When the Irish Rovers arrive in Penticton next month, they’re looking forward to meeting a fellow traveller they are helping to also retire from the road.
With 50 years of wandering Canada and the world behind them, the Irish Rovers are planning to give up life on the road after this tour, though they plan on keeping the music coming at folk festivals and the like as well as producing new albums.
And like the Rovers another weary traveller, Clancy the cat, is ready to put his roving days behind him.
“It was George Millar who said we should do something for Clancy,” said Jennifer Fahrni, public relations manager for the band. They had been viewing a funny cat video on the AlleyCats Facebook page, she said, when they noticed a post about “this big ginger cat called Clancy.”
“We all thought of The Clancy Brothers, great old friends of the Rovers who sadly are all gone now. The cat himself reminded me of George with his ginger hair and been a Rover all his life.”
Rescued from the streets of Penticton by the AlleyCats Alliance, Clancy found a travelling partner with Bill Burles, and journeyed 12,000 kilometres with him before becoming lost on a trip through the Yukon and ending up on the streets again, this time in Dawson City.
Clancy is back in Penticton now, and the Rovers have made a generous offer to help Clancy to a new home. They’ve offered to cover the adoption costs for the caregiver who has been helping Clancy recuperate from his wilderness journey — and who now doesn’t want to give him up — plus supply $100 of food from Bosleys.
“Since we’d like to meet the lucky lady who has been taking such good care of Clancy, we’ll donate a pair of tickets for her to see the show, and an autographed 50th anniversary lithograph poster. She can get it autographed personally by the band after the show. Maybe we can also get a photo of Clancy with the Rovers,” Fahrni wrote in a letter to AlleyCats.
Fahrni said the Rovers are big dog people, but Clancy is such a character that he caught their attention. They’d like to see others head over to the AlleyCats Facebook page and adopt a cat.
“We’d be very happy to help get all the kittys on the street into new homes,” said Fahrni.
AlleyCats Alliance can be found online at facebook.com/AlleycatsAlliance and http://alleycatsalliance.org. The Irish Rovers will be in Penticton at Cleland Theatre on March 7, with tickets available at the Community Centre or 250-490-2426.