I was thinking the other night about William and Sarah’s cat. Well, I assume there was more than one, over the years. The only mention of a pet I have seen in family letters is in one from William’s sister Hannah, in which she says, “Mother says she fancies she can see dear Gertrude sitting on a footstool by the fire nursing the cat”. I’ve got to imagine there were family cats – there wouldn’t have been any shortage of available kittens, given the lack of feline birth control technology. Cats were the original mouse-traps, after all, and there is no more effective mouse-trap than an under-fed cat.
Thinking about Gertrude’s cat made me wonder about where it came from. Cats aren’t native to New Zealand – in fact, our bird life had no natural predators until people and a variety of ship stow-aways arrived in the country. So I guess cats in New Zealand are descended from cats that jumped ship here; and those cats probably originated around the docks of London and other English ports. As well as contemplating my family history, I realise that my own Avro’s murky genealogy undoubtedly goes back to some immigrant cat as well – most likely a steerage cat or deserter cat from a ship’s crew, rather than a first-class cabin cat! Possibly he is even a descendant of Gertrude’s cat, although given that he doesn’t even know who his own parents were, it’s not something we’ll ever be able to find out!
Avro is known to the neighbourhood as The Terminator, because any small creature unfortunate enough to cross his path is likely to be terminated with extreme prejudice. I don't mind him killing mice and rats - that's his job – but I do object to the carnage amongst the local birdlife, and I get very tired of my house being the killing ground. I've lost count of the number of dead birds and bird parts I've had to clean up. The toilet seems to be his favourite place to take things to kill, which makes for a pleasant start to the day when I stagger in there semi-conscious and find the remains of Avro's "first breakfast". On one memorable occasion, there was not only the dead bird, but also the remains of the branch it had been sitting on when captured, which must have been a challenge for him to get through the cat door. Then there are the escapees - more than once I've come into the lounge to find a ruffled and aggrieved bird perched on top of a bookshelf, and evidence of a vigorous pursuit by the cat.
As for the rats and mice - well, my neighbour Anne reports that she has had no more mice problems since The Terminator commenced operations down the side of her house.
(Here he is, hunkered down under Anne’s bathroom window, waiting for lunch to walk past.) Unfortunately, Avro has merely transferred her mouse problem to me, because he will bring the dratted things indoors to play with. Half the time he loses them under bits of furniture - then he loses interest and goes outside to look for something else to play with. The surviving mice make themselves very comfortable in my kitchen. Those that don't survive turn up whenever I move furniture...
It's not always mice, either - I don't want to think about where he is finding them, but Avro has also brought in a few rats. The other night I got up to go to the loo, and in the dark stood on something soft - which turned out to be Avro himself, who hissed wildly and clawed his way up my leg in fury. When I turned on the lights to survey the damage, I found Avro poking around under a pile of towels which were waiting to be washed. By the time I had cleaned and bandaged my many lacerations, Avro had wandered out of the room, so I lifted one of the towels, and out popped.....some kind of rodent - either an extremely obese mouse, or a small rat. (I would prefer to think it was the former). Fortunately Avro came back and took it outside to kill. This morning I found a fresh dead rat in the middle of the back lawn. It wasn’t there last night, and since Avro spent most of the night on my bed, he must have caught it early this morning. I am very, very glad he didn’t feel the need to bring it into the bedroom to tell me all about it!
Then there are the skinks, which I think are probably on the national endangered species list - they are certainly endangered around here. Sometimes I manage to rescue them - occasionally I am fooled by the skink survival mechanism of dropping their tail, and rescue the wrong part. One time I encountered Avro acting suspiciously in the loo, but I couldn't see evidence of anything being hunted so I thought no more about it. The next day I picked up the spare pack of toilet rolls, and found a large and tail-less skink had been hiding underneath. It took off into the laundry, where there are several holes in the floor, so hopefully it has found a safe haven underneath the house, at least until it grows a new tail. Yesterday morning I heard Avro crashing around under the dining table, and found him in hot pursuit of another tail-less skink. I shut the cat in the bathroom until the skink had time to escape – Avro was furious and stormed around like a rock star trashing a hotel room, but at least the little lizard got away.
It could be worse, I suppose. At least I don’t feel the need to eat whatever Avro kills. Adela Stewart, an early settler to New Zealand, got so bored with her diet of mutton, mutton and more mutton (she lived in a sheep farming district) that she traded a bit of mutton for a quail that her cat brought in. She plucked the quail, cooked it, and ate it with great pleasure. Thereafter the cat, and its offspring, regularly hunted quail for her and brought them in to swap for meat. I can’t see myself coming to quite the same arrangement with Avro!
Thinking about Gertrude’s cat made me wonder about where it came from. Cats aren’t native to New Zealand – in fact, our bird life had no natural predators until people and a variety of ship stow-aways arrived in the country. So I guess cats in New Zealand are descended from cats that jumped ship here; and those cats probably originated around the docks of London and other English ports. As well as contemplating my family history, I realise that my own Avro’s murky genealogy undoubtedly goes back to some immigrant cat as well – most likely a steerage cat or deserter cat from a ship’s crew, rather than a first-class cabin cat! Possibly he is even a descendant of Gertrude’s cat, although given that he doesn’t even know who his own parents were, it’s not something we’ll ever be able to find out!
Avro is known to the neighbourhood as The Terminator, because any small creature unfortunate enough to cross his path is likely to be terminated with extreme prejudice. I don't mind him killing mice and rats - that's his job – but I do object to the carnage amongst the local birdlife, and I get very tired of my house being the killing ground. I've lost count of the number of dead birds and bird parts I've had to clean up. The toilet seems to be his favourite place to take things to kill, which makes for a pleasant start to the day when I stagger in there semi-conscious and find the remains of Avro's "first breakfast". On one memorable occasion, there was not only the dead bird, but also the remains of the branch it had been sitting on when captured, which must have been a challenge for him to get through the cat door. Then there are the escapees - more than once I've come into the lounge to find a ruffled and aggrieved bird perched on top of a bookshelf, and evidence of a vigorous pursuit by the cat.
As for the rats and mice - well, my neighbour Anne reports that she has had no more mice problems since The Terminator commenced operations down the side of her house.
(Here he is, hunkered down under Anne’s bathroom window, waiting for lunch to walk past.) Unfortunately, Avro has merely transferred her mouse problem to me, because he will bring the dratted things indoors to play with. Half the time he loses them under bits of furniture - then he loses interest and goes outside to look for something else to play with. The surviving mice make themselves very comfortable in my kitchen. Those that don't survive turn up whenever I move furniture...It's not always mice, either - I don't want to think about where he is finding them, but Avro has also brought in a few rats. The other night I got up to go to the loo, and in the dark stood on something soft - which turned out to be Avro himself, who hissed wildly and clawed his way up my leg in fury. When I turned on the lights to survey the damage, I found Avro poking around under a pile of towels which were waiting to be washed. By the time I had cleaned and bandaged my many lacerations, Avro had wandered out of the room, so I lifted one of the towels, and out popped.....some kind of rodent - either an extremely obese mouse, or a small rat. (I would prefer to think it was the former). Fortunately Avro came back and took it outside to kill. This morning I found a fresh dead rat in the middle of the back lawn. It wasn’t there last night, and since Avro spent most of the night on my bed, he must have caught it early this morning. I am very, very glad he didn’t feel the need to bring it into the bedroom to tell me all about it!
Then there are the skinks, which I think are probably on the national endangered species list - they are certainly endangered around here. Sometimes I manage to rescue them - occasionally I am fooled by the skink survival mechanism of dropping their tail, and rescue the wrong part. One time I encountered Avro acting suspiciously in the loo, but I couldn't see evidence of anything being hunted so I thought no more about it. The next day I picked up the spare pack of toilet rolls, and found a large and tail-less skink had been hiding underneath. It took off into the laundry, where there are several holes in the floor, so hopefully it has found a safe haven underneath the house, at least until it grows a new tail. Yesterday morning I heard Avro crashing around under the dining table, and found him in hot pursuit of another tail-less skink. I shut the cat in the bathroom until the skink had time to escape – Avro was furious and stormed around like a rock star trashing a hotel room, but at least the little lizard got away.
It could be worse, I suppose. At least I don’t feel the need to eat whatever Avro kills. Adela Stewart, an early settler to New Zealand, got so bored with her diet of mutton, mutton and more mutton (she lived in a sheep farming district) that she traded a bit of mutton for a quail that her cat brought in. She plucked the quail, cooked it, and ate it with great pleasure. Thereafter the cat, and its offspring, regularly hunted quail for her and brought them in to swap for meat. I can’t see myself coming to quite the same arrangement with Avro!
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