Harrison Christian: For the sake of our pets ...

Harrison Christian

At dusk my neighbour opens his door and tries to call his cat inside, with a tone of increasing desperation.

It's a relief when the cat comes padding up the drive, bringing an end to this nightly vigil.

There's something so exposing about calling out for your pet. It's like shouting your credit card number to the neighbourhood.

To summon her cat, my colleague has to wander around outside calling "tinties" in a high-pitched voice. Subtract the cat and you have someone who is mentally ill.

We do strange things for our animals.

I'm reminded of the time I drove through town with a cat on my head.

I have two cats I know of. One lives in Auckland with my parents. The other is somewhere in Dunedin.

My folks were moving house and assigned me the sole task of transporting the Auckland cat to their new place. I was the bringer of the cat - a straightforward but delicate role, like a kind of ring bearer.

Floyd is a flat-faced creature who is deaf and medically addicted to wet food.

I punched some air holes in a cardboard box and taped him inside.

I thought Floyd was reasonably secure, there in his box in the back of the car. I had hoped the dark, enclosed space would calm his nerves. But Floyd is not a parakeet. Instead he panicked, somehow escaped mid-journey and decided, in the world of new sensations that was my VW, the best refuge was atop my head.

With his claws in my scalp and tears streaming down my face, I resigned to wearing him like a hat.

Maybe it's a yearning for my estranged cats that leads me to the "Cats of Hawke's Bay" Facebook page, where people post photos of cats they encounter on the street.

With just 35 'likes,' the page is well behind its Auckland counterpart, but remains a definitive who's who of local felines.

"This cat came to visit while I was washing my car," the latest post says. "Pretty friendly cat. Wanted to be friends and have a pat."

I hear dog people scoff at this, but they are no different than cat people. They have their own Facebook pages - each school is as weird as the other.

For example, many people abandon dignity in order to walk their dogs.

My trips with the family dog around the block were always a blur of public embarrassments.

About 30 seconds in to the ordeal she would start to breathe in a disturbing wheeze, attracting concerned looks from other walkers.

She'd then begin evacuating her bowels and bladder at regular intervals, while I stumbled along behind her with a plastic bag.

The bag was more a symbolic gesture than anything else, a tacit apology for the dog's more violent and uncontainable outbursts.

Finally, after I'd taken her for a swim in the sea and we'd picked our way over the dunes, she would release a pressurised jet of salt water from her rear end.

It would propel her around the car park while people looked up from their picnics in horror.

At those times I would rather have a cat on my head.

-Harrison Christian is a reporter at Hawke's Bay Today.