Was William a Chartist? He went to one Chartist meeting that we know of. This doesn’t necessarily make him one, doesn’t mean he signed any of the petitions or agreed with all of the Charter. He left England before the 3 million signature petition was presented to Parliament, as did many of the Chartists and their supporters. A quick search of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography shows that quite a few former Chartists ended up in Nelson. Former Chartist leader George Binns, in replying to an attack on him in the Nelson Examiner, said “I have nothing to do with Chartism in New Zealand, and my past enthusiasm might have been forgotten where there is no grievance to redress and no enemy to our weal”. It’s possible that many of the former Chartists in New Zealand felt this way – in the new country, where the English class system had not taken root, and where opportunity was available for all who were willing to put in the work, there were not the same grievances as in England. The former Chartists didn’t need to be activists – they could just get on with their lives. It’s possible that this was the situation William was in.
What adds spice to the mystery is that a few months later, in October 1856, at the public meeting for the election of the Superintendent of Nelson Province, William rushed in to propose Dr David Munro as a candidate. William showed a rather strange haste and lack of propriety – the Nelson Examiner noted that the two main candidates were quietly conferring as to which of them should be proposed first; and Munro already had an intended proposer, who was reduced to seconding the nomination. A third candidate, opposing Munro and his main opponent on a number of issues, was a former Chartist, JP Robinson. So why didn’t William support Robinson? Was it that he didn’t agree with Chartist policies? It seems unlikely, given that life in New Zealand had already provided him with a key aim of the people’s charter, the vote. Was he trying to make a bit of a name for himself in Nelson political circles – he had been there for less than a year, so was he trying to get noticed? Did he have political ambitions of his own? He would have known Munro in Wellington, although they moved in different social circles – did he want to win personal favour with the man?
So does it matter whether he was a Chartist or not? I think, for the purposes of telling this story, that it does. I had been wondering how much of “politics” was going to find its way into the story – the more politics, the more work for me. The context is inevitably political – the New Zealand Company and land issues; Maori and land issues; the Maori wars; and local body politics, which we already know William was involved in. And where does Sarah fit into it all, given that it’s her story? It’s even harder to find out what she would have thought about it all – after all, reported history is so much his-story, and very little her-story. There are a couple of clues which suggest to me that Sarah would have taken an interest in politics, and that she and William may have discussed these issues at home. First, William’s sister comments in a letter to her that she remembers “you were very fond of a newspaper when you were at Ilford” – she encloses some of the local ones for her. Well, apart from advertisements, newspapers of the time were almost entirely political – so we know Sarah took an interest in the world around her. Second, two of her daughters signed the huge electoral petition that ultimately resulted in the 1893 Electoral Act giving New Zealand women the right to vote. Sarah died a couple of years before this; I don’t think the earlier petitions survived, and I don’t know if she signed any of them. But Emma and Kate, the two daughters who never married, did sign – and they had to have been influenced by the views of their parents, with whom they lived far longer than their siblings did. Slender clues perhaps, but I’m coming to the view that political issues were probably regular dinner conversation in the Norgrove household, and that therefore there’s a natural place for it in Sarah’s story.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Going with the flow
People sometimes experience moments where something appears in their creative work that seems to come from beyond them – for writers, a character appears fully-formed from nowhere, or a character says something that you know you didn’t think up yourself. Some people think it’s the hand of God at work. William Blake said, “I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.” As far as Puccini was concerned, Madame Butterfly was dictated to him by God : “I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public”. Sometimes it does feel like that – those are my fingers on the computer keyboard, but it’s just flowing through me from somewhere else altogether. I think flow is an explanation which removes the spiritual element which some people find off-putting –flow is just the state where we’re so in the groove with what we’re doing, everything just comes together. You lose track of time and the world around you and it’s like magic!
Last week I had one of those experiences, resulting in a research side-track and some interesting questions. I’ve been working on writing William and Sarah’s last night on the Gertrude – the immigrants are a bit stunned and disappointed by what they have seen of Wellington. They’re feeling a bit misled by the New Zealand Company’s claims about the place, and there is a lot of talk going on in the steerage compartment instead of the usual quiet getting ready for bed. Here it is, still very much messy First Draft :
Below deck, it was noisy chaos instead of the usual quiet bed-time preparations. The curtains were still open in most of the bunks, and somewhere she could hear a woman weeping. The men were clustered around the tables between the berths, several vigorous discussions taking place at once. A small child’s wail rose above the din, and the sudden tightening of her nipples made her realise that she had been so caught up in her own worries that she had forgotten Ovid. Where was he? They had left him sleeping in their bunk, watched over by the neighbouring Plimmers. She was too small to see the far end of the compartment over her thronging ship-mates. She began to work her way past the benches, struggling past backs and elbows and sea-bags, stubbing her toes as she pushed and excused herself. She glanced up to get her bearings in the shadowy sea of dark coats, and found she could see the pale moon of Ovid’s face peering from their bunk. She reached for him, hands quickly checking over his small body as he wrapped his legs around her waist and pushed his face into her neck. “Mama’s here now,” she murmured to him, “Mama’s here”. Over the hubbub, she heard a gruff voice call out their name from the other side of the table.
“Norgrove! You’ve looked longer on this so-called town of Wellington than the rest of us tonight. What say you about the New Zealand Company’s promises now?”
The muttering voices quieted as benches creaked, men turning to see William as he followed Sarah through the crowd. She heard him sigh, and felt his hand on her shoulder, a brief squeeze that sent warmth and tingling quite unexpectedly through her. She leaned into his solid warmth as he turned to look at the expectant faces.
“Well, certainly it’s not a town or city as we know them back in England,” he began.
“Far from it,” came a voice from near the hatch, as other voices called out, and fists thumped the table.
“Friends,” William shouted. “Friends, that is not why we took this journey! If you wanted the familiar, the towns and cities of England, why then are you here? Why did you bring your wives and children on this dangerous voyage if you wanted a world like the one we left behind?”
“Hear, hear!” came a voice from below and to the right of her. Bodies shifted around Sarah as John Plimmer extracted himself from his family’s bunk and stood up. “Norgrove has the right attitude. This place is full of opportunity for us all!”
Immediately, the uproar broke out again, and William broke away from her to move closer to the table. Men shifted to allow him through and she lost her balance, pushed back against the bunks and almost falling into someone’s bed. A tug at her skirt made her look down, and she saw Eliza Plimmer beckoning her down to join her family in the lower bunk. She squirmed between a ship-mate and her own hanging sea-bag and gratefully sat down on the edge of the bunk as Eliza pulled six-year old Isaac onto her lap to make room. “You stayed on deck a long time.” Eliza leaned over and spoke directly into Sarah’s ear to make herself heard. “Does it look any better for looking at it longer?”
“No,” Sarah said, “not in the slightest.” She tried unsuccessfully to hitch her skirt into a cushion without jolting Ovid, or disturbing Eliza’s two younger children, who were nested in blankets at the back of the bunk. The raised edges of the bunks stopped bedding from sliding out, but made for uncomfortable seats, especially since five months of use had reduced the straw stuffing in the mattresses almost to dust. In the end, she did what Eliza had done, and swung her feet up onto the bunk and leaned her back against the rough boards dividing it from the next bunk. They sat toe to toe, unable to talk without raising their voices, and unable to see anything of what was going on through a solid wall of men’s coats. Sarah let Ovid slide down onto the mattress with his head pillowed on her stomach, and twitched the end of a blanket over him. She thought she saw Eliza rolling her eyes in the gloom as outside, their husbands argued the opportunities and benefits of their wild new Eden against those who despaired.
She stroked Ovid’s fine blond hair – it had lightened in the sun since they had crossed the equator. It really needed cutting, but she wasn’t going near him with a pair of scissors in a ship rolling around at sea. It would have to wait till they got ashore, and then she would barber William as well if she got a chance. Who knew? This time tomorrow night, they would probably be sleeping on the shallow beach she had seen from the deck, or somewhere in a forest under one of those towering trees. She didn’t want to think about it – she wanted to be doing something. No wonder the men were ranting and storming, but none of the women seemed inclined to join in, and she wasn’t going to be the first to speak. Eliza seemed to have come to the same conclusion; she had reached around Isaac for work-basket and was digging through it for something to do. Sarah leaned towards her. “You won’t be able to see to sew in this light.” Eliza pulled out a thick skein of grey wool. “No,” she said, “but we may as well finish rolling the wool while we’re stuck in here.” She picked out the end of the yarn, and held the rest for Sarah to take. Sarah tucked her hands inside the skein and then pulled them apart to hold the loops taut. Eliza started to roll the wool around her fingers, forming a squarish lump that slowly took on the shape of a ball as she wound the wool around it. Sarah’s hands moved automatically, easing the wool off the skein. She focused on it in the dim light as they settled into a rhythm, concentrating on the wool and her hands so that individual words from the men’s discussion blurred into a loud hum.
They were just starting on the second skein when Eliza abruptly stopped winding and leaned out of the bunk to look at something. Although the men nearest them were still talking hard, the noise seemed to be dying down, and Sarah thought it was probably the ship’s surgeon, come on his nightly rounds. She was proved right when Dr Garrett’s voice called out above the noise. “What’s this then, a Chartist meeting?” The silence that followed was so sudden and tense that she realised a good number of her fellow passengers must have been more involved in the Chartist actions than merely signing a petition.
© Helen McNaught
I stopped writing in complete surprise when Dr Garrett spoke, because where in the world did “a Chartist meeting” come from?? It’s not something I ever studied in a formal history class, but I knew I had run across it somewhere. Eventually, I tracked it back to the Nelson Examiner’s report on a public meeting held in 1856 to discuss the Education Act. In speaking in favour of the Act, our William “remembered attending a Chartist meeting about 25 years ago, at which one of the great reasons urged for the passing of the people’s charter was that the Government did not make proper provision for the education of the people”.
The rest of his speech is quite fascinating, but I’ll come back to it at another time. I took off into an exploration of Chartism, starting with Wikipedia, and ending up in some fairly scholarly articles. I haven’t quite finished yet – am still wondering if anyone has written a thesis on the links between Chartism and emigration to New Zealand – because obviously there has to be a link.
Just as interesting, though, is whether great-great grandpa was a Chartist, and does it matter anyway? I’ll come back to this in my next blog entry, because this one is already enormous!
Last week I had one of those experiences, resulting in a research side-track and some interesting questions. I’ve been working on writing William and Sarah’s last night on the Gertrude – the immigrants are a bit stunned and disappointed by what they have seen of Wellington. They’re feeling a bit misled by the New Zealand Company’s claims about the place, and there is a lot of talk going on in the steerage compartment instead of the usual quiet getting ready for bed. Here it is, still very much messy First Draft :
Below deck, it was noisy chaos instead of the usual quiet bed-time preparations. The curtains were still open in most of the bunks, and somewhere she could hear a woman weeping. The men were clustered around the tables between the berths, several vigorous discussions taking place at once. A small child’s wail rose above the din, and the sudden tightening of her nipples made her realise that she had been so caught up in her own worries that she had forgotten Ovid. Where was he? They had left him sleeping in their bunk, watched over by the neighbouring Plimmers. She was too small to see the far end of the compartment over her thronging ship-mates. She began to work her way past the benches, struggling past backs and elbows and sea-bags, stubbing her toes as she pushed and excused herself. She glanced up to get her bearings in the shadowy sea of dark coats, and found she could see the pale moon of Ovid’s face peering from their bunk. She reached for him, hands quickly checking over his small body as he wrapped his legs around her waist and pushed his face into her neck. “Mama’s here now,” she murmured to him, “Mama’s here”. Over the hubbub, she heard a gruff voice call out their name from the other side of the table.
“Norgrove! You’ve looked longer on this so-called town of Wellington than the rest of us tonight. What say you about the New Zealand Company’s promises now?”
The muttering voices quieted as benches creaked, men turning to see William as he followed Sarah through the crowd. She heard him sigh, and felt his hand on her shoulder, a brief squeeze that sent warmth and tingling quite unexpectedly through her. She leaned into his solid warmth as he turned to look at the expectant faces.
“Well, certainly it’s not a town or city as we know them back in England,” he began.
“Far from it,” came a voice from near the hatch, as other voices called out, and fists thumped the table.
“Friends,” William shouted. “Friends, that is not why we took this journey! If you wanted the familiar, the towns and cities of England, why then are you here? Why did you bring your wives and children on this dangerous voyage if you wanted a world like the one we left behind?”
“Hear, hear!” came a voice from below and to the right of her. Bodies shifted around Sarah as John Plimmer extracted himself from his family’s bunk and stood up. “Norgrove has the right attitude. This place is full of opportunity for us all!”
Immediately, the uproar broke out again, and William broke away from her to move closer to the table. Men shifted to allow him through and she lost her balance, pushed back against the bunks and almost falling into someone’s bed. A tug at her skirt made her look down, and she saw Eliza Plimmer beckoning her down to join her family in the lower bunk. She squirmed between a ship-mate and her own hanging sea-bag and gratefully sat down on the edge of the bunk as Eliza pulled six-year old Isaac onto her lap to make room. “You stayed on deck a long time.” Eliza leaned over and spoke directly into Sarah’s ear to make herself heard. “Does it look any better for looking at it longer?”
“No,” Sarah said, “not in the slightest.” She tried unsuccessfully to hitch her skirt into a cushion without jolting Ovid, or disturbing Eliza’s two younger children, who were nested in blankets at the back of the bunk. The raised edges of the bunks stopped bedding from sliding out, but made for uncomfortable seats, especially since five months of use had reduced the straw stuffing in the mattresses almost to dust. In the end, she did what Eliza had done, and swung her feet up onto the bunk and leaned her back against the rough boards dividing it from the next bunk. They sat toe to toe, unable to talk without raising their voices, and unable to see anything of what was going on through a solid wall of men’s coats. Sarah let Ovid slide down onto the mattress with his head pillowed on her stomach, and twitched the end of a blanket over him. She thought she saw Eliza rolling her eyes in the gloom as outside, their husbands argued the opportunities and benefits of their wild new Eden against those who despaired.
She stroked Ovid’s fine blond hair – it had lightened in the sun since they had crossed the equator. It really needed cutting, but she wasn’t going near him with a pair of scissors in a ship rolling around at sea. It would have to wait till they got ashore, and then she would barber William as well if she got a chance. Who knew? This time tomorrow night, they would probably be sleeping on the shallow beach she had seen from the deck, or somewhere in a forest under one of those towering trees. She didn’t want to think about it – she wanted to be doing something. No wonder the men were ranting and storming, but none of the women seemed inclined to join in, and she wasn’t going to be the first to speak. Eliza seemed to have come to the same conclusion; she had reached around Isaac for work-basket and was digging through it for something to do. Sarah leaned towards her. “You won’t be able to see to sew in this light.” Eliza pulled out a thick skein of grey wool. “No,” she said, “but we may as well finish rolling the wool while we’re stuck in here.” She picked out the end of the yarn, and held the rest for Sarah to take. Sarah tucked her hands inside the skein and then pulled them apart to hold the loops taut. Eliza started to roll the wool around her fingers, forming a squarish lump that slowly took on the shape of a ball as she wound the wool around it. Sarah’s hands moved automatically, easing the wool off the skein. She focused on it in the dim light as they settled into a rhythm, concentrating on the wool and her hands so that individual words from the men’s discussion blurred into a loud hum.
They were just starting on the second skein when Eliza abruptly stopped winding and leaned out of the bunk to look at something. Although the men nearest them were still talking hard, the noise seemed to be dying down, and Sarah thought it was probably the ship’s surgeon, come on his nightly rounds. She was proved right when Dr Garrett’s voice called out above the noise. “What’s this then, a Chartist meeting?” The silence that followed was so sudden and tense that she realised a good number of her fellow passengers must have been more involved in the Chartist actions than merely signing a petition.
© Helen McNaught
I stopped writing in complete surprise when Dr Garrett spoke, because where in the world did “a Chartist meeting” come from?? It’s not something I ever studied in a formal history class, but I knew I had run across it somewhere. Eventually, I tracked it back to the Nelson Examiner’s report on a public meeting held in 1856 to discuss the Education Act. In speaking in favour of the Act, our William “remembered attending a Chartist meeting about 25 years ago, at which one of the great reasons urged for the passing of the people’s charter was that the Government did not make proper provision for the education of the people”.
The rest of his speech is quite fascinating, but I’ll come back to it at another time. I took off into an exploration of Chartism, starting with Wikipedia, and ending up in some fairly scholarly articles. I haven’t quite finished yet – am still wondering if anyone has written a thesis on the links between Chartism and emigration to New Zealand – because obviously there has to be a link.
Just as interesting, though, is whether great-great grandpa was a Chartist, and does it matter anyway? I’ll come back to this in my next blog entry, because this one is already enormous!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
A Holiday
It's Waitangi Day - our national holiday - celebrated by me by taking a day to spend on myself, with William and Sarah. Not that it would have meant anything to them - the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi wasn't marked until 1934, and didn't become a public holiday until 1974. I've been thinking about Wellington Anniversary Day, which is now celebrated with a public holiday in the Wellington Province. I didn't make anything special of it this year, because it was actually the last day of my month-long summer vacation - I was thinking about work and getting ready to go back to the office. But then, how many of the thousands who celebrated with the traditional trip to the beach/river/lake and a barbecue were thinking about the original Wellington Anniversary Day?
The day was first celebrated in 1841, to mark the anniversary of the arrival of the Aurora, the first of the New Zealand Company settler ships to arrive in Wellington. The following year, William and Sarah would have been barely three months in Wellington when the second anniversary day rolled around. It wasn't a public holiday as we know them today, although it was celebrated on the nearest Monday, rather than the actual day, just as we do now.
There was a varied sports programme for the day, starting with a sailing match (boats with under 30 foot keel) and a rowing match between whaleboats in the morning. There was horse-racing over hurdles. For those with only themselvs to enter competition, there were sack-jumping races, the traditional catch-a-greasy-pig and climb-a-greasy-pole events, a one mile running race and a rifle-shooting match. In the evening, Maori from the Wellington side of the harbour staged a canoe race against those from the Petone side, won by the Petone men. The same day, the Wellington Horicultural and Botanical Society held its first exhibition, which saw fruit and vegetables of surpising quality and size exhibited. At 9pm, a ball was held - ticket price 10/6 for the men, who were free to bring as many ladies as they could persuade to join them.
How did William, Sarah and Ovid spend Wellington Anniversary Day 1842? I have absolutely no idea! At this stage I think it's unlikely that William would have had his own business up and running. I think he would probably have been taking work wherever he could get it, as a contractor and a labourer. There seems to have been plenty of labouring work around, clearing land and building roads. If he had the day off on Anniversary Day, it wouldn't have been a paid holiday, but it seems like everyone who could took the day to celebrate. I imagine that Sarah packed up a picnic of some kind (succeeding generations of Norgroves have been indefatigable picnickers) and they headed out into the sunny morning to watch the races from the beach. I think they would have gone along to the Horticultural Exhibition to check out the vegetables - they might have got a vegie garden of their own started by now, and would be keen to see what sort of specimens other people were producing. They could have walked along to Te Aro to take Ovid to watch the horse racing, and then back along the harbour to see the waka race. I see William networking with everyone he knew, and even those he didn't, his mind churning with ideas and possibilities. Perhaps he would have taken his sketch pad, and in quieter moments sketched the scenes in front of him - the sails in the distance, the whale boat, the Maori and their waka, the crowds gathered in the sun - trying to catch something of the simple enjoyment people were taking in their holiday fete. Sarah would have been catching up with friends from the Gertrude, the women comparing notes on how they were settling in, and how their children were coming along. Ovid would have been bounding around, wanting to look at everything, touch things, taste them - a source of constant concern to his mother in case he fell in the water or got trampled underfoot. The only time Sarah would have stopped glancing around anxiously to check on him would have been when he was safely on his father's shoulders, watching a race or catching a ride as they walked along.
By the time the waka race finished early in the evening, the light would have been fading, and the family would have been tired from all the walking and talking, and probably a little sunburned into the bargain. As they wouldn't have been going to the ball (not having 10/6 to spare, and not really being of the ball-going class) they might have just gone quietly home for supper and an early night. Or perhaps they joined friends for a private party at someone's house, taking food and sitting around talking, maybe dancing a few country dances to the sound of a fiddle. And at the very end of the day, before going to sleep, perhaps William and Sarah lay snuggled up in bed and reflected on the day, the different sights and sounds, the strange juxtaposition of the traditional English rural games against the unfamiliar Maori in their canoes. They would have been reminded of how far they were from their old home and the families they had left behind. Wellington, so alien at first, they realised had become home; after such a short time, it seemed like they had been here forever.
The day was first celebrated in 1841, to mark the anniversary of the arrival of the Aurora, the first of the New Zealand Company settler ships to arrive in Wellington. The following year, William and Sarah would have been barely three months in Wellington when the second anniversary day rolled around. It wasn't a public holiday as we know them today, although it was celebrated on the nearest Monday, rather than the actual day, just as we do now.
There was a varied sports programme for the day, starting with a sailing match (boats with under 30 foot keel) and a rowing match between whaleboats in the morning. There was horse-racing over hurdles. For those with only themselvs to enter competition, there were sack-jumping races, the traditional catch-a-greasy-pig and climb-a-greasy-pole events, a one mile running race and a rifle-shooting match. In the evening, Maori from the Wellington side of the harbour staged a canoe race against those from the Petone side, won by the Petone men. The same day, the Wellington Horicultural and Botanical Society held its first exhibition, which saw fruit and vegetables of surpising quality and size exhibited. At 9pm, a ball was held - ticket price 10/6 for the men, who were free to bring as many ladies as they could persuade to join them.
How did William, Sarah and Ovid spend Wellington Anniversary Day 1842? I have absolutely no idea! At this stage I think it's unlikely that William would have had his own business up and running. I think he would probably have been taking work wherever he could get it, as a contractor and a labourer. There seems to have been plenty of labouring work around, clearing land and building roads. If he had the day off on Anniversary Day, it wouldn't have been a paid holiday, but it seems like everyone who could took the day to celebrate. I imagine that Sarah packed up a picnic of some kind (succeeding generations of Norgroves have been indefatigable picnickers) and they headed out into the sunny morning to watch the races from the beach. I think they would have gone along to the Horticultural Exhibition to check out the vegetables - they might have got a vegie garden of their own started by now, and would be keen to see what sort of specimens other people were producing. They could have walked along to Te Aro to take Ovid to watch the horse racing, and then back along the harbour to see the waka race. I see William networking with everyone he knew, and even those he didn't, his mind churning with ideas and possibilities. Perhaps he would have taken his sketch pad, and in quieter moments sketched the scenes in front of him - the sails in the distance, the whale boat, the Maori and their waka, the crowds gathered in the sun - trying to catch something of the simple enjoyment people were taking in their holiday fete. Sarah would have been catching up with friends from the Gertrude, the women comparing notes on how they were settling in, and how their children were coming along. Ovid would have been bounding around, wanting to look at everything, touch things, taste them - a source of constant concern to his mother in case he fell in the water or got trampled underfoot. The only time Sarah would have stopped glancing around anxiously to check on him would have been when he was safely on his father's shoulders, watching a race or catching a ride as they walked along.
By the time the waka race finished early in the evening, the light would have been fading, and the family would have been tired from all the walking and talking, and probably a little sunburned into the bargain. As they wouldn't have been going to the ball (not having 10/6 to spare, and not really being of the ball-going class) they might have just gone quietly home for supper and an early night. Or perhaps they joined friends for a private party at someone's house, taking food and sitting around talking, maybe dancing a few country dances to the sound of a fiddle. And at the very end of the day, before going to sleep, perhaps William and Sarah lay snuggled up in bed and reflected on the day, the different sights and sounds, the strange juxtaposition of the traditional English rural games against the unfamiliar Maori in their canoes. They would have been reminded of how far they were from their old home and the families they had left behind. Wellington, so alien at first, they realised had become home; after such a short time, it seemed like they had been here forever.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Cats and other household vermin
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)