CAT-SODY BATTLES

If my partner and I ever split, I would most certainly get the cats. We have had our two rescues Bluebelle and Pounce for five years, but my partner will still only refer to them as “black cat” and “ginger cat”, and about once a fortnight he likes to speculate in front of the kids what Bluey and Pouncey would taste like after an hour in the oven.

Our cats show him affection only when he is boning a chicken; they purr and rub against his leg, hoping for an offcut. Far from ingratiating themselves, this just proves to him that cats are too fickle and selfish to be worth loving, much less feeding regularly, getting vaccinated or spending any money on.

That our Kiwi cats won’t eat raw chicken innards – the only offcut they get – is another sign they are not worthy. The cats in Vietnam, where he is from, sensibly eat what they are given, including innards.

Vietnamese cats also “kill rats bigger than them” and are not fat and lazy creatures that suddenly lose focus and drop to the floor in raptures when they happen upon a sunbeam. But even when our cats do proper cat things like kill rats or mice, they can’t catch a break.

Bluebelle likes to decapitate her victims, and will place the head and body centimetres apart on the nicest rug she can find. In my partner’s eyes, this is stupidity and a job half done rather than a useful kill.

Pounce, who has a bung leg, drags the back end of half-dead mice from traps around the house, and seems to eat around the innards. Again, Pounce loses points for not finishing her innards.

For the ex-couples in this week’s cover story, the question of who gets the pets was not so clear-cut. Reporter Amberleigh Jack, who was once stepmum to an 18-yearold chihuahua, speaks to divorce lawyers and pet lovers about the highs and lows of sharing custody of your pets.

EDITOR Emma Chamberlain