The price of a cat's affection is having to deal with dead rats, mice and small birds, and coping with vomit. The appeal is that the world is a bewildering place full of people doing unimaginably nasty things, but an animal is never nasty, unless it has been abused by humans, who are the bad dogs of the world. We know what's wrong, but we do it anyway.
I have begun to look differently at dogs. I don't want to own one. I've tried, and couldn't handle their constant need for attention, but I look at them these days like some women look at babies. Some dogs have big personalities, especially the small dogs I once ignored.
They enjoy the world so much when their owners walk them that it's infectious. What smells we live among, colours, if they can see colours, and what gratification there is in peeing here and there, the way some humans leave graffiti.
It must be age. I smile at dogs. I talk to cats. I lose my house keys. And in the evening I'm rewarded by a small animal's decision to choose my lap to sleep on. Gertrude Stein said, I am I because my little dog knows me. I am I because Toby helps me feel less cantankerous when I watch the world news and despair at the stupidity of people.
If everyone could have a loyal cat maybe they'd stop making wars and wrecking people's lives. Life could be simpler, surely.
Such is the simplicity of the animal-lover's brain, anyway.
A cat makes the world small enough to handle, for minutes at a time. And a dog can remind the world of what loyalty is. It's a rare trait in humans, but comes naturally to a well cared-for dog like the chubby and unbeautiful Ataahua, of Hamilton, who was doubtless lovely looking enough for her owner.
Ataahua's owner, Kerry Morgan, has vanished. Though the dog was taken home for the night without him she escaped to sit on the Waikato riverbank where he was last seen, and where they walked together every day. Searchers found Ataahua near his shoes and hat.
She kept returning, waiting for him, and as I write, days later, he has not been found.
Donald Trump is the scary new American politician who'll cause havoc if he gets elected, and makes democracy look dumb. Syria is in its usual state of misery, while Europe drowns in asylum-seekers.
China is building armed islands in the sea near the Philippines, and America is testing its minute men nuclear missiles to remind Korea that it can retaliate against attack. England may leave the European Union, and somewhere in Russia, I expect, Alexander Putin is busy doing press-ups. He has a dog. He can't be all bad.
As for Kerry Morgan, wherever he is, what greater tribute could there be to him than the loyalty of his dog?
I'm a sucker for stories that make the world seem to be a saner place than I know it is, and this is absolutely one of them.
Rosemary McLeod is a journalist and author.
