I know, everyone thinks their pets are soothsayers or candidates for Mensa, but I know Roxy our rescue cat from Roxburgh is what my companion would call NTB (not too bright). For instance, she has not worked out she could help herself to her morning meat thawing on the bench rather than wait for me to emerge from the bedclothes to get it for her. ( Please do not tell me it is a cunning ploy to get me out of bed.)
It’s the succession of proudly presented dead rats finding their way into my bedroom which have convinced me of Roxy’s election year chops.
I draw the line at swallowing them, but I am sure she would not turn a whisker if I suddenly leapt out of bed and began nibbling on their juiciest bits once she’s done with them.
What am I saying? Rats’ juicy bits? Disgusting. Honestly, some people will say anything in an election year just to get attention.
After successfully ignoring that, I must endure the thud, thud, thud of her pursuing the hapless rat around the bedroom.
On occasion there is blood-curdling squealing from her prey, something which recently moved my companion to let a rat escape to the second storey deck outside our bedroom. To be fair, he thought in his sleep-addled state he was rescuing a mouse, and he has history in that regard. (Remember, he was indignant about an ungrateful mouse biting him during a rescue mission on the first day of lockdown.)
That mistaken identity would not have moved me to such compassion. The next day when he went on to the deck, presumably with the aim of rescuing what daylight revealed to be a young rat, it took fright and leapt on to the lawn below. It disappeared momentarily into the shrubbery, whereupon Roxy pounced again and brought it back inside. Good grief.
Much like our politicians’ pontifications, Roxy’s rat antics strike when I am tired. And, hell, at the moment could there be anything more tiring and tiresome than our members of Parliament? They are all falling over each other to convince us we should vote for them, but the closer we get to the election, the more it looks as if all they are interested in is being elected for the sake of being elected. I struggle to understand what the major parties stand for. National is all about getting things done, but what things? Labour, which at one point wanted us to believe it was transformational, now seems hellbent on promoting itself as a rival to the sort of do-nothing government led by John Key. I am hanging out for a policy on a new flag.
Much of our superficial political commentary does not help either, obsessed with polling and which of the parties have the most popular leader, as if that is the most important thing. Perhaps some commentators could benefit from comprehensive civics education including explaining we do not have United States-style presidential elections here to choose our party leaders or our prime ministers.
It is hard to take any of this election stuff seriously when we have new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins treating much of what the Government led by Jacinda Ardern proposed as something as distasteful as Roxy’s rats. Is it credible that he, as one of the top ministers under her leadership, has suddenly had an epiphany now he is in the hot seat, realising all of these things were wrong?
The jettisoning of policies related to the environment or carbon emissions are madness when we know the country is increasingly exposed to the devastating (and expensive) effects of climate change. The argument the individual policies dropped would not have had a big impact on carbon emissions misses the point. Doesn’t every little bit help? What a waste of public servants’ time working on projects for years to have them dropped on flimsy grounds.
Already the Government’s U-turning has left the Emissions Trading Scheme, described as the Government’s primary response to climate change, in tatters as this year’s first auction failed to meet the confidential reserve price, the first time this has happened.
Roxy is perfect for the current political scene. As well as being NTB and struggling to join the dots about anything, she does a fine line in fickle. She convincingly cuddles up to me when I am home alone, but once my companion aka North Otago’s Crazy Cat Gentleman sets foot in the house I don’t get a look-in.
Roxy for PM. A tonic for the catatonic.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
