With cats being in the news recently - Auckland Council wanting to declare feral cats a pest for bothering birdlife and cat-owners getting very hissy and scratchy about it – I have been feeling smug that my newest cat, Frank, doesn't pose a threat to birds.
Don't get me wrong, Frank is no pussy when it comes to predation. She (because Frank is actually a female, a tradition that started when we found out our hayshed cat, Stanley, was of the feminine persuasion) is a fearless and ferocious hunter.
Of hair ties, mostly.
There is a "junk jar" on my kitchen bench, alongside the "junk bowl" , the basket of junk, and just above the junk drawer.
Among the other things in the junk jar (a nail file, a small pair of scissors, two halves of a plastic egg, oddments of jewellery, pens that didn't work and a stretchy bright pink caterpillar) were many, many hair ties.
Until one day recently when I went to fish one out to wrangle my hair into submission.
And there were none. I assumed I'd been a victim of theft, the immediate suspects being my daughters, and I tied my hair up with a grimy rubber band from the horse grooming kit and forgot all about it.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of Frank vigorously murdering something all over the kitchen floor and up and down the passageway.
From the sound of it she'd managed to drag an irate wildebeest through the cat door and it was putting up one hell of a fight.
I shuffled out in trepidation, worried I'd step in something really nasty ... gnawed mouse portions being a prime example.
Instead, the prey that was putting up such a struggle it was bouncing Frank off the kitchen walls was ... a hair tie. And not even a very big one.
But regardless of its size, the hair tie and Frank were locked in a battle of epic proportions.
Man, that hair tie could fight. It was throwing Frank into the air, catching her on the way down and going for her throat. It was fast too.
One minute under the dining table, the next minute in the middle of my potted peace lily on the breakfast bar. I thanked the heavens Frank was on to it ... a hair tie that savage could have taken out the whole family while we slept.
But the hair tie was tiring ... it tried to escape under the couch, coming out disguised in a layer of fluff, but Frank pounced on it, growling.
It made a run for freedom under the fridge, but Frank fished it out along with a bottle top, two marbles and a random chopstick.
I couldn't watch any more. Rescuing the hair tie and shaking the fluff off I put it back in the jar. Then I went looking for the rest of the missing hair accessories.
As I suspected, they were stashed in typically Frank places ... under the furniture, in the dog bed and behind the old sewing cabinet. I put them all back in the junk jar.
And then I put them back again, and again, catching Frank with a guilty paw in the jar at least twice a day.
I tried to save the hair ties, really I did ... I bought Frank some ping pong balls to kill ... she hid from them. I bought her a catnip mouse, with a feather for a tail ... she dragged it outside and drowned it in a puddle.
Eventually I thought I'd cracked it. Frank seemed to be happily playing with something under the coffee table and it didn't appear to be circular or elastic.
I hoped it was the catnip mouse, but it was a bit small. Maybe a feather or a piece of paper or string? A closer look revealed…
A cockroach. A really big, shiny dark brown cockroach. One of the inhabitants of the old woodpile in the shed.
And it was alive.
These beasts and I have a mutual agreement; they don't come into the house and I don't scream at them.
I couldn't watch any more. I had to get the enormous bug out of my house and back where it belonged, and I couldn't let Frank turn it to gnawed cockroach-bits all over the floor.
As Frank picked up the bug, I picked up Frank, and we shuffled in an undignified trio out the back door.
I shook Frank and the bug fell free, skittering under the deck.
Frank and I went inside.
I tipped the contents of the junk jar on the dining room floor.
"Here you are," I told Frank.
"You can have all the hair ties. You can have the pens and the solitary ear-ring and even the pink stretchy caterpillar. Just leave the bugs where bugs live."
And just in case we ever run out, I have three new packets of hair ties in the junk drawer.