Dunnville man keen on making vet appointment trudges through blizzard with kitten on sled, Canadian style

You see things during a snowstorm that catch your attention: cross-country skiers on residential streets, forts made to look like pseudo apartments, dustbins reincarnated as popsicles, snow angel sculptures, buses jammed, cars buried.

Then there's the Dunnville man who trudged through 40-plus centimetres of snow with his kitten strapped to a toboggan and wrapped in a cocoon of blankets just to make a scheduled vet appointment.

Jon Carter says nothing was going to stop his 11-week-old kitten Mowgli from reaching the Dunnville Veterinary Clinic for 8:30 a.m. Monday - not a blizzard, not upended traffic, not a kilometre walk through mountainous snow.

Not much was going to stop me," Carter says sheepishly. We had an appointment, the vet was open, it wasn't an extremely far walk."

On a normal day, the vet clinic - the only one in the small community southeast of Hamilton - fulfils between 40 to 45 appointments.

On Monday, just eight.

Four minutes before opening at 8 a.m., as a snowstorm barrelled over Ontario and clogged major roadways, staff posted to the vet's Facebook page asking clients to have patience and expect delays. Some people commented to cancel their appointments. Others sent well wishes. One, Carter's wife, wrote her husband was ready and could make it no problem.

And boy did he ever.

A half-hour after the post, clinic staff were graced with as Canadian a sight as it gets: Carter - clad in a hoodie, safety jacket and gloves, his face and scarf coated in snow - holding a toboggan with little Mowgli in a carrier he cloaked in thick blankies and towels.

We were very surprised he made it through the snow with his little sled and his cat," says clinic staff member Meghan McBurney with a chuckle.

Call him a true Canadian or an optimist, to wife Christina Carter, he's just a committed pet owner. The family lives about one-kilometre from the clinic, she says, a 20-minute walk each way. Carter works outside nearly year-round and is used to inclement weather. And Mowgli, importantly, needed another vaccine shot.

Our car was completely stuck, we were buried, but it's very important to take care of kittens and get their shots on time, at least very important to us," Christina says.

Mowgli, the white and grey VIP of the hour, made it to the clinic and back without any fuss or weather-related gripes.

He wasn't cold at all and got home safe and cuddled into my son's arms, telling him all about his trip to the doctors," Christina says.

Sebastian Bron is a reporter at The Spectator. sbron@thespec.com