Because my wife and I are such ardent animal lovers and because we rent a small one bedroom apartment in a trendy block, where you can’t fit so much as a Basil plant on the balcony – let alone a pet – we often venture out to meet and interact with animals wherever we can. In our time we’ve tried to tame seagulls, starlings, hornbills and doves. During the recent Hermanus Whale Festival, I briefly befriended a dassie mother and child on the rocks. We’ve visited The World of Birds an abnormally high number of times and (here comes our dirty little secret)
we have a habit of coveting other people’s pets.
We’re not proud of it, but there it is. On three occasions, we’ve befriended neighbours’ cats to such an extent that they actually ended up spending more time with us than at home. Of course, the velvet cushion, cat nip and little tuna biscuit treats probably didn’t hurt. Various owners would appear at our door during the 8 ‘o clock news and ask pointedly if we might have seen their cat.
One set of neighbours even moved away suddenly, forlorn tabby cat meowing farewell to us from a cardboard box. I’m not saying we were the cause of their move, but they certainly didn’t leave a forwarding address. I bet the cat would have, if it could.
Recently though, we’ve stumbled on the most golden opportunity yet, for those suffering from pet envy. While following an irritated dove down Cape Town’s Hof Street, we ended up in De Waal Park; a verdant, well-kept giant green square where dogs of all breeds bring their owners on a Sunday afternoon, to frolic, mingle and wee on the numerous handy trees (the dogs that is – not the owners). Here, loosely congregating around a large central fountain, were all the dogs we had made wish lists about owning. Here was a staffie, who threw himself at us with characteristic abandon and bit my wrist in a friendly manner. There, a small black fur ball that looked like a shrunken, dyed Ewok. Best of all were the two golden retrievers who came and leaned against our legs in a nonchalant fashion. Big, ambling, shaggy, licky dogs. This was happiness.
Still, we needed to be careful. I could already see one or two of the dogs’ owners eyeing us every now and then – us with no apparent dog in tow. We retreated behind a fir tree and decided to move to a different part of the park – you couldn’t linger too long in one place, for fear of arousing suspicion. During our meander,
we came across a little Alsatian cross Jack Russell – some 50 metres from his likely owners. I made dog-calling noises (how do you write those?) and opened my arms in a friendly manner. He stared. He goggled. He barked. Then he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, clearly wise to our interloper status.
Next time, we agreed, we’d bring a fake wooden dog, on wheels, and pull it around with us on a leash. And a tennis ball; we needed a ball. All dog people had balls. Soon, we’d be ‘in the mix’, chatting with other dog people, and getting to know their pets every Sunday afternoon. I got the idea from the wooden horse of Troy…but then, we too were deceivers of a sort, admittedly. Not that we’d ever, ever steal anyone’s best friend, of course – we were harmless, really. Hearts in the right places etc. etc. We only wanted other peoples’ best friends to be our best friends too. Unfortunately, owners who were amenable to ‘sharing’ their pets were rather slim on the ground. We decided to make good our exit, before the alert went out that there were two non-dog owners in De Waal Park, lurking on the fringes of the obedience training session.
On the way home we stopped only to speak to a dusty black and white tomcat on a street corner in Gardens, while his owners peered at us through the front windows. Happily, when we got home to our designery block, inhabited largely by the latte set, we found two more cats – resident cats, even. Someone must have just moved in with them. Unfortunately, they appeared to be Siamese – a rather wiggy breed,
in my experience. I approached one on my haunches, as it sat munching quietly on some grass. I reached out a hand to ruffle its ears – and it turned into a hissing, hovering ball with four beclawed legs glinting like razor blades in the sunlight, before shooting off into the flower beds.
A setback, then. Most likely an alert had gone out on www.fbi.cat, the international website dedicated to keeping tabs on what the media were now dubbing pet whisperers. Pet whisperers, like us, apparently already numbered in the thousands (and growing). Young, otherwise normal couples who worked in the rat race, they usually lived in compact urban clusters sans garden access, and simply had a deep yearning for the halcyon days of childhood, when they used to roll around with the muddy dogs in mom’s herb garden, long after being summoned to bath. Anyway, it was clear that for now, we’d have to lie low. We tramped up to our flat and plonked ourselves in front of the TV. Maybe there was a Lassie movie SABC2; that always raised our spirits. Then I noticed two little brown geckos, ‘parking off’ in the corner of the lounge ceiling. Geckos, I thought. They were new. I looked at my wife.
We both looked up at the ceiling. Our own little, resident (possibly mating) pair of geckos. Could they…could they be tamed?
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