Sinclair on life: Doped-out Toffee the cat a purr-fect cautionary tale

By PETER SINCLAIR

What's the perfect present for the guy who has everything, including cancer?

Dope, apparently, if some of my e-mail is to be believed.

I could be described, I suppose, as belonging to the cognac rather than the marijuana generation. But, after the Lady Morphine column, I've been forced to consider dope in its medicinal sense, because several proponents of the Dope-As-A-Shamefully-Neglected-Medication school have been urging it on me as a course of treatment.

Cannabis, they write, numbs the pain/relieves the fear/quells the nausea/eases the chemo/helps focus the mind on the inner essential you, thereby strengthening the immune thingummies and so on and so forth ...

One correspondent stoutly maintains that Queen Victoria took hash to ease her menstrual cramps, and would go reeling back to her apartments late at night with the aid of special fixtures on the walls to hang on to. Whatever the truth of this whimsical anecdote, I shall leave dope to the royals and stick with my own special blend of tea which contains nothing more narcotic than camellia leaves.

For I have an instructive illustration of the effects of marijuana practically on my own doorstep - it is the cautionary tale of the Cat Who Smoked Dope.

Toffee was born in a caravan up north, one of a liquorice-allsorts litter of kittens whose owners were of herbal tendencies to such a degree that Toffee was brought up in a permanent dense blue haze of dope smoke.

White with dottings of caramel, like hokey-pokey ice cream, he won the heart of Elliot, the 9-year-old son of Phil Yule, my sound engineer in whose studio, The Voice Box, I often record.

Reclaimed from the sinful environment into which he had so innocently been born, and travelling in an old baseball cap, Toffee was brought to Ponsonby for rehabilitation.

Maybe if it had been another suburb - Mt Roskill, say, or Remuera - all would have been well. But Ponsonby well, I suppose it was asking for trouble. Anyway, too late now for vain regrets.

As soon as Toffee was old enough to go out, he did, and naturally he sought out those places which most reminded him of his misspent kittenhood.

Frantic searches from Three Lamps to Freeman's Bay revealed he was seeking out the low life.

It was not long before he made friends with the owner of a dubious caravan in someone's back garden. He took to frequenting a halfway house just down the road, and on still nights, when smell carries, he could be found loitering in the fragrant darkness outside a backpackers.

He became an expert gatecrasher, rolling up to the door for a certain kind of party and, yes, inhaling ...

Nor did it have to be dope smoke. As far as Toffee was concerned, even ordinary cigarette smoke was better than no smoke at all.

He started sleeping around - anywhere he hung his hat was home. When he got the munchies he would just help himself - he learned how to open the pantry door and steal cat bikkies one by one from the bag, a neat trick when you don't have an opposable thumb.

An elegant cat-collar with his name and phone number was added to his ensemble, but then the phone started to go late at night. Calls from restaurants on Ponsonby Rd, saying: "Excuse me, but is this your cat having a drink on our bar ?"

"Honestly," said Elliot's mum, "I didn't think I'd have this sort of problem until the boys hit their teens ... "

But Toffee continues to do his own thing. Some might say he is a cool cat. It only goes to show how insidious dope can be.

For it all started with just a sprig of catnip, and look at Toffee now.

I intend to take heed of his tragic example, the medicinal qualities of dope notwithstanding. At least my special blend of tea keeps me off the streets at 2 in the morning.

E-mail pete@ihug.co.nz