She was the cat’s meow – Winnipeg Free Press

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This article was published 07/07/2018 (1657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She bought her first cat — a Siamese she named Tao — in her early 30s.

By the time she died, Barb Belanger’s count was higher than the number of years the Manitoba Cat Club member was alive. She was a “cat lady” by definition, but not the lonely type who sat at home with strays watching romantic comedies all day.

She was an esteemed judge on the international cat fancy show circuit, and an award-winning breeder whose cats, who’d been born in her Winnipeg basement, won thousands of rosettes and so many trophies that she started donating them to the shows post-ceremony.

Found in the bedroom of her River Heights home with the door closed, her cats purring outside it, Belanger died of heart failure on March 5.

“She lived for her cats, there’s no doubt about it,” said Anita Huhn, a close friend, who added Belanger referred to her as “the sister she never had.”

Huhn and her husband Andrew were part of Belanger’s tight-knit circle and inherited many pets from her over the years. (They got the cats that weren’t “show quality.”) After all, Belanger had hundreds of cats throughout her 72 years, caring for up to 14 at a time.

Belanger was born Barbara Joyce Cusitar, an original baby boomer, to William Roy Earl Cusitar and Mabel Lillian Cusitar on Nov. 2, 1945. Twenty-two years later she would arrive at the Winnipeg General Hospital, this time as an employee. She got her first nursing gig there after graduating from the St. Boniface Hospital School of Nursing in 1967.

The oldest child of two, Belanger was a natural caregiver. Growing up, she played nurse with her cousins and looked out for her brother, Roger Earl Cusitar, who was five years her junior.

In 1972, two years after he’d photographed her wedding, her brother was killed while riding in a car with a drunk driver. She stopped drinking.

“Going through mum’s stuff, we found a stack of cards that she had kept from his funeral along with a few letters,” said daughter Brenna Belanger. “(Roger’s death) changed the dynamic of the family; everybody became less of themselves.”

Belanger was married for 18 years before she separated from the father of her only child in 1988.

Still, she continued to take care of others as she’d always done. She was a living encyclopedia filled with information, said Norma Godavari, a friend who met Belanger at Gordon Bell High School. When Godavari felt sick, she’d call up her friend for medical advice. There was no need for WebMD when you had “BarbMD” in your life, Huhn added.

Throughout her career, Belanger cared for patients at Winnipeg General Hospital, the Canadian Red Cross in Manitoba, Health Links and Victoria General Hospital, where she spent more than 20 years in the emergency department. The only other career she would’ve considered was a home economics teacher, Brenna said, since her mom was an avid sewer, knitter and quilter.

“It was funny, she always said to me, ‘Kid, you’re the adrenaline junkie that lives for rides. I’m the adrenaline junkie that lives for (hospital emergency) codes.’”

Although Belanger detested roller-coasters, she adored Disneyland. A Mickey Mouse head is engraved on the memorial stone where her ashes lay at Brookside Cemetery.

She went to Disney theme parks at least 50 times in her life and took her last trip in January with her daughter. Brenna keeps her mother’s Mickey Mouse trinkets and maneki-neko figurines— Japanese cats that are good luck charms — in glass display cases in her home.

Belanger wasn’t particularly superstitious, she was simply a traditionalist who appreciated Japanese culture. (Her favourite cat breed was the Japanese Bobtail, so she and Huhn always flipped through a Japanese-Canadian dictionary to search for cat names.) She believed in research and hard work.

Huhn recalls spending hours beside her friend looking over charts of cat genes, trying to figure out what cats had the best traits because Belanger wanted to breed the “perfect” cats, which meant considering everything — from ear sets to coat types to head shapes to potential parents. During the latter half of her life, Belanger’s basement was always full of cats, usually including a litter or two of purebred kittens.

“She played with genetics like most people play with crossword puzzles,” Brenna said.

Some of the cats Belanger bought for breeding cost upwards of $1,000; she started breeding cats in the ’80s and would mate Abyssinian, Maine Coon and Oriental Shorthair felines. The Japanese Bobtail, however, was the breed she would come to favour because it is one of the oldest naturally occurring types — of paramount importance to her as a career nurse who was fascinated by genetics.

She sat on the genetics committee of the American Cat Fanciers Association for years. She also served as a judge for 25 years and was even invited to judge an international competition in Beijing in 2004, a highlight of her work.

While she travelled constantly to cat shows around the world, making her way to most provinces and at least half of the 50 states in the U.S., Belanger never stopped calling Winnipeg home.

She stopped judging cat shows about five years ago, fearing she might drop an animal because of her deteriorating health. But she volunteered to help clerks clean cages and file paperwork.

“She was perpetually helping all the time,” her daughter said.

Days before she died, close friend Andrew Huhn told Belanger she appeared ill. He told her he’d take her to the hospital, but she said she was just having a bad day.

“She never complained,” he said. “She was more worried about everybody else than she was herself.”

Brenna requested people make donations to Mothers Against Drunk Driving in honour of her mom. Belanger’s caring legacy is left to uphold by her daughter and two grandsons Theodore, 11, and six-year-old Zachary.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @macintoshmaggie