Our furry friends are the first to fall victim as the recession bites

By Terry Prone

Monday, February 23, 2009

No, I don’t know the names of the Brass Neck 10. I do have a list, of course. Everybody does. How many are on your list? Mine has 13 people on it. One way or the other, I’m tearing it up.

I’ve lost the will to get excited about lads pumping up share values, and draw comfort from the certainty that when all is revealed, I’ll know none of them personally. Me, I have friends mainly in low places.

The recession-related news story that really bothers me is the one about people dumping their pets because it’s too expensive to maintain them. I could understand that if foreclosure is imminent and the ESB are getting stroppy about their bill, it might make sense to get rid of the fish, if you’ve four heated tanks of them.

Deep meaningful relationships with fish are rare, although I once had a pair of goldfish named Finn and Haddie, the demise of which made me so distraught, my big sister organised a stunningly elaborate back-garden funeral. It was short of a riderless horse and a 21-gun salute only because the back garden was too small and the neighbours too picky to allow for either.

We don’t currently have fish, but I’m a little nervous that the man in my life might come to the view that eliminating our two cats would be a good cost-cutting measure. Each is the size of a sheep, with an appetite to match.

The minute either of us opens the fridge or lifts a saucepan, they start a campaign to get a bit of whatever we’re cooking, even if it’s the heavily-salted runny brains called porridge Himself eats in the morning.

The problem about them campaigning for porridge is that they’ve usually slept across his legs in the bed like two oversized soft anchors, pinning him in the one position the whole night, so when breakfast time comes he’s got a pronounced limp and severely reduced cat tolerance.

When he swipes at them with the tea towel, Scruffy (who’s as thick as a plank) thinks it’s playtime, while Dino (who’s smart but touchy) lies down in a sulk, usually on the freshly ironed white shirt Himself is planning to wear that day. Dino is coal black and sheds half a ton of hair each day. The end result is that, half the time, Himself looks as if he’d had a fight with a bear and lost.

Whenever he’s going to an important meeting, the entire office has to go to work on him with strips of Sellotape to remove the contrasting fuzz. (We’re so used to him wearing tufts of cat fur, we take it for granted, but clients mightn’t like it…) I’ve never figured out why a white cat will always choose to lie on black clothes, while a black one will go for white ones.

The important thing is their marvellous laziness. Slip them a few slivers of ham and they purr like helicopters, then collapse and go to sleep. Dino goes to sleep as if he was posing for an ad. Scruffy, on the other hand, tucks his back legs under him in a way that makes him look like an oven- ready chicken.

Never let anybody tell you that cats aren’t affectionate. Of course they’re not clingy, tongue-hanging-out adorers like dogs.

If you disappear out of their lives for a week or 10 days, they don’t go into a decline. They do what they normally do, which is eat, sleep and pose. When you come home, they’re not all over you. But they’ll bring you gifts to celebrate your return.

When I came back from a recent business trip, for example, Scruffy brought me a robin in rigor mortis, depositing it neatly in my unpacked overnight bag.

I wept and yelled at the giver, who was markedly taken aback, not appreciating that robins have an emotional hold on humans most vividly expressed in Christmas cards of little redbreasts with notes of music issuing from their open beaks. Robins have an extra heartstring tug for me.

When my father, in his last few years, would be overcome by breathing difficulties while digging his garden and lean heavily on the handle of the spade a robin would come hop, hop, hopping up to him and perch on the cross piece at the top of the digging part of the spade, looking up at Dad and chirping at him. Break your heart, it would, to see the two of them.

One mitigating factor about Scruffy’s recent gift of the poor dead robin was that National Geographic magazine that week carried a feature about robins which suggested that, under their designer gear, they have a fundamentally bad attitude. They’re much more territorial than most birds and will kill each other rather than yield a millimetre of terrain.

Two robins on a sea journey divided the ship between them, one owning the bit from the mast to the prow, the other the bit from the mast to the end. Other than eating, they devoted the entire journey to fighting like hoodies.

At least, I thought, as I buried the poor victim, at least he was dead. Half the time when Scruffy brings home prey, it’s not dead. You have no idea how exciting it is to come home after a day’s work and find your sitting-room occupied by a blackbird perched on a light fitment, gazing down in terror at the feline who dragged him through two catflaps.

Although, a blackbird is easier than a wood pigeon. Maybe north Dublin produces particularly large wood pigeons, but the ones that end up — live and unhappy — in my sitting-room are as big as turkeys.

It takes a big bath towel, expertly thrown, to subdue an oversized pigeon and get it out into the garden for release.

I find myself clutching the bundled towel, the bird’s heartbeat hammering against my palm, giving it a lecture.

"Would you ever wise up?" I softly tell the pigeon. "Scruffy is huge and white. How the hell can you not see him coming? Just stay up high, would you? That’s why God gave us trees. So birds like you and your pal the blackbird could avoid cats. Be upwardly mobile."

I gently release him onto the top of a hedge and he cowers for a few minutes while I worry that Scruffy may have permanently disabled him.

Just as I get to the point of deciding I must recapture him and take him to a vet to be put to sleep (oh, the wonderful euphemisms of wildlife mercy-killing) he takes off and flies out of sight.

Next time I go through the procedure, I can’t tell whether it’s a brand new pigeon or a slow learner with a death wish.

Although the man in my life gives out to them and about them, I don’t think he’d do the cats in to save money. But if they’d learn to eat what they kill, (outdoors, ideally, and concentrating on rats and mice) they’d cut our cat food costs by at least 10%.

And, as Marty Whelan keeps telling us, every little helps.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, February 23, 2009