Decisions, decisions. Which one would it be? Should I choose the one that cares most about the cost of living? Or the one claiming to be organic? Or perhaps I should choose the one that reckons it can hide the fact that things stink?
You’d have thought my biggest decision last week was which party of ratbags, fakers or loons to vote for in the 2023 election. As it turned out, this wasn’t a head scratcher at all. I voted the way I always vote: for the lot who offended me the least while crossing my fingers that if they won, they wouldn’t spend three years disappointing me – a triumph of hope over experience. So, the eeny-meeny-miny-moe decision in the cardboard booth at Lakeview Primary was a doddle.
The most mind-melting call I had to make last week was which one of the apparently limitless types of cat litter I should buy: should it be the recycled paper stuff, the “all-natural” pellets, the one that goes for a frankly scandalous $150 for a 12.7-litre bag, or the brand claiming to be “antibacterial” and have a “fresh scent”? Or should I just buy – please excuse the pun – the cheap shit?
The business of cat business has become my business because we are presently in the business of trying to convert three wild young cats into tame, young cats and to have each of them fixed or knackered and microchipped. The medium- to long-term goal, Michele originally assured me, was that they then go to live with other families.
The first part of Operation Herding Cats, as it has come to be called, was supposed to happen last Wednesday and was to involve solving most of our problems at once: we would catch Tinkerbell, Molly (possibly up the duff) and Billy (previously dubbed Milly by Michele, who failed to notice the obvious, and possibly responsible for Molly possibly being up the duff), put them in separate cages and transport them to the vet, where they would be spayed or neutered and vaccinated, en masse. You have to love the wildly misplaced, Hipkins-like optimism of it all.
In the end, only Tinkerbell – the friendliest of kittens – was captured and dispatched to the vet. She returned in surprisingly high spirits, with a plastic cone around her neck and, it soon emerged, a powerful urge to pee.
While already au fait with litter boxes, and happy to use the one in the second-best bedroom, she seemed confused by their absence from the first and third-best bedrooms and, on brief visits to them – her last visits to them – decided to have a tinkle anyway. On the beds.
She has since been confined to the second-best bedroom, and I was dispatched on the mind-boggling kitty litter hunt.
As you will likely deduce from the accompanying photo, Tinkling Tinkerbell will not be needing a new home. It appears Lush Places has gone from a one-cat gaff to a three-cat gaff in the space of a year, for which we will no doubt be judged. It is plain that there is increasing disapproval of cats and cat ownership in New Zealand, particularly from the people who are, shall we say, convinced they hold the moral high ground and appear to derive enormous pleasure from hectoring anyone who doesn’t agree with them. These people even have a political party; I wonder if you can guess its name.
Protecting our native birds is, without question, crucial. But there needs to be a humane approach to strays, too. The dumping of kittens and cats (and dogs for that matter) – which has been climbing as the cost of living has risen, say animal welfare groups – is a crime. But there is a greater obscenity: that is the buying and selling of so-called “pedigree” kittens and cats, sometimes for thousands of dollars, when there are already enough cats and kittens in the world needing homes.
Molly is due at the vet’s again on Thursday.
