Feline Fellows

We have welcomed two murderers into the family.
No, I won’t sugarcoat it – that’s what they are and that’s why they are here.

Two twinned black cats with dark eyes and white blazes on their chest – the kids have named them Pharoah and Mako.
Pharoah was, actually, The Girl’s idea after reading up on Egypt. Mako was my attempt at talking The Boy out of calling his cat Nemo or Bruce, both of Pixar fame.

And yes, I know they will eat my little kitchen skinks, and they will, eventually turn into marauding Toms who will butcher the galahs and rosellas in my almond trees if they get the chance.
And, I know, that after working with environmental scientists in one of Australia’s most ecologically-sensitive regions that I should be appalled at the idea of raising my own feline marauders.

But, you know what, if they keep the mice away and scare a few snakes while they’re at it – they can eat all the galahs and geckos they want.

I don’t know at what time I became phobic about mice.
I remember being pregnant in what was, once, my family home, and watching the same mouse, night after night, skitter across the lounge room floor and hide behind the TV cabinet with any morsels it had picked up on its way through the kitchen.
How many nights I sat there, listening to the skritch-skratch of it eating toast in the safety of MY night-time retreat – how many nights I narrowly missed it with thrown paperback – I don’t know.
But by the end of our time in that house I know I was HYSTERICAL at the idea of that mouse sharing residency.

Looking back, considering my growing distaste for the little buggers, it wasn’t smart to move into a falling-down house surrounded by old dog kennels and wheatfields – and then leave it full of cardboard boxes full of books and clothes.

When The Man and I were both here, I’d lie away at night listening to the traps snap and then beg him to reset them.
We had a deal – I’d kill the spiders, he’d dispose of the mice.
But he’s gone now and, ironically, like so many women of this day and age, now that my Man has let me down – I’ve turned to Pussy.