Our home also accommodated pet mice. The first came when Daughter Number One was given the privilege of bringing the class mouse home for the holidays. On Thursday afternoon it arrived, complete with cage and treadmill. Daughter Number Two, a pre-schooler, was fascinated and delighted to be allowed to hold and stroke it. An hour later the mouse was lying on the cage floor, decidedly dead. An inquisition elicited the fact that younger daughter, feeling the mouse was a little grubby, had carefully washed it with her facecloth and cold water.
What to do? Unthinkable for elder daughter to have to face her classmates with the news the mouse had not survived even one night in our house. It fell to me to drive across the city to a shopping centre open late on Thursday night, and carefully choose a look-alike replacement. Classmates need never know our family secret.
We had goldfish too. When one of them was swimming at an odd angle, and obviously not feeling the best a daughter insisted we phone the vet to ask what could be done. The vet said he didn’t know but if we brought it in he would have a look at it. I had no car that day, so took a taxi, with two daughters, and the fish in a container. The vet took a look, said he couldn’t do anything and offered to dispose of the corpse. He was kind enough not to charge us. We walked home, about a mile and a half, with tears streaming from both daughters lamenting their lost loved one.
A budgie in a cage graced our kitchen for many years. We named him Archimedes (Archie for short, pre-empting a later royal baby). I hoped to teach him to say “Eureka, my bath is overflowing”, but he never quite got the hang of that. When we prepared to move south we intended that Archie should come in the car with us, but he conveniently expired a few weeks before we left. Having pets is a good way of coming to understand the cycles of life and death.
When Stephen and I were preparing to leave Auckland and move south, the daughters had left home, but we still had four cats. (The last remaining hen had gone to a retirement farm in Thames. We later received a postcard to say she was happy and enjoying the attentions of a rooster.) A friend offered to give our four felines a temporary home until we were settled, and then freight them down to us. We took them to her house where she shut them in a shed. The next morning she phoned to say they’d managed to escape, and we wandered the streets for hours calling “puss, puss”. A passer-by asked if I’d lost a cat and I confessed shamefacedly that I’d lost four! They were never found although the friend kept checking our old house in case they’d managed to find their way home.
Once we’d settled in Christchurch we needed a cat and went to the SPCA to find one. I couldn’t resist a handsome black cat whom we named Blott.
Ruth with Blott, 1988
When we found that a stray cat was sneaking through the cat door and stealing Blott’s biscuits we named him Monster, after the Cookie Monster. Despite advertising no-one claimed him, so he joined the family. Some years later another stray adopted us. She was a good mouser, so became Miss Molly Mouse Muncher. Again we had no success tracing her origins, but months later a card in the letterbox told us her name had been Mushroom, and her family had too many pets so were glad she’d moved in with us.
With only two humans in our household, we were not so tempted to add more animals, although we sadly missed our chooks. In 2001 we bought tiger worms for our compost bin. Individual names for these were not practical, so they were designated Wylie One, Wylie Two, etc. In 2007 we bought them a Can’-o-Worms worm farm, where they happily live and breed, and supply garden fertilizer.
Molly died at the time of the earthquakes and we willingly adopted a refugee cat, a cuddlesome Burmilla called Bentley (his original owner was a car enthusiast).
Bentley in tree
When Bentley’s time was up we decided we wanted another Burmilla, although we’d never previously had designer cats. This is how we came to acquire Ziggy, whose pedigree name is Avon Ziggy Stardust, the adorable feline who now rules our home.
With lots of worms and Ziggy too
our home’s complete, I think, don’t you?
Read Full Post »
Ruth's Reflections 