Dialogue: Dumped cats - pathetic victims of the heartless

People in the country know more than most that this is the season when city folk dump cats - and LOUISA HERD* has a heartfelt message for them.

It's that time of year again when country bumpkins within an afternoon's drive of Auckland are faced with the abandoned cats and kittens kindly left beside our letterboxes by urban pet-lovers.

Gee, thanks, guys. Our district is host to one of the few remaining habitats of fairy terns (30 left in the world) and an important site for the endangered New Zealand dotterel, so hordes of feral pussies are just what the DoC ordered.

What is it with these morons? Only the other week, my husband, coming home from work, picked up a tiny kitten playing chicken on the road with the milk tanker. She's a dear wee thing - stripey with four white paws and a white chest - and had obviously come from a house because she is fully toilet trained to use a litter tray and unfazed by two noisy boys.

Somebody - may they rot in hell - took this baby from her mother, put her in a box, drove out here, then casually fired her on to the verge and drove off.

Did they think it was funny? Did they look back at her and laugh? Or did they piously pat themselves on the back for humanely "giving her a chance"; that the farmer whose gate they dumped her at would take her in, because there must be heaps of cats on farms, eh?

Well, no farmer round here has farm cats and the only chance they were giving kitty was the choice of becoming a stoat's suppertime morsel or roadkill.

Starvation and cold wouldn't have helped, nor would wasting energy crying in the wet bush for mum. Either way, she was nothing more than hawk tucker until my other half popped her in his pocket.

But I already have five cats - every one of them a former stray. Cats like Ginger, left behind when his owners went to Europe; Pimple, who was one of a litter the old man found inside a disused boiler at the former Carter Kumeu sawmill; and Priscilla, discovered half-dead at the bottom of a skip.

Many more feline outcasts have passed through my hands. Some I have managed to find homes for but others, sadly, had to be put down. I can't take them all, much though I want to.

People who think that animals are disposable make me mad. Ignorant pillocks who foist their responsibilities on others or who refuse - on the most jejune excuses - to neuter or spay their pets should be forced to help at the SPCA village and face the consequences of their behaviour first-hand.

Do the job of the poor soul who has to destroy this pathetic animal detritus of our cities.

Walk those dogs into the death chamber. Pick up the sad corpses of what were once jolly, roly-poly kittens. Let them look those terrified creatures in the eye before they bleat about not neutering Fido because it's his "manhood", or not spaying Tibby because it's "healthy" to let her have a litter.

Why, too, I have to ask, with rescue centres overflowing with rejected cats and dogs, do we see advertisements for pedigree puppies and kittens for sale at humungous prices?

What does the average family want with a $300 Persian cat or the latest $700 trendy dog? If you are that desperate to offload some cash, go to Mangere, get a mutt and bung the SPCA a monkey (donate $500).

Mutts can fetch, play, catch frisbees and woof as well as any pedigree pooch. Moggies are just as snugly warm and purry as a slinkily expensive Siamese.

Unless, of course, you don't really want a pet for its own sake. No, you want something that fits in with the shiny Jeep Cherokee, the children's orthodontic work and the architect-designed townhouse.

There's no swank value in mogs and mongrels. You can't stroll around the St Heliers waterfront bestowing a pitying smile on the lady walking towards you who doesn't know that Dalmatians are so last-year, darling, if you are tugging a Heinz 57-bitzer on the end of a lead.

Plain old tabby puss doesn't drape sumptuously over the Italian chairs like an exotic ocicat, does she? You can't brag about her over a latte in Parnell. Bummer.

I know there are people even now indignantly champing at the bit to write letters to the editor about silly females getting their knickers in a twist over animal welfare when there's war in Afghanistan and children going hungry.

True, true, dear epistolary nitpickers. Indeed, there are children starving, so why worry about Towser and Blackie? Bearing that in mind, here are the immortal words of S.T. Coleridge:

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small.

For the dear Lord who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

The man who could ill-treat an animal probably would not lose sleep over cruelty to a child. Please think of our dumb friends this Christmas. We don't want any more kittens in the letterbox.

* Louisa Herd is a Wellsford writer.