The George Street cat

I have just returned from my first visit to Newfoundland and spent a fantastic week exploring St John’s and the surrounding area. One of the most interesting locals I met was the George Street cat.

We met at the bar – in fact it was the bar at O’Reilly’s to be exact. The lovely little barmaid stooped down behind her and picked up a quite large cat who lay docilely in her arms while she carried him to the front door of the pub and told him to go home. No one was perturbed about this. You see the cat is called Sid and is quite the roamer along George Street. He likes hanging out in bars and seems to extremely sociable. He even has his own facebook page called The Adventures of Sid the Cat.

Sid is given treats where ever he goes – in fact he gets a little too much milk. Not good for him at all. He freely roams George St all hours of the day and night. This is his facebook page profile picture – I wonder who did this lovely painting?

Just search on facebook at this address @sid709 and you can read all about his adventures.

Newfoundlanders are just wonderful people so it is no surprise to me to know that Sid is well taken care of in this lovely little town. Doing a tour is a must. Our tour guides were multi-talented. They were historians, geologists, stand up comedians and fantastic singers.

While there I was taught to sing local songs (they did give me a book), I was taught Irish dancing (I kept forgetting to keep my arms down*) and I was screeched in and kissed the cod.

*The Irish dance with their arms down as opposed to the Scottish who dance with their arms up. There are many theories about why this might be. Some say it was the Catholic Church wanting to keep the dance more sedate, others say it was defiance of the English Queen as the dancers would not raise their arms to salute here. Read more about this here https://www.antoniopacelli.com/community/article/why-do-irish-dancers-have-straight-arms

I have lived in Canada for 24 years and this was my first visit to Newfoundland. It won’t be my last. Have you been yet? Go now … the cod is waiting to be kissed.