Deadly games

My kitten caught his first mouse today. I was proud. Well, simultaneously proud of him and sorry for the mouse. I really just wanted to go put the poor thing outside, but people always say not to do that because it will come back inside.

He’d found the poor little thing cowering behind a curtain, and he was on it in a flash. I had to chase him outside because he kept putting it down on the living room floor to play with it, and I didn’t want it disappearing underneath something.

He was gone for about an hour, and eventually came back sans mouse to have some cuddles and lie in the sun for quarter of an hour. Then he was outside again, as is the norm for him. I don’t know what he does all day, but he spends most of his time outside, usually within earshot, judging by the amount of times I’ve gone out onto the deck and called his name, to see him come bounding around the corner moments later.

A few minutes later he was back again with his prize, which I realised with a small amount of shock, was still alive. He’d played with this mouse for possibly an hour, left it alone and alive for 20 minutes, and then found it again. I don’t know how mice work, so I don’t know if it would have just stayed put out of fear, or if maybe he injured it in some way that I couldn’t see. Whatever the case, he tried to bring his live mouse back into the house. I shooed him away and he disappeared once more.

I saw him again about half an hour later, this time batting the now-dead mouse across the deck. I felt a bit sad for the mouse, but I was glad Tonka was finally learning to hunt. I was glad, that is, until about ten minutes ago.

It’s now 10pm, and Tonka has been scampering around the hallway outside my bedroom door for the last fifteen minutes. After listening to his thumps and scuffles, I eventually got up to see what he was doing. Imagine my surprise when I come out of my room to find him hitting around his very dead mouse on the hallway carpet.

He looked at me, frozen. I looked back.

“TONKA!” I yelled, putting on my ‘very angry’ voice. “Get that thing out of here!”

I understand, of course, that he is a cat and doesn’t actually speak my language, but I correctly assumed that he would understand what I meant when I started stomping my feet at him and making a whooshing motion with my arms to direct him to the window. In a flurry of movement, he snatched up his toy with his teeth and fled to the living room window, scrambling out as fast as his little legs would take him.

How long am I going to have to keep a look out for that dead mouse?

Bullies

When I was in year 11 at college I seemed to spend a startling amount of time getting threatened by people.

Alright, I’m exaggerating. I only got threatened twice that year, but it was probably the first and only times that someone had legitimately threatened to hurt me and actually meant it, so it stands out to me.

The first time was after I’d been texting a boy. I’d never met him, he lived in another town, but my friend knew him and had been texting him from my phone, and later in the day he wanted to continue the conversation with me. I built up something of a friendship with him, although I think he’d have preferred something more, judging by the amount of the times he told me I sounded like I was hot. I don’t really know how you tell that over text, but I think I was flattered.

I told him I wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship (I was a bit young and I didn’t know him at all), but that I’d still like it if we could keep talking as friends. He seemed fine with that, but then I didn’t hear from him for several weeks. I wasn’t overly fussed about this, but one day I texted him saying something along the lines of “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in ages. How’s everything?”

It wasn’t long before I got a reply. But it wasn’t from him, no. It was from his furious girlfriend, who I had not known existed.

What followed was a whole lot of her telling me to keep my hands off her man, while I tried to tell her not to worry, I wasn’t trying anything, I was just saying hi. She told me she wasn’t going to deal with my little schoolgirl bull**** and that she knew people who could find out where I lived. I can’t remember how that conversation ended, but I do remember that she never did calm down.

The second time also involved texting a random guy. I have since learned that texting random guys is just a bad idea.

A different friend had been texting a guy on my phone, again, and she eventually realised that he was the ex-boyfriend of one of her other friends. The other friend told her not to text him anymore, so she happily complied, but I was left to explain to him with my friend had suddenly disappeared.

Now, it has come to my attention that I say things, sometimes, that other people don’t want me to say. My brain doesn’t seem to realise that it could embarrass others, because it’s something that I wouldn’t mind other people saying about me. I can often be pretty blunt and don’t particularly like beating around the bush, so I find it difficult to take into account what I shouldn’t be saying.

I said to this boy that my friend couldn’t talk to him anymore because his ex-girlfriend asked her not to. I didn’t think there was an issue with this but it turns out I was pretty wrong.

The next day, this ex-girlfriend – Samantha – was refusing to speak to my friend because she didn’t want the guy knowing that she’d said not to talk to him. I sent Samantha a quick text telling her that I was the one who’d said that to him, and didn’t realise it would upset her, but please don’t be mad with the other friend because she hadn’t done anything wrong.

My phone died, and later, when I got home, I turned it on to find several messages from an unknown number, telling me to leave Samantha alone, or I’d be getting a beating. In the next few messages the unknown sender seemed to be becoming increasingly enraged that I hadn’t replied. I finally responded with something along the same lines I said to Samantha – I was just sticking up for my other friend who hadn’t done anything wrong, and I just wanted it to be known that I was the one at fault.

This person texting me, who it turned out was a girl in the year below me, didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t insulting or harassing anyone, and after some discussion started to say that she knew exactly who I was, and I better watch my back. I went to an all girl school at the time, so needless to say I wasn’t particularly intimidated by a group of year 10 girls with a stupid grudge. In situations like these, I unleash the sass monster, because I don’t like people trying to intimidate me.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I replied. “I need to go find a rock to hide under.”

“Are you getting smart with me, b****?” She replied wildly. At least, I like to think she was replying wildly, because that would mean I’d gotten under her skin.

At this point, Samantha herself started texting me too, berating me for getting smart with her friend. As you can assume, I was unapologetic. Where in the book did it say I had to be polite to the girl who was threatening to gather a group of her pipsqueak friends and beat me up? I didn’t owe her anything, she wasn’t my mother.

The conversation continued with me shamelessly winding up the other girl until I ran out of texts. I probably don’t have a very good sense of self-preservation, because if she had decided to seek revenge, it would have ended badly for me, even if she and her friends were a year younger.

The funny thing about both these times that people started threatening me was that they didn’t seem to listen to reason. Before I started simply winding them up, I really tried to explain that I meant no harm. I even did it politely, until I got fed up. It astounds me that these people couldn’t just calm down or talk logically, but instead launched straight into promises of hunting me down. It’s weird to think that people like that exist.

Anyway, I was prompted to write this post because I saw Samantha working at the supermarket today. She didn’t see me, and she probably wouldn’t even have recognised me anyway, because it’s been so long. I let myself feel just the tiniest bit smug that the girl who had unleashed her slathering hounds on me appeared to be working in a Pakn’Save. Only a little smug though.

Name dropping and politician hunting

My classmate and I went on a Prime Minister hunt today at Fieldays, and scored an interview with him.

We’d heard he’d be showing up at ten, so we tried to find him. Eventually we ended up at the National party stall, and found ourselves shaking hands with David Bennet, who assured us the Prime Minister was not at Fieldays, and wouldn’t be showing up until somewhere between one and two. Disappointing. Disheartened, we left the building, bumping into a Waikato Times reporter that used to go to Wintec, who informed us that John Key most certainly was here, and would be coming around the corner any moment.

Sure enough, what she said was true, and minutes later there he was, moving at a snail’s pace through the mob of people who wanted him to take photos with their children. Feeling like idiots, my friend and I jumped in to shake his hand and get ourselves a photo too. But that wasn’t our reason for being there. The reason was to score an interview. We didn’t manage it after our photo, so we followed along in the sea of people as he made his way into the pavilion.

He walked up to David Bennet and stood chatting, shaking hands with people and taking more photos with children. Bennet, noticing us standing there awkwardly, beckoned us forward, telling Key that we had some questions to ask him.

I used the opportunity while my friend got his recorder out to shamelessly name drop.

“Do you know Ian Wishart?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m his daughter.”

“Oh! You’re in my electorate!”

“No, I live in Hamilton.”

Awkwardness ensued. Then my friend started his interview. I butt in once to ask a question that I was relatively proud about, and before long we’d run out of things to say. The end. Ta dah.

The two of us shook his hand again, and Nathan Guy, the minister for primary industries, who took it upon himself to join in on the interview. Then we were off, back to our Wintec site, feeling a little bit chuffed, and, on my friend’s part, a little bit like wanting to vomit.

As we left, his press secretary chased us down, telling us that for future reference, if we wanted to talk to John Key, we needed to go through them.

“Oh, yep,” I said out loud.

‘Screw that,’ I muttered in my head.

Feeling pretty good right now.