends bound for Kaua‘i. The first few months they were a welcome sight: We were lonely and overwhelmed by the move. Besides, we hadn’t made many friends yet so why not import a few.
We were so excited when they arrived. Greeting them with lei at baggage claim, still under the spell of Kaua‘i’s majestic mountains and tropical breezes. We wanted to hike to the chin of Sleeping Giant to show our guests the panoramic view of the Eastside and drink coffee on the lanai in the morning to a chorus of roosters crowing and Trade Winds rattling the palms.
But after we’d escorted the 15th guest to the airport, our enthusiasm as tour guides waned. We began to fantasize about moving into a smaller space – one without a guest room. But guest room or not, they will arrive. They’ll bring tents to erect in the back yard. They’ll say they sleep better on a couch.
It may take a year or two but eventually we knew we had to train them.
It was easy on the Mainland. Friends didn’t show up for two weeks at a time, they dropped in for a weekend. Now they’ve flown across an ocean to reach us and the only reason some can afford to come is because of our generous (and ignorant) offer of our guest room.
One friend of mine warned: “Don’t feed them. They’re like bears – they’ll keep coming back.”
It’s true. Dozens of visitors have filed through our house without so much as buying a carton of eggs. That’s an exaggeration. They buy groceries for themselves and they’ll make sure you know which shelf is theirs. They buy two apples and one quart of milk, all the while eating the opah off the grill and raiding the cheese and vegetable drawers. They’ll even have the impudence to complain about the price of groceries. One time I had a couple offer to make dinner for us and proceed to use what we had in our cabinets to do so.
Friends will send friends of friends and children of friends of friends. People who weren’t even friends in college will try to cash in on a crash pad.
It took nearly five years for Wes and I to enforce a three-day rule. Everyone who calls, outside of family, gets the same spiel: You can stay three days here and after that you need to either camp or get a hotel.
I won’t lie, I’ve offended people. One old friend even found a way around my rule by calling right before he and his girlfriend arrived to tell me they’d be staying the first and last three days of their two-week trip with us. I guess he altered the three-day rule to mean not three days in a row. Cunning.
One friend told us he took the door off of the guest room at his house. “I don’t want them to get too comfortable.”
Another friend, who has a cottage on his property, told me he only cooks for his guests the first night and that he makes it clear that they must rent a car. Renting a car seems obvious, but trust me, some visitors don’t get it. There are folks who think Kaua‘i is so small an island that one can walk around it in an afternoon. Or worse, they say they’ll hitchhike.
Assume nothing with house guests. Most will require an intervention at some point.
My biggest beef with guests is the perpetual question, “Can’t you take a day off of work?”
“No,” I tell them. “They wouldn’t call it work if I didn’t get paid for it.”
The hardest house guest so far was the girlfriend who showed up with a new boyfriend annually. Couples can be the hardest house guests. Not everyone travels well together and the newly anointed lover can be a real risk. It took a few times, but now we don’t even extend the three-day rule to them. They need to just get a room somewhere.
Then there’s all the stuff they leave behind as though it’s a favor to you: cheap aluminum beach chairs, towels, boogie boards, snorkel gear, even a couple surfboards are under our house.
Here’s an overview on house training house guests.
First, let them know the three-day stay and rental car rules before they arrive. After they unpack feed them. Over dinner is when I tell them (regretfully) we will not be taking any days off work and then give them a guide book. We tell them where they can shop for groceries and provide a bag full of beach gear so they won’t buy any.
One rule I fail to enforce is the one dinner only. I don’t share my kitchen very well and love to cook, so I do all the dinners when I have guests. They’re on their own for the other two meals. I can hear how hardcore this sounds and you probably wonder why anyone would consider staying with me, but they do. Ultimately, house guests are a given when you live in Hawai‘i – like any lovable house pet, they’re much more enjoyable when properly trained.