Cat love an addiction
CATS EH? Will shred your furniture and ignore you for food. Humans seem extraordinarily venal when it comes to fluffy-bummed cuddle magnets.
I am the owner of a cat. It came into my possession when I was an inner city dweller. Once the vet bills are all added up and the odd bird kicked under an increasingly lumpy carpet, it has been an investment of debatable perspicacity. Since moving to the rain forest my attitude to the freeloading little bugger has hardened somewhat. Oh yes, in return for destroying the leather couch, eating anything tasty left unattended on the kitchen bench and being able to bring his mates around for the odd ‘‘let’s urinate all over the washing and sleep and leave fur all over the clothes’’ feline rave party, he does occasionally bring in a live rat and let it go inside the house for the humans to amuse themselves with – but this is not really paying the dues is it? All things considered, apart from the fluff, cat fetishism is basically analogous to drug addiction.
As delightfully fluffy-bummed as they may be, just like stoats and weasels domestic cats are unprincipled predators that prey on native birds, lizards and insects simply for sport. In addition to this nurtured clique, there are the cats that brain dead humans dump on the roadside out of boredom because they don’t have the rectitude to dispatch them responsibly. These create feral populations in the wild that prey on native fauna! Don’t get me wrong; I like my cat – Maurice – who has been with me for 14 years and when he’s not out killing things we share the house with a grudging respect for one another dependent, on his part, on being allowed to sleep on me when I am watching TV.
Gareth Morgan may have been a bit extreme but the matter he has raised clearly needs discussion. In the meantime, remember that every time you are feeling all gooey over a cat – somewhere out there in the dark, one of its brethren is hooking a native chick out of its nest – probably just for fun – and a bell round its neck is not going to change that one bit.