EVIL EYES: Being a grown-up means never having to be attached to cats. PHOTO/FILE
IF THERE'S one thing guaranteed to get me worked up, it's cats.
To be frank, they terrify me. Yep I'm a scaredy-cat of cats.
I put my very real but admittedly irrational cat phobia down to a traumatic childhood experience. I must have been 8 or 9. We were outside
my Nana and Pop's house saying goodbye after a visit when a strange cat appeared. Even then, I wasn't the biggest cat fan, so when it came towards me I moved away slightly. It kept coming (they sense fear, you know) and I kept moving away. I ran and the cat chased me. I swear, the cat chased me.
And all the while my grandparents, parents and brother were standing there laughing their heads off, thinking it was a heck of a joke and I was kidding around. To this day, my mother swears she had no idea I was actually freaking out, but I'm not convinced. Every time I tell this story - often to cat lovers struggling to understand my fear - people mock. Is it any wonder I'm scarred for life?
Maggie was the one exception to the rule. I remember looking out the window of my Wellington student flat and seeing my flatmate coming up the steps with a cardboard box. "Yay, Girl Guide biscuits," I thought. You can imagine the disappointment when it turned out she had adopted a kitten, without asking her flatmates. Maggie, so named because we'd just discovered maggots in the ham, grew on me and eventually I came to accept her.
