CHATTELS and COMPANIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 874, 4 May 1956, Page 16

CHATTELS and COMPANIONS

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 2 |

OR the second time in three months, but only the third time in six years, our cat has laid a’ dead rat at our back door. Perhaps this means that rats, after disappearing almost completely for ten or fifteen years, are on the way back. But I don’t think jt does. I think

the cat has caught the only three adventurers hungry enough to dis-

pute possession with her. I have not seen a live rat here in 25 years. Though I have been only seven years in continuous occupation I have seen no droppings, lost no wheat, mash, potatoes, or fruit, heard no night noises, and uncovered no nests. Yet the cat’s two recent captures were not a pair. One was what we used to call a bush rat-small, almost black, with long fur, a long tail, and prominent ears and eyes. The other was a common rat-Norwegian, I suppose, originally-and I buried it without a second look.

. But rats are rats everywhere in the world when they are not mice. Everywhere they are thieves and destroyers. In every country hands~ are raised against them. And nowhere yet has: man conquered. them. I don’t know whether the rats ‘that came here with the Maoris were brought here deliberately or sneaked in. I don't know whether they have been destroyed by rats imported since or absorbed by inter-breeding. It is extremly unlikely I think, that I have ever seen one,

though I have seen bush rats and used to believe that these were Maori rats driven into retreat like the Celts before the Romans, Saxons and \Danes. But until I read Froude I believed that the very dark people still to be found in Cornwall, Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland were descendants of Spaniards wrecked there during , the flight of the Armada. Now I don’t that the few who escaped death in the sea met it when they struggled ashore, and that if one here and there survived the total was not enough to change the colour of whole communities. It was, of course, not necessary to change the colour of the Celts to enable them to propagate black hair and black eyes. Nor is it necessary to postulate a Maori origin to explain a black rat in the bush. Blackness is not uncommon among Norwegian rats, and is the common colour of the rats the Norwegians have killed, starved, or absorbed. If there are Maori rats left anywhere they are hiding where neither man nor mus (rattus or norvegicus) has so far been tempted to go.

* cd tk A CORRESPONDENT who does his best to keep these notes wholesome has written to say that one of Philip the Second’s instructions to El Greco (continued on next page)

APRIL 4

was that "no dog, cat or other obscene creature" should appear in the paintings. I don’t know whether that is a

hint to me to keep them out of this Calendar or

support for my argument that they should be kept out of houses and cars. To keep them out of these notes I should have to get them out of my life and thoughts, and that would leave me with very few thoughts. But ‘whatever Philip thought, animals are never obscene. They can be dirty, loathsome, offensive, disgusting; can carry and spread disease; can nauseate us by their evil smells and evil habits. They can be corrupted, but can’t themselves corrupt; can’t leer or snigger; can’t. poison or shock or pervert our minds. They are without what men call morals, but just as far from immorality. An animal can no more wallow in mental dirt than a fish can or a flower. I can’t, of course, be sure, without the context, what Philip meant, but I suspect that he drew a line between cats and dogs and some other domestic animals (perhaps goats and pigs) and animals of cleanlier habits; perhaps between the eaters of flesh and the eaters of grass. He certainly did not object to horses in paintings, or to sheep and lambs, though the only difference between the mind of a lamb and the mind of a pup is that the pup’s is more active and alert.

APRIL 5

> ail — ~-? WISH I knew who first called an animal by a human name; if he did it for love and not for convenience; and how long it was before the habit spread. I can’t see him as a prehistoric creature with hair in his eyes and blood on his lips, but only as someone very near, geologically, to the men and women we know now. Although we have

names for our enemies as well as for our friends, I think the naming of

animals marks a definite and comparatively recent advance in human development. We named them because we liked them, had come to be interested in them, and felt some kind of fellowship with them. It has always surprised me that there are no named animals in the Bible; though when I said something like that to Jno. one day he reminded me at once of the shepherd in the New Testament: "He calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out.’ That certainly suggests that each sheep had its own name and answered to it. I remember, too, that Adam at their creation "gave names to all cattle," but I don’t think we are asked to believe that he gave them individual names. He just distinguished the cattle from the sheep, the sheep from the goats, and so on. In any case, no one passed on the names. Cattle and sheep walk freely through both Testaments but only as cattle and sheep: never as Daisy or Strawberry or Whiteface or Crumpled Horn, They wete wealth, property, chattels, but not companions. The patriarchs were all dead before that change came. (To be continued)