Sitting drinking champagne and reading my book in a riverside cafe in Singapore last week I saw a feral cat move confidently through the space. She was low to the ground and unhurried - this was obviously her domain. I assumed female, she was lean but full bellied, probably pregnant. I watched her until she left and looked for her the next day and the following. She was never there during the day but always as dusk fell and I enjoyed my glass of champagne watching the lights of the city emerge. I was reminded of another feral cat I had seen last year - that one during the day and moving quickly through the city. She hid under a bus as she saw me notice her.
I wonder now at the assumed female of these - they felt female if that makes sense but also now makes me consider the historical relationship - European - between cats and women, but that's another post.
The later in the week an article on National radio about the increase in size and ferocity of feral dogs in rural Australia made me think of an incident in New Zealand some twenty years ago when a pack of feral dogs was culled from the Auckland city rubbish dump. Autopsies shows all the females were pregnant and all carried female pups only - an exponential populations rise in the making. Here, the feral dogs are becoming much larger and the packs bigger. Not only a threat to sheep but now also to cattle.
in my post apocalyptal considerings I think about these two groups - the dogs moving in a destructive and harmful way across the environment, slaughtering, creating fear and retribution while the cats move quietly through their environment taking what they need and not drawing so much attention to themselves.
I know this is a totally simplistic structural reading and probably says more about my thoughts on patriarchy than anything else - but hey, this is a blog!
I also remembered a comment made about the CBD in Wellington as the heights of the buildings continued to rise. That in the event of a major earthquake - the big one scientists keep drooling about - the CBD would be covered in no less than sixty feet of broken glass. Survival seems distant in that event.
But back to the cats and the gentler notion of feral - that it is possible to live independently of the dominant paradigm.
I've just realised there is no conclusion to this post - it is just a series of observations!
