AE 1438 - The Goss: What Pets Did We Have Growing Up in Australia?

معنی واژه با لمس

1. 0:08SPEAKER_02: Dad, was there ever a pet you liked more than the rest of us?
2. 0:15SPEAKER_00: Was there a pet I liked more than you?
3. 0:18SPEAKER_02: The rest of the family.
4. 0:19SPEAKER_00: The rest of the family.
5. 0:22SPEAKER_00: Um I think my first pet was probably the one he was the dog I grew up with.
6. 0:28SPEAKER_00: My mum had a a dog.
7. 0:30SPEAKER_00: Um when when mum and dad got married in England when they got back to Australia, um dad bought her a dog.
8. 0:37SPEAKER_00: And um so he was about one year old when I was born.
9. 0:41SPEAKER_00: So I sort of really grew up with him for the first eleven years of my life until he uh passed away.
10. 0:48SPEAKER_00: The bucket.
11. 0:49SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12. 0:49SPEAKER_00: What was his name?
13. 0:50SPEAKER_00: Butch.
14. 0:51SPEAKER_00: Butch.
15. 0:52SPEAKER_00: Butch.
16. 0:52SPEAKER_00: He was a boxer.
17. 0:54SPEAKER_02: So you liked him more than us before we were born.
18. 0:56SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19. 0:57SPEAKER_00: It's a fair call.
20. 0:58SPEAKER_00: So it's uh when you grow up with an animal, it's sort of it's different.
21. 1:01SPEAKER_00: We've had lots and lots and lots of animals, but they've all got their own quirks and you love them for different reasons.
22. 1:10SPEAKER_02: G'day guys, welcome to the Aussie English podcast.
23. 1:13SPEAKER_02: Grab a cupper, get comfy, and let's have a yarn.
24. 1:18SPEAKER_02: Today we're talking about the pets we grew up with.
25. 1:21SPEAKER_02: The lovely ones, the absolute troublemakers, and the ones Dad probably treated better than me.
26. 1:28SPEAKER_02: So so yeah, okay.
27. 1:30SPEAKER_02: Um what was the first animal you remember living with?
28. 1:32SPEAKER_02: What was its name and what did it look like?
29. 1:34SPEAKER_02: So you were saying Butch?
30. 1:35SPEAKER_02: That's the one that you remember?
31. 1:36SPEAKER_00: Yeah, butch, he was the dog we had.
32. 1:38SPEAKER_00: Um when I was born, mum had him.
33. 1:40SPEAKER_02: So what made her choose um Butch and what sort of breed was it?
34. 1:44SPEAKER_00: He was a boxer, and I don't know why she chose a boxer, but um So that's a sport he like playing, but what breed was he?
35. 1:51SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh huh, boom boom.
36. 1:54SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37. 1:55SPEAKER_02: Uh so who decided to get it?
38. 1:57SPEAKER_02: Mum did?
39. 1:58SPEAKER_00: Um well dad was good wanted to buy her a dog, and um she wanted a boxer for some unknown reason.
40. 2:05SPEAKER_00: I never actually discussed with her why.
41. 2:07SPEAKER_00: I was too young at the time, I suppose, and then afterwards it was probably irrelevant.
42. 2:11SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, she just liked boxes, they were friendly dogs.
43. 2:15SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44. 2:15SPEAKER_02: Where did it sleep?
45. 2:17SPEAKER_00: Uh wherever it wanted to.
46. 2:20SPEAKER_00: No, it was it was an outdoor dog.
47. 2:21SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
48. 2:23SPEAKER_00: And yeah, in winter he slept inside in front of the heater.
49. 2:26SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
50. 2:27SPEAKER_02: So he was allowed inside during winter.
51. 2:29SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was allowed inside all the time, but he preferred being outside.
52. 2:32SPEAKER_00: So in summer he slept outside.
53. 2:35SPEAKER_02: And how big was it?
54. 2:36SPEAKER_00: Um boxes are sort of l medium to large-ish dogs.
55. 2:40SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably weighed I don't know, 30 kilos.
56. 2:45SPEAKER_02: And what did you feed it?
57. 2:46SPEAKER_02: And uh who was supposed to look after it?
58. 2:48SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, he back in back in those days, it was no no such thing as buying specialist pet food, really.
59. 2:55SPEAKER_00: He basically ate table scraps.
60. 2:57SPEAKER_00: Whatever was leftover.
61. 2:58SPEAKER_00: And a gate oh, and we'd used to give him yeah, canned dog food as well, but um yeah, just basically table scraps, he'd eat anything.
62. 3:06SPEAKER_02: So you did have dog food like that you would get in a can or something from the shops.
63. 3:10SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
64. 3:10SPEAKER_02: What was that usually?
65. 3:11SPEAKER_02: Is that just leftovers from the butcher or the uh knackery or stuff?
66. 3:16SPEAKER_00: All the leftover stuff that they throw together and they probably put a few vitamins and minerals and things in to make sure that it's balanced, but yeah, I'm not sure that uh back in the early 1960s the uh pet food science was quite what it is today.
67. 3:31SPEAKER_00: So were you responsible for feeding it?
68. 3:33SPEAKER_00: Uh mostly.
69. 3:33SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
70. 3:35SPEAKER_00: Well certainly when I was older.
71. 3:36SPEAKER_00: Yeah, older as in you know, he he died when I was eleven, but um 11 or 12.
72. 3:42SPEAKER_00: Uh but yeah, he um it was obviously when I was a little one, little kid, two years old, I wasn't feeding the dog, but uh most of the time it was me feeding him, but occasionally my sisters would as well.
73. 3:53SPEAKER_00: What was he like?
74. 3:55SPEAKER_00: He was great, he was really friendly, and he was just he was with us uh everywhere we went.
75. 4:00SPEAKER_00: So yeah, back in those days, you know, you didn't have uh well we had big gates uh on our driveway um separating the backyard from the front yard, and so he was in the backyard, but he could these gates were about six foot tall, but he could jump over the gates.
76. 4:15SPEAKER_00: So he would just leap up, hook his front legs over the top and scramble over.
77. 4:19SPEAKER_00: Because he wasn't clearing it in the game.
78. 4:20SPEAKER_00: No, he wasn't clearing it, but he could get he could get over the over the gates.
79. 4:24SPEAKER_00: Um so but they were those gates weren't I weren't closed most of the time, they were open.
80. 4:28SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was back in those days, people just had their dogs out and about, dogs out in the street and things, which you can't do anymore, you know, rightly so too.
81. 4:36SPEAKER_02: But when did that change?
82. 4:38SPEAKER_02: Because I'm always talking to students who are from places like Turkey, for example, where they'll be like, the weirdest cultural shock I had was there were no cats outside, just roaming around, you know.
83. 4:47SPEAKER_02: No dogs in the street.
84. 4:48SPEAKER_02: And the same with Kel, my wife coming from Brazil, she was like, Well, there's no just dogs running around.
85. 4:53SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, No, we don't have that.
86. 4:54SPEAKER_02: So back in your day that was the case.
87. 4:56SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was much more common.
88. 4:58SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
89. 4:58SPEAKER_00: When did that change?
90. 5:00SPEAKER_00: Uh, probably about 1980s, I reckon.
91. 5:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
92. 5:03SPEAKER_00: Yeah, late 70s, early 80s.
93. 5:05SPEAKER_00: I think yeah, local councils realized that there were just too many problems with dogs marauding around.
94. 5:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
95. 5:10SPEAKER_00: And I assume a lot were getting hit by cars, or getting hit by cars, killing people's chickens, yeah, and yeah, yeah, and attacking people in the street and barking at them and just being a general nuisance, I think.
96. 5:22SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
97. 5:22SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's interesting.
98. 5:23SPEAKER_02: I remember being as a a kid with our first dog, Dusty, um, where we lived up in Callista, and it was always a big kerfuffle.
99. 5:31SPEAKER_02: It was a big issue if he got out.
100. 5:32SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
101. 5:32SPEAKER_02: And he he still had his balls, right?
102. 5:34SPEAKER_02: He hadn't been castrated.
103. 5:35SPEAKER_02: I know.
104. 5:36SPEAKER_02: Um so he was off on the hunt.
105. 5:38SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
106. 5:39SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that 'tis the season.
107. 5:41SPEAKER_02: Where are the ladies?
108. 5:43SPEAKER_02: I smell lady.
109. 5:45SPEAKER_02: And he would just run off, right?
110. 5:46SPEAKER_02: Yes.
111. 5:47SPEAKER_02: So take me back to an ordinary afternoon with um your pet um boxer Butch in your yard.
112. 5:53SPEAKER_02: If I walked in um to your yardle house, what would be what would I see?
113. 5:57SPEAKER_00: Um if you walked in, he would have just barked his head off at you.
114. 6:01SPEAKER_02: In an aggressive way?
115. 6:02SPEAKER_02: In an aggressive way.
116. 6:03SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
117. 6:03SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
118. 6:04SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
119. 6:04SPEAKER_00: He is very defensive.
120. 6:05SPEAKER_00: Um to the point of uh when um mum and dad had decided they weren't going to have any more children, and they were getting rid of all of the uh I've got two younger sisters, so they were getting rid of all of the you know baby things in particular.
121. 6:21SPEAKER_00: And they gave um our old pram um to one of the neighbours who had just had a baby, and we uh got a uh phone call one day from the um grocer's shop saying, Can you come and get your dog?
122. 6:39SPEAKER_00: And you know, the great this is like the dog the shops were 400 metres away from us, yeah, but the dog had followed her down the street following the pram, and um she'd left the pram outside the uh the shop because the you couldn't back in those days they weren't we know really wide aisles and things in supermarkets, it was a little grocer's shop, and you couldn't walk a pram around it.
123. 7:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so she'd left the baby in the pram outside the shop and the dog was guarding it and wouldn't let her near it.
124. 7:07SPEAKER_00: He was guarding the pram.
125. 7:09SPEAKER_00: So he was he was really protective of us and anything related to us.
126. 7:15SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, so we had to go down and pick up the dog and tell him to leave the pram alone.
127. 7:20SPEAKER_02: So that was my next question was gonna be what um what did the dog do in its lifetime that had you guys talking about it years later?
128. 7:27SPEAKER_02: Uh the other that's that's always one of those stories I've heard many times.
129. 7:30SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the uh the other one is that boxers, um, particularly uh back in our day when they used to have their tails docked, yeah, um, can't swim.
130. 7:40SPEAKER_02: What do you do you want to explain what that is?
131. 7:42SPEAKER_00: Docking is just removing their tails when they're puppies, just leaving them a little stump.
132. 7:45SPEAKER_00: Yeah and that was the um you know pure bread, that was the breed um style at the time.
133. 7:52SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because they were originally um as fighting dogs.
134. 7:56SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
135. 7:57SPEAKER_00: And so fighting dogs um had their tails docked because often their ears as well, right?
136. 8:02SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
137. 8:02SPEAKER_00: Um so but you know, boxes nowadays don't have that, they have tails.
138. 8:07SPEAKER_00: Um it's a weird one when you see rottweilers with big tails.
139. 8:11SPEAKER_00: I know.
140. 8:11SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like the same, they were they were fighting dogs.
141. 8:15SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, yeah, so um they can't swim, at least they can't swim very well because they're very front-heavy.
142. 8:21SPEAKER_00: Uh they've got big shoulders and a big fat head.
143. 8:24SPEAKER_02: So it's an anatomical.
144. 8:25SPEAKER_02: It's not that they're just kids.
145. 8:27SPEAKER_00: No, no, but physically they're just like and and so he would be a he'd be a sort of four-legged submarine and we used to take him down to the beach.
146. 8:34SPEAKER_00: But he loved the beach and he would go collecting rocks, and and he would just walk out into the sea and walk out.
147. 8:42SPEAKER_00: Well, not dive, he would just walk out and and and go and with his head down, picking up rocks and and bringing them back again.
148. 8:49SPEAKER_00: And uh there's a couple of times where he wouldn't let us take the rock away from him and he brought it all the way home.
149. 8:54SPEAKER_02: I feel like that'd damage his teeth quite a bit.
150. 8:56SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's brainless.
151. 8:58SPEAKER_02: So, what other pets did you have as a kid growing up?
152. 9:01SPEAKER_00: Um, when he went, we had a um we had a cat.
153. 9:04SPEAKER_00: Yep.
154. 9:05SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we had you know rabbits and guinea pigs, and we also had Yeah, guinea pigs as well.
155. 9:10SPEAKER_00: We did.
156. 9:10SPEAKER_00: And rabbits, yeah.
157. 9:11SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we had um two uh tortoises or terrapens, you know, long-necked terrapins.
158. 9:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, freshwater turtles.
159. 9:20SPEAKER_00: Yeah, two or three of those over the period of time.
160. 9:22SPEAKER_00: So uh we built them as great palace of an enclosure out the bat in a corner out the backyard, and uh one of them dug its way out, of course, as they do, because when you're kids and you build things, you don't think about you know putting wire meshing things underground to stop them getting out.
161. 9:38SPEAKER_02: I don't know, it's one of those stupid things when you actually know a bit about turtle biology, you're like no shit, Sherlock, but you just look at them and you're like, this doesn't look like something.
162. 9:46SPEAKER_02: When you're 12 years old, what do you yeah, you're not thinking about that?
163. 9:50SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
164. 9:50SPEAKER_02: Why did you get terrapins?
165. 9:52SPEAKER_02: Oh it was just why not?
166. 9:54SPEAKER_00: Why not?
167. 9:55SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where'd you get them from?
168. 9:56SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know whether we got from a pet shop or we had friends or what no, we didn't find them.
169. 10:01SPEAKER_00: We or we had friends who had them or something, I can't remember, but yeah, we had two of them, Fred and Fertile.
170. 10:07SPEAKER_00: Fred and Fertile.
171. 10:08SPEAKER_00: Don't ask me why Fertile, but yeah.
172. 10:10SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh boy and a girl.
173. 10:13SPEAKER_00: Good choice.
174. 10:13SPEAKER_00: We thought they were gonna have babies, of course they never did.
175. 10:16SPEAKER_02: Too busy escaping.
176. 10:18SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
177. 10:19SPEAKER_02: Hibernating and escaping.
178. 10:20SPEAKER_02: How long were guinea pigs a thing for?
179. 10:22SPEAKER_02: Because that's one we grew up with rabbits and guinea pigs, um, my sister and I, and now my kids have guinea pigs as well.
180. 10:28SPEAKER_02: But uh it's one of those weird things where I think, when did these first come to Australia?
181. 10:31SPEAKER_02: Because they're a South American animal that was domesticated as food because they use them as a food source in a lot of countries there.
182. 10:38SPEAKER_02: Um they're just an interesting pet to have in Australia.
183. 10:42SPEAKER_02: I know, I know.
184. 10:43SPEAKER_00: Well, rabbits are the same thing.
185. 10:45SPEAKER_00: Uh just bring feral rabbits to Australia for uh in the nineteenth century for hunting.
186. 10:50SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
187. 10:51SPEAKER_00: And um and all of a sudden people have decided, oh, rabbits are a cute animal to have as a pet, which they actually are.
188. 10:57SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, they are pretty clever, aren't they?
189. 11:01SPEAKER_02: Did you like guinea pigs more than rabbits?
190. 11:03SPEAKER_00: No, I think rabbits rabbits have got personality.
191. 11:05SPEAKER_00: Guinea pigs do a little bit as well, but mostly they just squeak at you and scratch.
192. 11:12SPEAKER_02: Tell tell the story about um our rabbit and guinea pigs growing up with my sister.
193. 11:16SPEAKER_02: Because we had some pretty funny stories with them, right?
194. 11:18SPEAKER_02: So I had Peter Rabbit.
195. 11:20SPEAKER_02: You did have Peter Rabbit.
196. 11:21SPEAKER_02: I named it Peter, but it was a girl, so it's P-E-T-A.
197. 11:24SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
198. 11:24SPEAKER_02: And then Annika, my sister, what did she have?
199. 11:26SPEAKER_02: Fuzzy peg?
200. 11:27SPEAKER_02: Was that the first one?
201. 11:28SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can't.
202. 11:28SPEAKER_02: Olga Depolga.
203. 11:30SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
204. 11:30SPEAKER_00: She had a whole series of guinea pigs.
205. 11:32SPEAKER_02: There was a story called, I think there must have been two stories with guinea pigs.
206. 11:35SPEAKER_02: One of them was Olga Depolga, and Fuzzy Peg must have been from another story or something, I think.
207. 11:39SPEAKER_02: Must have been.
208. 11:40SPEAKER_02: And she had Fuzzy Peg one, two, and three because they kept dying.
209. 11:44SPEAKER_00: Kept dying, and then well, Peter Peter Rabbit killed a couple of them.
210. 11:48SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my rabbit did.
211. 11:49SPEAKER_00: It's an aggressive thing.
212. 11:50SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, what happened?
213. 11:51SPEAKER_02: I remember there were a few funny stories with Peter Rabbit because you really bonded with the rabbit, didn't you?
214. 11:55SPEAKER_02: Oh, I loved her.
215. 11:56SPEAKER_02: She was great, yeah.
216. 11:57SPEAKER_00: She because we used to have her inside and she'd just come and sit up on my lap like a cat.
217. 12:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
218. 12:02SPEAKER_00: And go to sleep on my lap while we're sitting in the lounge watching TV.
219. 12:05SPEAKER_02: When did that go wrong?
220. 12:06SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, when I had a vasectomy.
221. 12:10SPEAKER_02: Do you want to explain what a vasectomy is?
222. 12:12SPEAKER_02: Well, for the listener.
223. 12:16SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go into male sterilization.
224. 12:19SPEAKER_00: You had your tubes cut.
225. 12:20SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
226. 12:21SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, I was a little bit tender in the groin um when I got back from the uh operation.
227. 12:27SPEAKER_00: Jeez, you would have been about my age, right?
228. 12:29SPEAKER_00: Uh younger than that, yeah.
229. 12:30SPEAKER_00: Really?
230. 12:31SPEAKER_00: Like I was 35, 36, something like that.
231. 12:33SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
232. 12:33SPEAKER_02: All right.
233. 12:33SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we were five or six months.
234. 12:35SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
235. 12:35SPEAKER_00: Um and just had the the rabbit came in and was sitting on my lap.
236. 12:41SPEAKER_00: And then um, or she came up to sit on my lap and she jumped onto my lap.
237. 12:47SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure whether she hit the roof first or I hit the roof first.
238. 12:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
239. 12:51SPEAKER_00: But uh it was I remember the scream.
240. 12:53SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was uh not not a pleasant experience for either of us, I don't think.
241. 12:58SPEAKER_00: Or was forgiven and she came back.
242. 12:59SPEAKER_02: She used to be a a serial pest with um the television.
243. 13:04SPEAKER_00: Yes.
244. 13:05SPEAKER_00: What do you want to describe that stuff?
245. 13:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she used to get behind the um the cupboards because we had her inside and she just wandered around and she'd get behind the cupboards, and then one time she um she chewed through the uh the electric wire.
246. 13:17SPEAKER_00: The TV went off.
247. 13:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
248. 13:19SPEAKER_02: And there was sometimes too where she'd chew it again and the TV wouldn't turn on.
249. 13:23SPEAKER_02: You'd come and be like, what the fuck's wrong with the TV?
250. 13:25SPEAKER_00: And then you'd realise she'd chewed through the chewed through the wires.
251. 13:28SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, how did she not get electric?
252. 13:30SPEAKER_00: Well, she was lucky, I think she chewed through the uh the neutral, but um yes.
253. 13:36SPEAKER_02: I guess maybe bone doesn't doesn't um have electricity.
254. 13:41SPEAKER_02: Speaking of pets, most pests.
255. 13:44SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is scrap.
256. 13:45SPEAKER_02: He has decided to come and walk over the table where we are, yeah.
257. 13:48SPEAKER_00: Probably probably adjust all the uh the volumes on the soundboard.
258. 13:51SPEAKER_00: I know that constantly happens.
259. 13:53SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's alright.
260. 13:54SPEAKER_00: We're one of our cats keeps um turning the TV off.
261. 13:58SPEAKER_00: Or changing channels, just stepping on the remote.
262. 14:00SPEAKER_00: If you leave it on the coffee table, she jumps up there and just steps on it.
263. 14:04SPEAKER_00: So a some random button will do something.
264. 14:07SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
265. 14:08SPEAKER_02: So how did how did you guys have the rabbits and or the rabbit and the uh guinea pigs inside when we had um cats as well?
266. 14:14SPEAKER_02: Because we had Mickey and Mandy.
267. 14:16SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
268. 14:16SPEAKER_02: We had one Mickey was the calico cat and Mandy was um black.
269. 14:21SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
270. 14:22SPEAKER_02: So how did they survive?
271. 14:23SPEAKER_02: Or do the cats just had no interest in it?
272. 14:25SPEAKER_00: The cats didn't really have much interest.
273. 14:26SPEAKER_00: The the I seem to remember the cats liked the rabbit, and that was the same as us when we were kids, because we had a cat and a rabbit at the same time.
274. 14:35SPEAKER_00: And they would play together, they would play together, they would chase each other around the backyard and yeah, have have you know, and then they wouldn't sleep together, but they were perfectly happy being around each other and interacting and interacting.
275. 14:48SPEAKER_02: So they obviously the rabbits they're smart enough that they need some sort of interaction or socialization or they're very social animals, so they you know they live in you know large family groups, yeah.
276. 14:58SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that doesn't surprise me, I guess.
277. 15:00SPEAKER_02: But I I I don't know, I keep bringing the guinea pigs inside and I'm like, because Joey always wants to sit on the couch with um her guinea pig speedy, and I've been spending so much time with it recently.
278. 15:09SPEAKER_02: Like I try and do about half an hour to an hour a day socializing the pig.
279. 15:14SPEAKER_02: Trying to make it as sort of friendly and domesticated as possible, and it's really funny because they freak the fuck out.
280. 15:20SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah.
281. 15:20SPEAKER_00: And they and they have that vibration, that sort of almost subsonic brrrr.
282. 15:25SPEAKER_00: But do you know what that is?
283. 15:26SPEAKER_02: It's adrenaline, they freak out, like they're on fight or flight when you pick them up.
284. 15:30SPEAKER_02: And it's only just been the last week that when I go and get um my daughter's guinea pig speedy out of the enclosure, I'm there every night I'm like, oh fuck it, I'll go get him, put him on my lap and just chill out with him.
285. 15:40SPEAKER_02: He's probably gonna piss on me, but whatever.
286. 15:43SPEAKER_02: Put him on my lap and chill with him for for an hour or so.
287. 15:46SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's only been the last week that he stopped doing those shakes.
288. 15:50SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
289. 15:51SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, uh, he's finally getting used to being picked up and held.
290. 15:56SPEAKER_02: And the other thing I keep noticing is he puts his head up and sniffs and is looking around and trying to walk around a lot more.
291. 16:01SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
292. 16:02SPEAKER_02: But it is funny, Peaches and Scrappy, my cats, um always want to sit on the couch with me.
293. 16:09SPEAKER_02: They want to be where I am.
294. 16:11SPEAKER_02: Um Scrappy's very curious about the guinea pigs.
295. 16:13SPEAKER_02: I don't know if he'd attack them.
296. 16:14SPEAKER_02: I part of me wants to think he wouldn't.
297. 16:16SPEAKER_02: The other part of me thinks he's a predator and if he he's gonna do it.
298. 16:20SPEAKER_02: Never trust a predator.
299. 16:21SPEAKER_02: Peaches is terrified of the guinea.
300. 16:24SPEAKER_02: Anytime I've held the guinea pig close to her, she just gets up, looks weird, and runs.
301. 16:29SPEAKER_02: Like just bails.
302. 16:31SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if she was left alone though, it'd be different, I suspect.
303. 16:33SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a weird one.
304. 16:34SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
305. 16:35SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, it's been it's been funny trying to sort of get the guinea pigs to um chill out a bit.
306. 16:40SPEAKER_02: They're growing so fast.
307. 16:42SPEAKER_02: And we used to the ones we used to have at um Callista when we were growing up, my sister and I.
308. 16:48SPEAKER_02: I remember they got used to the sound of the car, didn't they?
309. 16:52SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah.
310. 16:53SPEAKER_00: I there were times where I'd be out walking in the uh working in the yard, yeah, and you and your mum would be out shopping or something, and I would the the pigs would be sitting in the because we used to have them in enclosure in the in the carport.
311. 17:07SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and all of a sudden there'd be this week weep week weep.
312. 17:11SPEAKER_00: You'd be like, What's the thing?
313. 17:12SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
314. 17:12SPEAKER_00: And then the dog would start barking.
315. 17:14SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
316. 17:14SPEAKER_00: And then I would hear the car turn up the as soon as you turned up the gravel road, because we were the second house in the house.
317. 17:21SPEAKER_00: You'd hear it and go, Oh, there's a car coming, and then realise it's ours.
318. 17:24SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the guinea pigs would hear it first, and then the dog would hear it.
319. 17:27SPEAKER_02: It's nuts, isn't it?
320. 17:28SPEAKER_02: Because I never I never thought about how good the hearing of animals like guinea pigs.
321. 17:32SPEAKER_02: I mean, it makes sense, they're prey animals, right?
322. 17:34SPEAKER_02: So they need to be able to hear the predators coming after them.
323. 17:37SPEAKER_02: But it was it's one of those funny things where they get um acclimated to certain sounds or things.
324. 17:43SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they they wouldn't do it for any other car that came up, it was only our car.
325. 17:47SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they when it came up, it was obviously some signal sound that frequency Yeah, you wonder what they were latching on to.
326. 17:54SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
327. 17:55SPEAKER_02: Yeah, who knows?
328. 17:56SPEAKER_02: It is pretty funny, but I remember that, and it I think it was probably they associated it with food, right?
329. 18:00SPEAKER_02: They assume they were getting fed.
330. 18:02SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
331. 18:02SPEAKER_02: Here we go.
332. 18:03SPEAKER_00: Because as soon as you and um Annie would turn up, you'd feed them because you that's how you interact with them, you'd go and get them some food.
333. 18:10SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
334. 18:12SPEAKER_02: Yeah, cool.
335. 18:13SPEAKER_02: So which pet did you beg your parents to get?
336. 18:17SPEAKER_02: And um do you remember the story differently?
337. 18:20SPEAKER_02: You know, no harassing them?
338. 18:22SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think I was ever begging for a pet.
339. 18:25SPEAKER_00: I remember um one of my sisters was begging for a goldfish.
340. 18:31SPEAKER_00: And you know, goldfish really, but you know, that's what she ate.
341. 18:35SPEAKER_00: And she ended up getting it, yeah.
342. 18:37SPEAKER_00: Which is fine because they're relatively easy looking at it.
343. 18:40SPEAKER_00: Pretty low maintenance, just clean out the tank once a month, throw some food in once a day.
344. 18:45SPEAKER_00: Um but um yeah, so that's really the only begging for a pet.
345. 18:49SPEAKER_00: Because we always had pets.
346. 18:50SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
347. 18:50SPEAKER_00: So you know, they're always you know some new pet coming around.
348. 18:54SPEAKER_02: So who's who were most of them just sort of yours?
349. 18:57SPEAKER_02: Were they everyone's?
350. 18:58SPEAKER_02: No, they didn't.
351. 18:58SPEAKER_02: Did everyone have their different animals?
352. 19:00SPEAKER_00: They're everyone's the uh the dog was just well, the dog was mum's, but yeah, yeah, he was just the family pet.
353. 19:06SPEAKER_00: And then when he went, we got a cat and um cat called Panther.
354. 19:11SPEAKER_00: Guess what colour she was?
355. 19:12SPEAKER_00: Black.
356. 19:12SPEAKER_00: Okay, very good.
357. 19:14SPEAKER_00: Um we're highly original as as children.
358. 19:18SPEAKER_02: Well, that's always the case, right?
359. 19:19SPEAKER_02: Joey, what do you want to call um the goldfish?
360. 19:22SPEAKER_02: Oh goldie.
361. 19:23SPEAKER_02: Oh, good idea.
362. 19:25SPEAKER_02: Very clever.
363. 19:26SPEAKER_02: How did you come up with that?
364. 19:27SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
365. 19:28SPEAKER_02: You've got an elephant um toy, what do you want to call it?
366. 19:30SPEAKER_02: Oh, call it Ellie.
367. 19:33SPEAKER_00: Hey, you know.
368. 19:34SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so we had a cat called Panther, and she she was just a family cat, but I think she latched onto me.
369. 19:40SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so she would always sleep on my bed.
370. 19:42SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
371. 19:43SPEAKER_00: In fact, on or in.
372. 19:44SPEAKER_00: In winter she'd sleep in the bed.
373. 19:46SPEAKER_00: On in summer she'd just sleep on the bed.
374. 19:48SPEAKER_00: Um but other than that, uh oh when and then she had kittens and one of them became one of my sister's cats.
375. 19:56SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
376. 19:57SPEAKER_02: Um is this like at home or when they moved out or sorry?
377. 20:00SPEAKER_02: Was this one?
378. 20:01SPEAKER_02: Oh no, at home, okay, yeah.
379. 20:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and yeah, so then one of the sisters got to keep one of the cats, one of the kittens, and the others got given away.
380. 20:09SPEAKER_00: Um and that was then I think when the younger sister decided she wanted a pet as well, and the goldfish came up.
381. 20:14SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
382. 20:15SPEAKER_02: Uh I want one too.
383. 20:16SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
384. 20:17SPEAKER_00: Well, you can't have another cat.
385. 20:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me too.
386. 20:20SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
387. 20:23SPEAKER_02: So was de-sexing not popular back then for animals?
388. 20:26SPEAKER_02: Uh something you just didn't do?
389. 20:27SPEAKER_00: Well, uh we cats and dogs used to be de-sexed a bit older than they are now.
390. 20:32SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
391. 20:32SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh our cat when you know she had kittens when she was six months old, five five and a half months old.
392. 20:39SPEAKER_00: That happened with our first before she was four months old.
393. 20:43SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's crazy, right?
394. 20:44SPEAKER_00: How quickly they can So yeah, she was always going to be de-sexed, but typically they wouldn't de-sex them until they're about six months old back in those days.
395. 20:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because now it's at what three months.
396. 20:53SPEAKER_00: And in which case she actually did get de-sexed when she was about seven months old after she'd had the kittens.
397. 20:59SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
398. 20:59SPEAKER_02: So that happened with us.
399. 21:01SPEAKER_02: We had we we adopted peaches, but she she was astray that had gotten pregnant and obviously been given up for adoption or caught or something, had the kittens, and then I don't even think she was about a year old when we got her, and they were like, Yeah, she's de-sexed, she's gone through the full cycle of life in her first year.
400. 21:18SPEAKER_02: So who chose the names for these animals?
401. 21:20SPEAKER_02: Uh well, obviously Butch was mum's, she killed him Butch.
402. 21:24SPEAKER_00: Why?
403. 21:25SPEAKER_00: Just because he was Butch.
404. 21:26SPEAKER_00: I don't know, because he was Butch.
405. 21:27SPEAKER_00: Big and strong, yeah.
406. 21:28SPEAKER_00: Yeah, big and strong.
407. 21:29SPEAKER_00: Um we chose the uh it was a general consensus amongst the three of us children to uh call the cat Panther.
408. 21:37SPEAKER_00: Um and then it was sort of whoever's uh pet it was, like the turtles and things and and the guinea pigs and the rabbits.
409. 21:44SPEAKER_00: Um the rabbit, believe it or not, its name was Cheskawaffles.
410. 21:48SPEAKER_00: Cheskawaffles?
411. 21:49SPEAKER_02: Where's that from?
412. 21:50SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
413. 21:51SPEAKER_00: That was just invented.
414. 21:54SPEAKER_00: It wasn't me.
415. 21:54SPEAKER_00: It was one of the sisters decided it Cheska.
416. 21:58SPEAKER_00: And it got called Cheska, and everybody thought it was Cheska.
417. 22:00SPEAKER_00: Chester It was a cute rabbit.
418. 22:04SPEAKER_00: It was a big grey and white one, a bit like your Peter rabbit.
419. 22:07SPEAKER_00: More white than yours.
420. 22:08SPEAKER_00: Yours was grey with white.
421. 22:09SPEAKER_00: This one was white with grey.
422. 22:11SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
423. 22:12SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
424. 22:13SPEAKER_02: It's funny, Noah called his guinea pig because we got two of them in the end.
425. 22:16SPEAKER_02: Um it's so it's becomes this cycle.
426. 22:18SPEAKER_02: We've had guinea pigs.
427. 22:19SPEAKER_02: We bought two when the kids were really young.
428. 22:21SPEAKER_02: Who was that?
429. 22:22SPEAKER_02: Baza and Stevo.
430. 22:24SPEAKER_02: Um Stevo died within a few years from I don't know what.
431. 22:27SPEAKER_02: Um old age.
432. 22:29SPEAKER_02: Probably.
433. 22:31SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then we were like, Oh, poor Baza, he's all by himself.
434. 22:34SPEAKER_02: These are social animals.
435. 22:35SPEAKER_02: We'll get him a mate.
436. 22:36SPEAKER_02: We got Pedro.
437. 22:37SPEAKER_02: Baza dies.
438. 22:38SPEAKER_02: Pedro's all alone, and I'm like, oh fuck.
439. 22:41SPEAKER_02: Like, I just feel bad for these poor little bastards.
440. 22:43SPEAKER_02: So we got another two, and I like I wanted to get another one, and then the kids are like, but Pedro's yours, he's not ours.
441. 22:50SPEAKER_02: We want one each.
442. 22:51SPEAKER_02: And we go there and they're all there's these brothers, three brothers, and I was like, Well, we're not getting all three, but all right, you can get one each.
443. 22:58SPEAKER_02: Like, fuck, what's the difference between having two and three guinea pigs?
444. 23:01SPEAKER_02: Whatever.
445. 23:01SPEAKER_02: You know, they're all males.
446. 23:02SPEAKER_02: As long as they're all males, you're fine.
447. 23:04SPEAKER_02: Noah calls his.
448. 23:04SPEAKER_02: I was like, What do you want to call yours, Joey?
449. 23:06SPEAKER_02: Speedy.
450. 23:07SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
451. 23:08SPEAKER_02: Yeah, why is that?
452. 23:09SPEAKER_02: He's fast.
453. 23:10SPEAKER_02: I know I have one called Speedy as well.
454. 23:13SPEAKER_02: Um, and then Noah called his hero Brian.
455. 23:15SPEAKER_02: And I was like, where the hell did that come from?
456. 23:18SPEAKER_02: Just made it up.
457. 23:19SPEAKER_02: No, it came from um uh Minecraft.
458. 23:22SPEAKER_02: Oh of course, the world of Minecraft, of which I am completely oblivious.
459. 23:27SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
460. 23:27SPEAKER_02: I was like, is it here and for the first month I thought it was Hero Brian?
461. 23:32SPEAKER_02: Brian.
462. 23:32SPEAKER_02: Like the name Brian and Hero in front.
463. 23:35SPEAKER_02: He's the hero, Brian.
464. 23:37SPEAKER_02: But it's hero brine.
465. 23:38SPEAKER_02: Like the is that baby fish brine?
466. 23:41SPEAKER_02: Brian shrimp?
467. 23:42SPEAKER_02: Shrimp?
468. 23:42SPEAKER_02: No, Brian is salty.
469. 23:43SPEAKER_02: Or is that just like water?
470. 23:45SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know that the words associated with like sea animals, but I because it's not one we very often use.
471. 23:50SPEAKER_02: And I was like, what the hell?
472. 23:51SPEAKER_00: Brian is just a salty water liquid mixture.
473. 23:55SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
474. 23:55SPEAKER_02: So anyway, it's called Hero Brian.
475. 23:57SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
476. 23:58SPEAKER_02: So and I'm spending time with him as well, trying to domesticate him.
477. 24:01SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
478. 24:01SPEAKER_00: Well, with a name like that, he'll do a bit more work.
479. 24:04SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's funny how like placid guinea pigs are, man.
480. 24:07SPEAKER_02: Like they obviously quickly bread out the vicious nature in them.
481. 24:10SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
482. 24:15SPEAKER_02: They're just so sort of like, huh?
483. 24:17SPEAKER_02: Like, and they don't you can pick them up, you can put them upside down, they don't bite you, they're just kind of like the whole time.
484. 24:25SPEAKER_02: It's almost just like this living brain dead animal that's just warm that you can pat.
485. 24:31SPEAKER_02: Which of your pets had the strongest personality?
486. 24:34SPEAKER_00: Panther.
487. 24:35SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
488. 24:35SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
489. 24:36SPEAKER_00: She was crazy.
490. 24:37SPEAKER_00: Why?
491. 24:38SPEAKER_00: Um she just was.
492. 24:40SPEAKER_00: She's just cooked.
493. 24:41SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cooked.
494. 24:42SPEAKER_00: She at at one point, because again, cats outdoors all the time, except at night, she'd come inside.
495. 24:48SPEAKER_00: At least back then, huh?
496. 24:49SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
497. 24:50SPEAKER_00: Um, and she used to sleep in the driveway, just on the concrete driveway in the sun.
498. 24:56SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice, nice.
499. 24:57SPEAKER_00: And we kept thinking, oh, some dog's gonna walk past and run up and attack her.
500. 25:01SPEAKER_00: And um this German shepherd came sniffing up the driveway, and she went for it.
501. 25:08SPEAKER_00: Tore him a new one.
502. 25:09SPEAKER_00: Chased him up the road.
503. 25:10SPEAKER_00: It was just like literally about 50 meters up the road.
504. 25:13SPEAKER_00: She's chasing this dog and the dog's tail between the legs and yelping and taking off.
505. 25:17SPEAKER_00: But she was mad, and she was little, she was just a little black ball of fire.
506. 25:21SPEAKER_02: It's funny, isn't it?
507. 25:22SPEAKER_02: That stereotype.
508. 25:23SPEAKER_02: You always have this stereotype growing up of like dogs killing cats, hunting cats.
509. 25:27SPEAKER_02: I've never of all the videos that I've seen online of interactions between dogs and cats, I've never seen a dog messing a cat up.
510. 25:33SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it happens.
511. 25:34SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they would.
512. 25:35SPEAKER_00: If a dog wanted to, yeah, they would just the cat would get the first punch in, but after that rabbit and shape and shape.
513. 25:41SPEAKER_00: But the dogs are always fucking terrified.
514. 25:43SPEAKER_02: No wonder, they're stupid.
515. 25:45SPEAKER_02: These are got pointy bits.
516. 25:48SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
517. 25:49SPEAKER_02: And they go for the face.
518. 25:52SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
519. 25:53SPEAKER_02: I know it's a weird one though, because you are just like you'll have this great dane or something, and a small kitten, and the kitten will be you know in its face and it'll be freaking out, and you're like, You're a hundred times as well.
520. 26:03SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we've got we've well, as you know, we've got a new kitten at home.
521. 26:06SPEAKER_00: We've had her for about five or six weeks.
522. 26:09SPEAKER_00: And um the other cat and she they just chase each other around the house and hiss and carry on.
523. 26:15SPEAKER_00: So they're not best buddies, but they enjoy playing together.
524. 26:18SPEAKER_00: But the dog, this cat just adores him.
525. 26:22SPEAKER_01: Really?
526. 26:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
527. 26:23SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
528. 26:23SPEAKER_00: She just uh sits on his mat, rolls over, and pats him, whacks him on the face with soft paws.
529. 26:28SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
530. 26:29SPEAKER_00: Interact with me, interact with me.
531. 26:30SPEAKER_00: And the dog doesn't know what to do.
532. 26:31SPEAKER_00: He just stands there going, ooh.
533. 26:33SPEAKER_00: So does he like her?
534. 26:34SPEAKER_00: He does.
535. 26:35SPEAKER_00: He's he's really interested and wants to if we let him, he would chase her around the house, but that would just fucking bedlam.
536. 26:41SPEAKER_00: It's just like 30 kilo Labrador sliding around on the floor.
537. 26:48SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so um, yes, cats and dogs, they uh they have an interesting relationship.
538. 26:53SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
539. 26:53SPEAKER_00: Did your pets have like their people?
540. 26:56SPEAKER_00: I think you said Panther was yours.
541. 26:57SPEAKER_00: Panther was mine, yeah.
542. 26:59SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
543. 27:00SPEAKER_00: And um my grandfather used to live with us and the uh Panther's kitten um that we ended up keeping on, she got to be an old cat as well.
544. 27:10SPEAKER_00: Um, but um her name was Noodles.
545. 27:14SPEAKER_00: So um she my grandfather thought that she was the good cat because she used to when she was outside, um, she would just go and sleep under the daisy bush in the backyard.
546. 27:25SPEAKER_00: Um but not hiding, she would be obvious, you could see her understanding.
547. 27:29SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was just and my grandfather used to you know be out, you know, he'd do two minutes of go, so I'm gonna go out gardening.
548. 27:34SPEAKER_00: He'd do two minutes of gardening and then get the deck chair out and sit in the sun and doze off, and he'd always watch this cat.
549. 27:40SPEAKER_00: So he was always, oh that's the good cat, that's my cat.
550. 27:43SPEAKER_00: Um but he couldn't tell the difference between the two of them.
551. 27:46SPEAKER_00: And so he would always be sneaking them food under the table when he'd have his breakfast.
552. 27:51SPEAKER_00: He'd have uh toast and vegemite and a cup of tea for breakfast most of the time.
553. 27:55SPEAKER_00: And he'd you know be slipping a little bit of toasted and vegemite under the table, um thinking, Oh, this is the good cat, isn't it?
554. 28:00SPEAKER_00: And most of the time it was Panther, who he didn't like because she was snarly, except when there was vegemite and toast.
555. 28:06SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, well, it most of them were just sort of family pets, really.
556. 28:12SPEAKER_00: There was no real association, even though there was a notional owner, but the you know, the pet doesn't know who the owner is.
557. 28:19SPEAKER_00: It's they choose a person.
558. 28:20SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's funny.
559. 28:21SPEAKER_02: I didn't really I don't know, I wanted the cats, my cats now, to like me and want me as their person, and they have latched on to me because they're always hanging out with me.
560. 28:29SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you're home all the time as well.
561. 28:31SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
562. 28:32SPEAKER_02: And Noah, it's funny seeing Noah, my son, going through the same sort of annoyance with this is my cat though.
563. 28:39SPEAKER_02: Scrappy's my cat.
564. 28:40SPEAKER_02: Why doesn't he like me as much as you?
565. 28:42SPEAKER_02: I had the same spirit growing up.
566. 28:45SPEAKER_00: I know, and you're you're stupid, you know, you're just you're crazy.
567. 28:49SPEAKER_02: Yeah, come with me, come with me, and the cat's going and picking him up and carrying him around, and also you're just not home as often as I am.
568. 28:56SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
569. 28:57SPEAKER_02: And yeah, so it's funny.
570. 28:58SPEAKER_00: I know And who feeds them?
571. 29:00SPEAKER_02: Me, yeah.
572. 29:01SPEAKER_02: And I noticed so I noticed exactly the same thing when I was a kid.
573. 29:04SPEAKER_02: Um, I was doing the same stuff as Noah.
574. 29:06SPEAKER_02: I was always like, why do the cats become my I want to wrestle them?
575. 29:09SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, yeah.
576. 29:13SPEAKER_02: I know, I know.
577. 29:14SPEAKER_02: So what about pets when we were a little older, my sister and I growing up in Ocean Grove with you guys?
578. 29:19SPEAKER_02: What else did we have?
579. 29:20SPEAKER_02: Uh so you guys had three cats.
580. 29:21SPEAKER_02: We had four.
581. 29:22SPEAKER_00: We just had serial cats.
582. 29:23SPEAKER_02: Yeah, cereal cats.
583. 29:24SPEAKER_02: Serial cats.
584. 29:25SPEAKER_02: There was always one.
585. 29:26SPEAKER_00: There's always at least one, and maybe two, once for a while we had three, um, one of which was your sister's, and when she moved out and got a you know, when she moved to Melbourne, she didn't take the cat with her, but when she got came back and got a house, she um she took the cat with her, but um, so then we were down to two.
586. 29:44SPEAKER_00: Um we've always had dogs.
587. 29:46SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
588. 29:47SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, one dog at a time, just serial labradors.
589. 29:51SPEAKER_02: Why the darker ones?
590. 29:52SPEAKER_02: You sort of you had a white we had we had two gold ones.
591. 29:55SPEAKER_00: Christy and that was before I was before you were born, and then Dusty when you were a kid.
592. 29:58SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
593. 29:59SPEAKER_00: Um and then well, it wasn't really a you know, it was it wasn't I'm never having a golden labrador again.
594. 30:04SPEAKER_00: It was just, oh well, we'll try a black one.
595. 30:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we liked it and we got another one.
596. 30:08SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had a little brown one for a while, but unfortunately he died as a puppy.
597. 30:11SPEAKER_00: He got meningitis, which had him for like a few weeks a week.
598. 30:14SPEAKER_02: Fucked, yeah, and then I remember that that was um devastating.
599. 30:18SPEAKER_00: That was poor little guy.
600. 30:20SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, so we've always had dogs.
601. 30:23SPEAKER_00: Um you had reptiles, um, so you had uh um dragons.
602. 30:29SPEAKER_02: We had a turtle called Oscar, a turtle called Oscar was a wild one that we sort of adopted because someone ran over him, right?
603. 30:35SPEAKER_02: Yeah, broke his shell.
604. 30:36SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then he's where did he come?
605. 30:37SPEAKER_02: Did he come from Laurie or Laurie ended up with him?
606. 30:39SPEAKER_02: One of our family.
607. 30:40SPEAKER_02: Lori ended up with him, yeah.
608. 30:41SPEAKER_02: Where did he come from?
609. 30:42SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
610. 30:43SPEAKER_00: One of your friends just sort of got this broken.
611. 30:45SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't remember where it came from.
612. 30:47SPEAKER_00: But he he was fine, he was pretty cool.
613. 30:49SPEAKER_02: Oscar outlived everything.
614. 30:50SPEAKER_02: He did, didn't he?
615. 30:51SPEAKER_00: And then you had the snake, black-headed Python, yeah, Kenny.
616. 30:54SPEAKER_00: Kenny, which is pretty cool, except when you moved out and the you know Kenny stayed at our place, and I was the only other person who would handle him, and I did I wasn't, you know, I was working all the time, and so I didn't handle him that much, and then he just became a bit unruly, and you got he was always really cage defensive.
617. 31:11SPEAKER_02: He was, but yeah, that's we would strike at the glass if you walk past and sort of freak out.
618. 31:16SPEAKER_02: The weird thing though was as soon as you got him out, he was really it was like a little puppy.
619. 31:19SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was just friendly and just sort of chilled out.
620. 31:22SPEAKER_02: But if he was in the cage by himself, he was aggressive, which was weird.
621. 31:26SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um he was pretty cool though.
622. 31:29SPEAKER_02: Oh no, they're beautiful snakes, black-headed pythons.
623. 31:31SPEAKER_02: If you guys haven't seen them, they're a non-venomous snake native to Australia.
624. 31:35SPEAKER_02: You find them, I think, in the northern territory.
625. 31:36SPEAKER_02: Northern territory, yeah.
626. 31:37SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they're they have these beautiful stripes on them and a dark black head.
627. 31:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
628. 31:42SPEAKER_02: They're very, very cool.
629. 31:43SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're good.
630. 31:44SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
631. 31:46SPEAKER_02: Common pet snake.
632. 31:48SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
633. 31:49SPEAKER_02: So what what made you always get heaps of cats?
634. 31:52SPEAKER_02: Is it just is it is it you or is it mum?
635. 31:55SPEAKER_00: Both of us we just like cats.
636. 31:57SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're fun.
637. 31:59SPEAKER_00: And again, same thing.
638. 32:00SPEAKER_00: Usually if you've got one, you probably get another one because despite the fact that you know in the wild they're loners.
639. 32:07SPEAKER_00: Well they're so domesticated.
640. 32:08SPEAKER_00: Domesticated cats are social.
641. 32:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so exactly.
642. 32:11SPEAKER_02: Wild cats are not, but you know, domesticated cats are I know they yeah, it's it's part of it is just the um it's almost like there's mental stimulation for you because you just see other animals interacting around you as a person at home.
643. 32:24SPEAKER_02: Like for me at least, I notice being at home all the time, and especially late late at night, the cats are always doing something, walking around, sleeping, having fun, playing, fighting, meowing, wanting a pat.
644. 32:36SPEAKER_02: There's just this other entity animal.
645. 32:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know, and there's something nice about that, I think, and that's there is for me at least with a dog, it's a little too high maintenance.
646. 32:48SPEAKER_02: It needs your attention a lot more.
647. 32:49SPEAKER_02: Whereas the cat it has moments when it does.
648. 32:52SPEAKER_02: I'm a cat.
649. 32:53SPEAKER_00: I like dogs and we've always had dogs, but if I was a choice, I'm a cat person rather than a dog person.
650. 32:58SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because they're a lot more hands-off.
651. 33:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
652. 33:02SPEAKER_00: Although the ones the two we've got at the moment, they just follow you around the house.
653. 33:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
654. 33:06SPEAKER_00: Like two little dogs.
655. 33:08SPEAKER_00: And the kitten, she's ridiculous.
656. 33:10SPEAKER_00: She um she's found one of my little soft toys that I can't one of the, you know, one of you or one of the grandkids gave it to me ages ago.
657. 33:18SPEAKER_00: And it just sits on my desk.
658. 33:20SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
659. 33:20SPEAKER_00: Um, a little mascot on the desk.
660. 33:22SPEAKER_00: And she comes up and steals it and runs away with it.
661. 33:25SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
662. 33:26SPEAKER_00: And it's just it just appears in different places around the house.
663. 33:29SPEAKER_00: Uh and I'll pick it up again.
664. 33:30SPEAKER_00: And this morning she had it, brought it downstairs.
665. 33:32SPEAKER_00: She obviously stole it.
666. 33:33SPEAKER_00: I had my office door open and she stole it from there, brought it down.
667. 33:37SPEAKER_00: And I was sitting having breakfast at the dining table and put it on the dining table next to me, and she just jumped up on there, grabbed it, and ran off with it.
668. 33:44SPEAKER_00: So it's uh it's sort of the reverse of a dog playing fetch.
669. 33:48SPEAKER_02: She just wants you to go and hide this.
670. 33:52SPEAKER_02: Hide this so I have to find it.
671. 33:53SPEAKER_02: So you gotta find it and then bring it back, and I'll hide it again.
672. 33:56SPEAKER_02: The weird thing is peaches and peaches and scrappy to some degree, but mainly peaches keeps picking up um this little Woody from Toy Story doll that we have in the house.
673. 34:05SPEAKER_02: I don't know who got it, but and she's all it just appears in different places.
674. 34:09SPEAKER_02: And it's weird because Toy Story is this story about toys that are living, but they whenever there's a person there, they're they're like on the ground like inanimate objects.
675. 34:16SPEAKER_02: But as soon as the person goes, they wake up and have a life again.
676. 34:19SPEAKER_02: And so I have those moments where I open my my um door to the office and Woody's just on the ground, and I'm like, what the fuck?
677. 34:25SPEAKER_02: And it's just Peaches picking him up and going, she puts him in his mouth, and you just hear this and just drags him around the house looking for someone.
678. 34:34SPEAKER_00: It's the cat version of the elf on the shelf.
679. 34:36SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you never know where it's gonna be.
680. 34:39SPEAKER_02: And Scrappy just started doing it.
681. 34:40SPEAKER_02: I saw him doing it um this week.
682. 34:42SPEAKER_02: He he did it last night, in fact, too.
683. 34:43SPEAKER_02: Um, he's found uh one of the kids' beanies for the Geelong cats, and he likes picking that up and dragging it around the house doing the same.
684. 34:53SPEAKER_00: They're funny, aren't they?
685. 34:54SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's weird.
686. 34:54SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the the other one that this little kitten's got is a um a cat soft toy that your mother got, and I don't know why, but she got it and was sitting up.
687. 35:03SPEAKER_00: It's not like we don't have enough soft toys for kids, we've got a whole basket full of them.
688. 35:07SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, this thing, and it's it's bigger than she is.
689. 35:10SPEAKER_00: Yep.
690. 35:10SPEAKER_00: And she it's not that heavy, but she grabs it and drags it around.
691. 35:14SPEAKER_02: It's like a leopard with an antelope, you know, that sort of films of dragging the sort of awkwardly walking around in the Serengeti plane.
692. 35:26SPEAKER_02: It's insane.
693. 35:27SPEAKER_02: So which pet was the hardest to keep out of trouble?
694. 35:30SPEAKER_02: Out of all these pets you remember from being a kid all the way up to now, which was the hardest one to kind of uh keep in control?
695. 35:37SPEAKER_00: Uh probably your cat Merlin.
696. 35:41SPEAKER_02: So I this was the only purebred cat we've ever had, yeah.
697. 35:45SPEAKER_02: It was a Burmese, yeah.
698. 35:47SPEAKER_00: Yeah, beautiful cat, absolutely adorable cat, um, and full of personality.
699. 35:51SPEAKER_00: And Burmese are like puppies as well, they just follow you around talking to you.
700. 35:55SPEAKER_00: Um, but he was trouble.
701. 35:57SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he would the things he would get into, and um but also because he was was it him that pissed everywhere?
702. 36:05SPEAKER_00: He was always like just spraying he and Max, uh but mostly I think because the cats next door, yeah.
703. 36:11SPEAKER_00: Uh we had two male cats next door that would come and you know spray on the outdoor outside of the windows and the doors.
704. 36:17SPEAKER_02: So my two have never done that.
705. 36:18SPEAKER_00: My two now, scrappy and peaches, they would never do it.
706. 36:21SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
707. 36:21SPEAKER_00: Um and girl female cats won't.
708. 36:24SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
709. 36:24SPEAKER_00: It's male cats a territorial thing, but yeah, okay.
710. 36:27SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, they um he would get into all sorts of things, but also every now and then he'd be outside.
711. 36:33SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we ended up turning him in an indoor cat because he would climb up things and couldn't get down.
712. 36:39SPEAKER_00: That's he literally could not get down.
713. 36:42SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we would have him outside and he would climb up the some of the gum trees and stuff in our backyard.
714. 36:46SPEAKER_00: And your mum and I would be scrambling up the tree to get him down.
715. 36:49SPEAKER_02: I remember sometimes I would have to gesture to him to like jump out, and he would put your arm or something.
716. 36:54SPEAKER_00: He'd just jump.
717. 36:55SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but he would and he also he also had had no idea.
718. 37:00SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people always say cats will always land on their feet, not him.
719. 37:03SPEAKER_00: He didn't care.
720. 37:04SPEAKER_00: You didn't just drop him, drop him, he'd just land.
721. 37:07SPEAKER_00: Just fall on his back or his side.
722. 37:08SPEAKER_02: Just go, yeah, he wouldn't land on his feet.
723. 37:10SPEAKER_02: What's going on here?
724. 37:11SPEAKER_02: And he would just roll down the stairs when he was playing too, right?
725. 37:14SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
726. 37:14SPEAKER_02: And just like slide down them and not really care.
727. 37:17SPEAKER_02: He didn't have that sense of I need to get upright, I need to get my feet underneath myself.
728. 37:22SPEAKER_00: The monkey cat we used to call him.
729. 37:24SPEAKER_00: He and he would, he'd be uh, and he could jump because he was again, he was he was light.
730. 37:29SPEAKER_00: Um he wasn't a big cat, but he was light as well.
731. 37:33SPEAKER_00: And um, because we've got in our house, we've got uh above all the internal doors, we've got these little window ledges with a you know small window above the doors.
732. 37:42SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so light goes through.
733. 37:43SPEAKER_00: And he could and he, you know, two meters high doors, yeah.
734. 37:47SPEAKER_00: He could jump up and get onto the little window bit at the top.
735. 37:49SPEAKER_00: Two meters.
736. 37:50SPEAKER_02: There are a few times where you come, you we would come home or something, and you'd be like, How the fuck did he get there?
737. 37:54SPEAKER_00: And he would just jump, he'd jump up and grab hold and pull himself up.
738. 37:58SPEAKER_00: But he could jump two meters in the air.
739. 37:59SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous.
740. 38:00SPEAKER_00: Cats.
741. 38:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, the ultimate animals, cats.
742. 38:04SPEAKER_02: Well, they're probably the most like sort of highly evolved predators that mammal predators that the world's ever seen, right?
743. 38:09SPEAKER_02: They're just everything about them is about hunting.
744. 38:11SPEAKER_00: Well, and you look at camouflage and you look at you look at the um diversity in cats, and you take cheetahs out of the equation, and every other cat's the same.
745. 38:21SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, they're basically physiologically and physically the same.
746. 38:25SPEAKER_00: The only variation is in colour and size.
747. 38:27SPEAKER_00: Yep.
748. 38:27SPEAKER_00: Uh cheetahs are different um because of the way they've evolved to uh to uh they're uh hunt down predators, they're chase predators.
749. 38:36SPEAKER_00: Ambush predators.
750. 38:36SPEAKER_00: Well they're not ambush predator, they're chase predators.
751. 38:38SPEAKER_00: But as in like they have this sudden sudden burst of speed, but they'll run they'll run up to yeah hundreds of meters to chase something, whereas lions will run 50 metres, they're ambush and they're cooperative predators.
752. 38:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
753. 38:51SPEAKER_00: Um so cheetahs have evolved like dogs to have longer legs, uh non-retractile claws.
754. 38:57SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh their claws are much more like dogs because they need to be gripping the ground and gripping the ground and stuff.
755. 39:04SPEAKER_00: So take them out of the equation.
756. 39:06SPEAKER_00: Every other cat's the same.
757. 39:07SPEAKER_00: And when you when evolution has got it right.
758. 39:11SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's really weird ones, I think, in like Borneo that are for climbing trees.
759. 39:16SPEAKER_02: They're called cloud leopards or whatever they are.
760. 39:18SPEAKER_02: There's yeah, there's these these type of leopard cats, and I remember they have really weird wrists where the wrists turn outwards like you're you're sort of like trying to get your pinky finger to touch your elbow so that they can climb up and down trees easily.
761. 39:31SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
762. 39:31SPEAKER_02: And they they can kind of flick their hands out and get their claws out.
763. 39:35SPEAKER_00: They're very cool animals.
764. 39:36SPEAKER_00: I've never seen one in a zoo.
765. 39:38SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they would be pretty nice.
766. 39:40SPEAKER_02: So did any of these animals ever get out, disappear, or unexpectedly turn out something?
767. 39:45SPEAKER_02: Or them.
768. 39:45SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
769. 39:46SPEAKER_00: Uh well, the the turtles used to escape, as we've said, and yeah, yeah.
770. 39:50SPEAKER_02: What about Oscar?
771. 39:50SPEAKER_02: We had that, because we used to clean out his tank.
772. 39:52SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
773. 39:53SPEAKER_02: We had this big tank in the house, and we would I I would I remember I used to wrap him up in a towel where I would try and get him stuck in there and then put the towel in a uh bucket.
774. 40:03SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
775. 40:04SPEAKER_02: Right?
776. 40:04SPEAKER_02: And I think there was one time where I must have either just wrapped him up in a towel or or put him in the bucket in the towel and just the the bucket fell over, but it was out the front of the house, and we had this deck like close to the ground, right?
777. 40:18SPEAKER_02: But you could get under the sides of it to go under the house.
778. 40:21SPEAKER_02: And Oscar, this turtle, um, just disappeared.
779. 40:25SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
780. 40:25SPEAKER_02: And mum was like, get the fuck out of the house.
781. 40:28SPEAKER_02: Get under the house.
782. 40:30SPEAKER_02: And I remember climbing through like dog poo and dust and it was you and Annie and one of her friends who shall remain nameless.
783. 40:37SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we did, and you found him, he was under there.
784. 40:39SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, walking around.
785. 40:41SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
786. 40:43SPEAKER_00: Fred disappeared, Fred the the turtle, he disappeared.
787. 40:46SPEAKER_00: And like a week later, our neighbour from Five Doors Down back up and said, I think this looks like your turtle.
788. 40:54SPEAKER_00: So yeah, he came back, and then um uh subsequently just two of them just disappeared, completely never to be seen again.
789. 41:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
790. 41:02SPEAKER_00: Um and the great escape.
791. 41:04SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the rabbit disappeared a couple of times.
792. 41:07SPEAKER_00: Really?
793. 41:07SPEAKER_00: But came back.
794. 41:08SPEAKER_00: Came back once, yeah.
795. 41:09SPEAKER_00: Never saw again.
796. 41:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
797. 41:11SPEAKER_00: Um and and the dog would just be wandering the street, you know.
798. 41:15SPEAKER_00: You'd call him and five minutes later he'd appear again.
799. 41:18SPEAKER_02: So we had the guinea pigs, like when we had Bazza and Steve, we had this Bunnings guinea pig hutch thing that didn't have a bottom on it.
800. 41:27SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
801. 41:27SPEAKER_02: So the idea was cool.
802. 41:29SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
803. 41:29SPEAKER_02: You can sort of move it around and they just bulldoze the grass.
804. 41:32SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
805. 41:32SPEAKER_02: But annoyingly, sometimes I would forget I would forget moving it.
806. 41:36SPEAKER_02: And so they would eat through all the grass and get super hungry.
807. 41:38SPEAKER_02: And obviously, it's like looking through prison bars.
808. 41:40SPEAKER_02: They're like, the food's right there, it's right there.
809. 41:43SPEAKER_02: And so I remember there were a few times where they escaped because they had dug underneath tunnel out.
810. 41:48SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they got under the fence into the neighbor's yard, and so there was one time where I had to get out there, and annoyingly, they're so fucking fast.
811. 41:56SPEAKER_02: But these small, fat little vegetarian like animals with no legs, they're tiny little legs, they're so fast.
812. 42:02SPEAKER_02: I went around, asked the neighbor, this poor guy shows up in like you know, t-shirt and undies, like obviously asleep, and was like, Can I help you?
813. 42:09SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I think my guinea pigs are in your backyard, dude.
814. 42:11SPEAKER_02: Do you mind if I go through and try and find them?
815. 42:14SPEAKER_02: Throw them over the fence.
816. 42:15SPEAKER_02: And I get over there, we're looking behind all this stuff in his yard, and then I spot them, and immediately they just run through the hole under the fence back into my yard.
817. 42:23SPEAKER_02: Block it off.
818. 42:24SPEAKER_02: Pretty much like, can you just put some rocks against that something?
819. 42:27SPEAKER_02: And then found them.
820. 42:28SPEAKER_02: Idiots.
821. 42:29SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's it.
822. 42:30SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had one one of our um one of our cats.
823. 42:34SPEAKER_00: Um, you remember Mandy, the black cat, the first black cat we had.
824. 42:38SPEAKER_00: Um she was an interesting character, wasn't she?
825. 42:40SPEAKER_00: Yeah, black cat.
826. 42:41SPEAKER_00: She was the ultimate black cat syndrome.
827. 42:43SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're just weird.
828. 42:45SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, she disappeared when your mum and I were living in Northcote, renting a house in Northcote.
829. 42:50SPEAKER_00: And um and she disappeared, and uh we could not find her anywhere and went outside um in the evening, about eight o'clock at night, and just heard her crying.
830. 43:04SPEAKER_00: And she's caught somewhere.
831. 43:05SPEAKER_00: Where is she?
832. 43:06SPEAKER_00: Crack her down.
833. 43:07SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it turned out she was trapped in the garage behind the house next door.
834. 43:12SPEAKER_00: So I had to go and knock on the door, and and um and the uh the parents didn't speak English, the two they had two young teenage girls.
835. 43:20SPEAKER_00: Having to like pantomime the problem.
836. 43:23SPEAKER_00: And they thought it was hysterical, the girls.
837. 43:25SPEAKER_00: So they were and they just went out, opened the door, and this black flash just went over the fence, back inside.
838. 43:31SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
839. 43:32SPEAKER_00: Just didn't want to see us completely panic stricken.
840. 43:37SPEAKER_02: What how did you end up with your first cats, Mickey and Mandy, right?
841. 43:40SPEAKER_02: Because you guys you had another cat before that.
842. 43:42SPEAKER_02: We had muffin before that.
843. 43:44SPEAKER_00: She um she adopted us, she was just a wild cat, you know, feral cat.
844. 43:49SPEAKER_00: Stray.
845. 43:49SPEAKER_00: Yeah, stray in in Brunswick, where the first place we were living.
846. 43:53SPEAKER_00: Yep.
847. 43:54SPEAKER_00: And she just walked into our kitchen door.
848. 43:56SPEAKER_00: We had the back door open one day, and she just walked in and said, Hello.
849. 44:00SPEAKER_00: Went, oh hello.
850. 44:01SPEAKER_00: Nice place she got.
851. 44:02SPEAKER_00: She didn't have a collar or whatever and thought, oh well, you know, and she just bumped off.
852. 44:06SPEAKER_00: We didn't.
853. 44:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not gonna start feeding somebody's somebody else's cat or even a stray.
854. 44:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
855. 44:11SPEAKER_00: Um, but then she just kept doing it.
856. 44:12SPEAKER_00: She'd come and knock on our door and we'd uh let her in and she'd go around and give her attention.
857. 44:17SPEAKER_00: And then we looked at her and went, mm, yeah, fleas and lice and whatever.
858. 44:22SPEAKER_00: Probably not someone's pet.
859. 44:23SPEAKER_00: Probably not somebody's pet.
860. 44:24SPEAKER_00: Took her down the vet.
861. 44:25SPEAKER_00: She wasn't tagged.
862. 44:27SPEAKER_00: Chipped or anything.
863. 44:27SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
864. 44:28SPEAKER_00: So once we'd spent money on her, she sort of became ours.
865. 44:32SPEAKER_00: Um and then of course she got pregnant and and had As they do.
866. 44:37SPEAKER_00: As they do.
867. 44:37SPEAKER_00: And had kittens.
868. 44:39SPEAKER_00: Um and she had them in our you know back shed.
869. 44:43SPEAKER_00: In a an old the fridge, the box the fridge came in.
870. 44:46SPEAKER_00: She climbed in there and had them.
871. 44:48SPEAKER_00: And then we thought, she's she's never gonna get out of this thing.
872. 44:51SPEAKER_00: So we had to actually cut a hole in the side of the box.
873. 44:55SPEAKER_02: A little opening at a door.
874. 44:56SPEAKER_00: A door in the side to let her in and out.
875. 44:58SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
876. 44:59SPEAKER_00: Um and then after a couple of weeks, she was gone and the kittens were gone, three of them.
877. 45:04SPEAKER_00: And you've been just devastated.
878. 45:06SPEAKER_00: She's just gone, bucket, you know, there's just these are our little kittens.
879. 45:10SPEAKER_00: We was yeah, we weren't handling them or anything.
880. 45:11SPEAKER_00: We were just you'd hear them and see them in the box and things.
881. 45:15SPEAKER_00: And um and then three weeks later, she just brought them back and dumped them on our back step.
882. 45:20SPEAKER_00: So I've had them for five weeks, they're now yours.
883. 45:24SPEAKER_02: And so was that Mickey and Mandy?
884. 45:26SPEAKER_02: Or was that just one of them?
885. 45:27SPEAKER_00: Or that was Mandy.
886. 45:29SPEAKER_00: Mandy was the yeah, the the black one out of that litter.
887. 45:32SPEAKER_00: We had uh two tortoiseshells and a black.
888. 45:34SPEAKER_00: We kept the black one.
889. 45:36SPEAKER_00: Um your aunt got one and friends got the other one.
890. 45:40SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
891. 45:41SPEAKER_00: And um so that was yeah, that was our second cat, Mandy.
892. 45:45SPEAKER_00: And um so we yeah, once once we had spent more money on them getting them fleeed and de-loused and everything else, and we thought, well, they're now ours.
893. 45:54SPEAKER_00: So um and we went round to all the neighbours and asking about the original cat Muffin to said, you know, is this yours?
894. 45:59SPEAKER_00: No, but see her around a lot, but no, she's not ours.
895. 46:01SPEAKER_00: So what happened to Muffin in the end?
896. 46:03SPEAKER_00: I don't think I asked.
897. 46:04SPEAKER_00: She got she got run over on the road.
898. 46:05SPEAKER_00: Oh really?
899. 46:06SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, because again, with your mother and I being out all day at university, yeah.
900. 46:11SPEAKER_00: Um, we were living in North Bourne at the time, and the woman across the road used to feed her.
901. 46:16SPEAKER_00: Shake your head, you know.
902. 46:18SPEAKER_00: But um so she'd go across the road, she was constantly crossing the road and um and she got knocked over on the road um and died, and then uh about a month later, so did um Mandy.
903. 46:30SPEAKER_00: She got hit on the road.
904. 46:32SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she wasn't quite right.
905. 46:33SPEAKER_00: No, right.
906. 46:36SPEAKER_00: Brain damaged cat.
907. 46:37SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we uh we probably spent way more money than we should have, you know.
908. 46:40SPEAKER_00: Hindsight bringing her back being what it is, but yeah, she had a broken jaw and a broken broken shoulder.
909. 46:48SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, we you know she got surgery on the jaw, and the shoulder was was in the end okay.
910. 46:55SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
911. 46:55SPEAKER_00: Um and I I spent weeks doing physiotherapy on her shoulder with her and she hated it.
912. 47:01SPEAKER_00: But yeah, just doing the getting the movement back into it, massaging it, and yeah, and uh and then we got Mickey, the little tortoiseshell, um, that she hated, absolutely hated it.
913. 47:13SPEAKER_00: And hated it.
914. 47:15SPEAKER_00: It was the worst thing you could ever do.
915. 47:17SPEAKER_00: We had a um an old television cabin.
916. 47:20SPEAKER_00: I know our our television.
917. 47:22SPEAKER_00: How could you?
918. 47:23SPEAKER_00: We um we had it sitting in an old television cabinet back in the back in the 50s when televisions first came in.
919. 47:29SPEAKER_00: They were mounted in these beautiful furniture, you know, timber cabinets with the speakers at the bottom.
920. 47:34SPEAKER_02: So but you did have a remote and you had to go up and the diagnosis and everything.
921. 47:37SPEAKER_00: And the the um we used to use that as our TV cabinet um and put the television in it, but of course the speaker case at the bottom was empty.
922. 47:46SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
923. 47:47SPEAKER_00: And and so the Mandy would sit behind the speaker holes, which just had a sort of mesh fabric over the front of it, so you couldn't see her, and every time the kitten danced around past, you hear this from under the television.
924. 48:04SPEAKER_02: It's so funny how you never know what's gonna happen.
925. 48:06SPEAKER_02: I've told this story before, I think, on the podcast with Peaches and Scrappy.
926. 48:09SPEAKER_02: Peaches was a bitch, like we got her.
927. 48:12SPEAKER_02: I hear that Peachy?
928. 48:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she's over there somewhere.
929. 48:15SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I got into plants a few years ago after COVID or during COVID, and I wanted a cat that wasn't gonna eat up all the plants and be a pest.
930. 48:24SPEAKER_02: And so instead of getting a kid, got sort of an adult one, and she was gonna sort of mind her own business.
931. 48:30SPEAKER_02: And she was she was sort of nice, but she's always been very kind of like She's just narky.
932. 48:35SPEAKER_02: I don't like being too close.
933. 48:37SPEAKER_02: I don't be like being held, I don't like being picked up.
934. 48:39SPEAKER_02: I like your pats from a you know, a distance.
935. 48:41SPEAKER_02: She likes being in control, and she would be, yeah, I would have her in the um cat stand thing that she sits on top of near me when I was doing videos for um the plant sort of stuff on my plant channel on YouTube, and every time my hand went near her, she'd fang me.
936. 48:56SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she'd you know, bite it, not nastily, but like in a playful kind of way.
937. 49:01SPEAKER_02: Well, just she was just very rough.
938. 49:04SPEAKER_02: Excuse me.
939. 49:05SPEAKER_02: She liked just just yeah, fanging you.
940. 49:07SPEAKER_02: She would never really, really hurt you or scratch you, but she would just fang you.
941. 49:10SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so we got scrappy because um my my kids wanted a kitten, and I thought, oh fuck it, we'll get a small cat for them to grow up with that that small to rack.
942. 49:20SPEAKER_02: And I thought Peaches is gonna be so pissed off.
943. 49:22SPEAKER_02: Because knowing these stories about like Mandy and being angry at you bringing home Mickey, I'm like, she's gonna be pissed.
944. 49:28SPEAKER_02: She's gonna be angry, she's gonna be she's gonna treat this kitten so badly.
945. 49:32SPEAKER_02: And I remember I think for the first day, uh me being me, I'm pretty impatient, so I was kind of like oh fuck it, let's just introduce them.
946. 49:41SPEAKER_02: And she reacted completely differently from what I was expecting.
947. 49:45SPEAKER_02: She her eyes widened and she was more curious than um Scrappy was.
948. 49:49SPEAKER_02: You brought me a toy?
949. 49:50SPEAKER_02: And she she only kissed once.
950. 49:53SPEAKER_02: And after that, they were best buds.
951. 49:54SPEAKER_02: It took one day to acclimate them.
952. 49:56SPEAKER_02: Uh, and they were hanging out after that, and I could trust them on their own.
953. 49:59SPEAKER_02: Well, it was like when your cat stopped fanging me.
954. 50:01SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she no longer did that anymore, so I would put my hand near her, and it was like she had um another cat that she could be rough with and get that out of her system and wasn't doing it with me.
955. 50:11SPEAKER_02: And so her personality changed overnight.
956. 50:13SPEAKER_02: It was very bizarre.
957. 50:14SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like your cat Merlin when we got the little kitten Max after him, who the tiniest little kitten, he fitted in my hand from his nose to the end of his tail, he fitted in my hand.
958. 50:22SPEAKER_02: Tell the story of where he came from.
959. 50:24SPEAKER_00: He's another another one of these adoptions.
960. 50:26SPEAKER_00: Uh he was a wildborn kitten at Deacon University where your mum was working at the time.
961. 50:33SPEAKER_00: And um it was similar to the muffin story, right?
962. 50:36SPEAKER_02: Where this other female cat had been getting fed there.
963. 50:38SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then she'd been up having kittens underneath the building that your mum was working in.
964. 50:43SPEAKER_00: And then people realized it and then started to catch them.
965. 50:45SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
966. 50:46SPEAKER_00: And with this story went on for about two weeks of well, we caught the mother and mother, and we and we we uh caught two of the babies, and there's but there's one left.
967. 50:54SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
968. 50:54SPEAKER_00: And um and it's I think at the time you were like, no.
969. 50:57SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe came home.
970. 50:58SPEAKER_00: No.
971. 50:59SPEAKER_00: She came home and said, Um, look, if we catch this last little kitten, can we keep it?
972. 51:02SPEAKER_00: And I said, Absolutely not.
973. 51:04SPEAKER_00: Next day, I get home.
974. 51:07SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened.
975. 51:08SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened.
976. 51:09SPEAKER_00: It just a box.
977. 51:10SPEAKER_00: And I've been to the vet.
978. 51:11SPEAKER_02: It seems like the postman arrived for you.
979. 51:13SPEAKER_00: I've been to the vet.
980. 51:16SPEAKER_02: She wouldn't tell you I brought the canon.
981. 51:17SPEAKER_00: I've already I've already spent money on the tiny little, he was the runt of the litter, and he was obviously the most scared one.
982. 51:24SPEAKER_00: He was impossible to catch, but eventually they got him.
983. 51:27SPEAKER_00: And um we she brought him home.
984. 51:30SPEAKER_00: We opened the box, and Merlin, this Burmese, you'll think, he was about a year old at the time.
985. 51:36SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and he just looked at it and went, You brought me a pet.
986. 51:40SPEAKER_00: Instantly, and within five minutes, they were grappling, rolling around on rolling down the stairs, holding onto each other.
987. 51:49SPEAKER_00: It was his best buds.
988. 51:50SPEAKER_00: Just clicked.
989. 51:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
990. 51:52SPEAKER_02: It was funny because I feel like I remember you became Max's best bud as well.
991. 51:56SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you bonded with him.
992. 51:57SPEAKER_00: Max would just sit on my lap.
993. 52:00SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't sit on anybody else's lap, he'd just come and sit on me.
994. 52:03SPEAKER_00: Um or he sat on the arm, he he got he was huge.
995. 52:07SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was the biggest huge paws that he could over.
996. 52:11SPEAKER_00: He wasn't fat, right?
997. 52:12SPEAKER_00: He weighed about six kilos, but he wasn't fat.
998. 52:15SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
999. 52:15SPEAKER_00: He was he he would stand in our kitchen, he would stand on his back on his back legs, put his front paws over the over the bench and look over it, going, What have you got for me?
1000. 52:27SPEAKER_00: He was a monster.
1001. 52:28SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1002. 52:28SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yeah, he got to the point where he wouldn't sit on the lap, he would just sit on the arm of the chair next to me, yeah.
1003. 52:34SPEAKER_00: And I'd use him as the arm of the evil or whatever it is.
1004. 52:36SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1005. 52:37SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1006. 52:38SPEAKER_02: Peaches does that with me every night when I'm having calls.
1007. 52:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1008. 52:41SPEAKER_02: So if I ever have lessons with you guys, you'll you won't be able to see it, but probably to the uh to the left of the screen there'll be a cat.
1009. 52:48SPEAKER_02: There'll be a cat.
1010. 52:50SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1011. 52:50SPEAKER_02: So how much do you feel like um pet ownership has changed in your lifetime in Australia?
1012. 52:55SPEAKER_02: Have there been big changes?
1013. 52:57SPEAKER_00: Well, they keep dogs and cats in your own yard.
1014. 53:00SPEAKER_00: Well, most people still don't keep their cats in their yard, but now there's this big movement to keep cats indoors, which I agree with.
1015. 53:07SPEAKER_02: People will probably be thinking, especially if they live overseas, why?
1016. 53:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
1017. 53:11SPEAKER_00: Well Well, firstly, well, take the dogs one to start with.
1018. 53:15SPEAKER_00: Keeping your dogs in your own yard makes sense.
1019. 53:17SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1020. 53:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because dogs are aggressive and they're they can be annoying, they're crapping on people's gardens and you know, whatever.
1021. 53:25SPEAKER_00: So keep your dog in your own yard.
1022. 53:27SPEAKER_00: You can't keep a cat in in a yard.
1023. 53:29SPEAKER_00: You know, unless you can try to get it.
1024. 53:31SPEAKER_00: Well, there are there are cat tops that you can put on fences that have got rollers on them.
1025. 53:37SPEAKER_00: I saw something the other day.
1026. 53:38SPEAKER_00: Cats work out how to get over them.
1027. 53:40SPEAKER_02: You can buy mesh that connects all around your house's gutter, yeah, and then you can attach it to the fence all the way around your house so that the cats can't get out.
1028. 53:48SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, who the fuck is doing that?
1029. 53:50SPEAKER_02: I know, I know.
1030. 53:51SPEAKER_02: What an ice sauce birds will ever come into your yard again.
1031. 53:55SPEAKER_00: So well, that's the other thing with you know with cats is that they're they're really efficient hunters and so they're out eating wildlife, yeah, lizards and birds and I realise too, because I've been one of those people that now lurks in the uh community Facebook groups and um makes complaints about good luck with that.
1032. 54:13SPEAKER_02: It's fun.
1033. 54:14SPEAKER_02: Um but I we have like five or six different cats that community complaints department walk past my window here.
1034. 54:20SPEAKER_02: I've got a fence.
1035. 54:21SPEAKER_02: The fence is right near the windows and I have all these photos.
1036. 54:24SPEAKER_00: And you will, if you listen to these a lot, you'll hear every now and then me going, There's another cat walking along the street.
1037. 54:28SPEAKER_02: I know, or the roof of the house next door.
1038. 54:31SPEAKER_02: But so I take photos and then I'll anonymously, because I'm a pussy, put them up in the because otherwise you get torn a new one.
1039. 54:36SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1040. 54:37SPEAKER_02: Um I put up the uh the images of the cat and they're like, Can you guys please keep these inside?
1041. 54:43SPEAKER_02: Like, for fuck's sake, I'm sick of this.
1042. 54:46SPEAKER_02: And there's just fights on top of the roof.
1043. 54:48SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1044. 54:49SPEAKER_02: And I realized I what did I do?
1045. 54:51SPEAKER_02: I took a photo.
1046. 54:52SPEAKER_02: There were two cats sleeping underneath the um or in where we keep the guinea pigs out there in our backyard.
1047. 54:58SPEAKER_02: And I took a photo and being like, Can you guys take these?
1048. 55:01SPEAKER_02: Take them home.
1049. 55:02SPEAKER_02: And all these people, cut your grass, mate, cut your grass.
1050. 55:05SPEAKER_02: You need to cut your grass, that's what's bringing them over.
1051. 55:07SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?
1052. 55:09SPEAKER_02: What the fuck are you talking about?
1053. 55:10SPEAKER_02: And then I realized I went out and mowed the lawn.
1054. 55:12SPEAKER_02: There were feathers all in little areas in the grass, and the cats had been hunting the the stupid doves that we had nearby.
1055. 55:22SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1056. 55:22SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, I guess you got a point.
1057. 55:24SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1058. 55:25SPEAKER_02: Mowed the grass, and they haven't been around in the garden the same way since.
1059. 55:28SPEAKER_02: So yeah, thank you, kind stranger.
1060. 55:31SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
1061. 55:33SPEAKER_02: Alright, well, we should probably finish up.
1062. 55:35SPEAKER_02: We've been going for about an hour.
1063. 55:36SPEAKER_02: Have we?
1064. 55:36SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1065. 55:37SPEAKER_02: What about some rapid fire questions?
1066. 55:39SPEAKER_02: Go for it.
1067. 55:39SPEAKER_02: Alright, dog, cat, or something completely different?
1068. 55:42SPEAKER_02: Cat.
1069. 55:43SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1070. 55:43SPEAKER_02: Didn't even have to think.
1071. 55:45SPEAKER_02: Best pet name in the family.
1072. 55:47SPEAKER_02: Smudge.
1073. 55:48SPEAKER_02: Smudge.
1074. 55:49SPEAKER_02: That was the only one we had.
1075. 55:50SPEAKER_02: Um the only cat that we've ever had that hasn't had a name with it starting with an M.
1076. 55:53SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say, so you've always had these.
1077. 55:55SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so what's we got Muffin?
1078. 55:57SPEAKER_00: Mandy, Mickey.
1079. 55:58SPEAKER_00: Muffin, Millie, Molly, Mandy with the three kittens.
1080. 56:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1081. 56:01SPEAKER_00: Uh Mickey, Merlin, Matilda, Matilda.
1082. 56:04SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1083. 56:05SPEAKER_02: And then you've got Mackenzie now.
1084. 56:06SPEAKER_00: We had Macy and we had smudge, and now we've got McKenzie.
1085. 56:09SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
1086. 56:11SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you had Macy as well.
1087. 56:12SPEAKER_02: Alright.
1088. 56:13SPEAKER_02: Um which pet was the most spoiled?
1089. 56:16SPEAKER_02: Uh Merlin.
1090. 56:18SPEAKER_02: Which one was the biggest escape artist?
1091. 56:21SPEAKER_02: Merlin.
1092. 56:22SPEAKER_02: Pet on the bed?
1093. 56:24SPEAKER_02: All of them.
1094. 56:24SPEAKER_02: No.
1095. 56:26SPEAKER_02: No dog on the bed.
1096. 56:27SPEAKER_02: No.
1097. 56:28SPEAKER_02: Who was worse at cleaning up after the pets?
1098. 56:31SPEAKER_02: You.
1099. 56:33SPEAKER_02: Which pet would you trust to guard the house?
1100. 56:35SPEAKER_02: None.
1101. 56:36SPEAKER_02: Which pet would you never trust near your dinner?
1102. 56:39SPEAKER_02: Uh Max.
1103. 56:41SPEAKER_02: Max.
1104. 56:42SPEAKER_02: He would always get into it.
1105. 56:44SPEAKER_02: What have you got there?
1106. 56:45SPEAKER_00: You got any carbs?
1107. 56:46SPEAKER_00: Any bread?
1108. 56:46SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, Merlin was the bread, the carb stealer.
1109. 56:49SPEAKER_00: Max was funny.
1110. 56:50SPEAKER_00: Max would get into everything, but he only ever ate dry cat food.
1111. 56:54SPEAKER_00: Well, he didn't he go through the whole thing that you've got.
1112. 56:56SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you could give him any other sort of food.
1113. 56:58SPEAKER_00: He would he would steal stuff off the plate in the sink, but he wouldn't eat it.
1114. 57:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1115. 57:03SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, we he got he broke it.
1116. 57:05SPEAKER_00: He broke it.
1117. 57:06SPEAKER_00: This cat, he was the big dumb ox, but because he was big and strong, yeah, he broke into the um the what we affectionately call the toilet cupboard.
1118. 57:14SPEAKER_00: We turned uh when we did a bathroom renovation, moved the toilet into the bathroom and and they made a room, the toilet cup of everything.
1119. 57:22SPEAKER_00: We made a walk-in cupboard, yeah, sort of, you know, just a storeroom.
1120. 57:25SPEAKER_00: And um we had that had the pet food in there, uh, but the doors just closed.
1121. 57:30SPEAKER_00: They don't have latches, they've just got the automatic clothes things on them.
1122. 57:34SPEAKER_00: He worked out how to open them and he broke into the he tore open the cat food and we got home and there was just piles and vomit and half a thing of cat food missing.
1123. 57:48SPEAKER_00: I loved how he kept beating.
1124. 57:50SPEAKER_02: He would just keep eating vomited up and eating like you know what I feel you know what I feel like right now?
1125. 57:56SPEAKER_02: I'm feeling much more food again.
1126. 57:58SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1127. 58:02SPEAKER_02: Just imagine coming home and seeing it like out of it, just so tired from all the eating and vomiting, and then just being like worth it.
1128. 58:08SPEAKER_00: But Merlin Merlin, you're you're Burmese, he was the food stealer.
1129. 58:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1130. 58:13SPEAKER_00: Jo, your mum, would get home from work, and often she would buy uh a muffin or a cake or a piece of pastry or something from people to light, right?
1131. 58:21SPEAKER_00: And have half of it and bring half of it home.
1132. 58:23SPEAKER_00: Roll it up and leave it in a bag.
1133. 58:25SPEAKER_00: And he would he'd be head and front into the bag, ripping things open to find the and he he fought me one day for a crust of toast.
1134. 58:36SPEAKER_00: He he was up on the chair next to me, which he used to do.
1135. 58:39SPEAKER_00: I didn't don't particularly like cats on the table, but you can't stop them when you're not there.
1136. 58:43SPEAKER_00: But when you're there, no.
1137. 58:45SPEAKER_00: Well they do, they learn that you can't do it when you're not there.
1138. 58:47SPEAKER_00: Um he would sit on the the chair next to me and and he just put his paw up and grabbed a piece of toast, a crust off my plate, and I tried to take it back from him, and he growled at me and back off.
1139. 59:02SPEAKER_02: That's what Scrappy's always after bread as well.
1140. 59:04SPEAKER_02: Apparently it's the yeast.
1141. 59:05SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but he's the only cat that ever did it.
1142. 59:08SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1143. 59:08SPEAKER_02: Scrappy gets in and he takes bites.
1144. 59:10SPEAKER_02: The annoying thing is he doesn't just steal one piece of bread out of the packet, you just take bites all along it, and you're like, well, now I've got to throw it all out.
1145. 59:17SPEAKER_02: I don't want your cat saliva on my toast.
1146. 59:19SPEAKER_02: Like anyway, a last one is um which family pet would you bring back for a day?
1147. 59:26SPEAKER_02: Oh which one?
1148. 59:28SPEAKER_00: Well Jasper Kenny.
1149. 59:32SPEAKER_00: You reckon Kenny the snake the snake.
1150. 59:35SPEAKER_00: Really?
1151. 59:35SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1152. 59:35SPEAKER_00: Out of everything.
1153. 59:36SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you know, he was the only snake we ever had.
1154. 59:38SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
1155. 59:39SPEAKER_00: We've had multiple fish, turtles, lizards, cats, dogs.
1156. 59:43SPEAKER_00: But he's the only snake we've ever had.
1157. 59:45SPEAKER_02: I'd bring Jasper back.
1158. 59:45SPEAKER_02: He was one of your black labradors.
1159. 59:47SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was a very friendly guy.
1160. 59:49SPEAKER_02: Bang!
1161. 59:50SPEAKER_03: Yeah, remember that?
1162. 59:53SPEAKER_02: And whenever I said bang, and then I would say, come alive! And he would just leap up.
1163. 59:59SPEAKER_02: He was great.
1164. 1:00:01SPEAKER_02: All right, well, that's probably enough for today, guys.
1165. 1:00:03SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us.
1166. 1:00:04SPEAKER_02: Um, and we'll see you next time.
1167. 1:00:06SPEAKER_02: Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.
1168. 1:00:08SPEAKER_02: Tell us if you're enjoying these episodes.
1169. 1:00:09SPEAKER_02: I hope you're liking the brand.
1170. 1:00:12SPEAKER_02: Stop it.
1171. 1:00:12SPEAKER_02: See you guys.