Hug your fence

To rent is to be free from the disquiet of such expensive trivia as insurance, rates and household maintenance. But pets are an issue. Once my wife Vic and I purchase our own house, a wee fifties place in Paraparaumu, Vic wastes no time starting a menagerie. To most people, the “crazy cat lady” persona is a cautionary tale; for Vic, it’s a life goal. Her left shoulder is tattooed with a black oriental shorthair, an offshoot breed of the Siamese cat, which were supposedly revered as guardians of hallowed or royal real estate. In practical terms this probably means they’re good at catching rats.

I grew up in a house where a couple of stray cats bred into a clowder of inbred, semi-feral creatures I had to fend off at the dinner table, lest they steal the crumbed schnitzel right off my plate. I found occasion to say “Mum, there’s a litter of kittens in the hot water cupboard again” so many times there was no novelty left in it. I was the oldest of five siblings. When I left for university, Mum replaced me with a golden Labrador called Tiggles. Tiggles stuffed herself with food until she was fat as a barrel. When I came home to stay I could barely sleep for the sound of Tiggles flapping her ears back and forth through the night.

So I think people should cut me some slack for entering adulthood skeptical of what pets have to offer. But I endeavour for Vic, who assures me that the right kind of pet will bring naught but joy, even though I suspect that “the right kind of pet” is code for animals from the topmost shelf.

When it comes to choosing a dog, we aren’t after a snarling attack dog, the kind people might employ to patrol a gang house. We push to the opposite end of the canine behavioural spectrum and purchase an orange, pony-sized groodle with a star-shaped white patch on his chest. We name him Teddy because that’s exactly what he looks like when he first totters up our garden path at twelve weeks old. We have no Buddhist temples to guard, but this doesn’t stop Vic from requiring our cat is a red-spotted tabby oriental shorthair. We name this adorable cat Mango, for he has the hue and intelligence of a mango. Vic takes both pets to the vet and he looks them over, looks back to Vic, and asks “Is your husband also a ginger?”

I do want to be the kind of person who doles out love unconditionally to my pets. But as it stands right now, I expect a little recompense: for the shelter, food, walks, toys, treats and such. Not much, mind. I just want Teddy to let us know if a burglar is sizing up our house, for example. Or for Mango to keep the rats away. Mango needn’t eat the rats, if he doesn’t want. Maybe just kill them once in a while.

Things would go better between the pets and I if I could just know what they mean when they do things. And: whether they really even care about us. Such things don’t matter to Vic. The animals are drawn to her as their main human, and Vic sees no need to cross-examine their intentions. That Vic asks nothing of them may well be the appeal. I can’t help but continue to question what Teddy and Mango mean and how much they care. And I’ve gotta say: the signals are mixed.

When our friends Stacey and Jay come to visit, as we sit in our little wood-lined dining nook, Mango jumps onto Stacey’s lap and climbs down into her woollen top, nestling against her bra. Stacey marvels at Mango’s casual intimacy with someone he’s just met. I wonder: Is Mango signalling Stacey is worthy of our continued trust? Or is he so pure of heart he’ll entrust anyone with his life? Or does he merely adore the warm softness of a cashmere weave?

Teddy can perceive the footfalls of the old man across the street stepping out of his front door, 30 metres away, to put the rubbish out. He regards this man with a primal suspicion reserved for exactly no one else, and lets out a guttural growl every time he senses him, summoning as much menace as is available to a dog who looks like a sheep. What can Teddy deduce about this man’s strength of character that we cannot? Perhaps each week that rubbish bin contains a fresh dead body, and Teddy feels bound by duty to his humans to report a threat. I can really get behind Teddy if this is the case. Or if Teddy would extend this preternatural sense to anyone else, ever.

On a sticky summer evening around 11, Teddy is asleep upside down on the sofa next to the street-side window, his heading lolling backwards off the edge, his ball sack in the air, his legs twitching to the wisps of some doggy dream vision. Vic and I hear a slam that vibrates through the matai floorboards. At first I dismiss the noise as one of our two young children turning over and kicking a wall in their sleep. But more bangs follow, washed with a shifting mix of cheers and jeers, like a manic depressive tide. There’s a sharp crack, and the sound of something brittle snapping; some pounding, then the abrupt caving of something hard but pliable – the panel of a car, I think.

I edge up to our front door, which is open to the night save for a soft fly screen attached to the frame with magnets. Our street is dark because the streetlights only turn on sometimes, but I can make out a mob of men moving past our car parked on the street.

I’m suddenly aware that my silhouette against the kitchen light behind might announce me as a witness. I creep back to the kitchen and flick off the light, hoping that if anyone notices they’ll assume I’m turning in for the night, unfazed by casual street violence. I return to glide the door closed, holding the handle open then manually sliding the latch bolt into place, rather than letting the spring slam it in with its distinctive loud CLACK.

Our door is made of frosted glass, etched with an illustration of a stag pausing at the crest of a wooded hill, bordered by a frame painted royal blue. When the streetlights do shine, they project the stag onto the hallway wall, like a ghostly sentinel. There is no stag tonight.

The shouts of the mob grow more raucous, but move further up the street, and I allow myself a breath.

Teddy stirs, opens one eye and slides off the couch. Maybe now he’ll ward off the mob with a cautionary bark, or at least acknowledge the presence of malicious strangers by standing to attention. But he just pushes his front legs forward, arches his back into a deep stretch, shakes his floppy ears, then slumps onto his bed in the corner, returning to a deep, oblivious slumber.

There’s a house down the street which our neighbourhood friend Anna refers to as “that crack house”. To me the word “crack” sounds more at home in an American movie. I don’t believe this house features actual crack cocaine. But what’s true is that we live on a street where people use “crack” as an adjective.

I always wondered what contraband this house was actually peddling, what “crack” might mean.

It turns out the police were also wondering about that.

I was working from home on a bright autumn afternoon a few months prior when I spied a squadron of armed defenders through my window. I watched them fan out down the street. They were dressed all in black, their torsos bulging with protective gear and pockets, their faces masked. Spread between these black figures were the standard-issue police, sporting pale-blue collared shirts, topped with a darker blue vest. Black or blue, they all held assault rifles.

It might not seem unusual in other countries to see cops with guns. But around here we don’t usually see guns, even in a holster. There are no holsters.

What struck me was how little these police and armed defenders communicated to the neighbourhood. And by “little”, I mean: nothing at all. There was no suggestion that since they had guns maybe we should get away from the place where people were arming themselves with guns. There was no suggestion of what had prompted them to arm themselves. There was no suggestion of anything. Except for the strong suggestion implied by a cop with an assault rifle looking in my general direction.

As the daylight faded and the street eventually drained of armed cops, I received a message from our friends Suzie and Eric, who live close to the crack house. They heard a rumour that someone was holed up inside the house with a gun in their hands and a chip on their shoulder.

A single armed response and just the one angry mob ought not to colour my judgement of the street. But these events contribute to a theme of untoward local happenings.

I was walking home from the train station one evening when I spotted a skinny young guy, face shielded by a black hood, creeping around the back of an op shop on Kāpiti Road. I heard a window smash. I pulled out my phone to call the police, but then decided to put a little distance between me and this burglary in progress. Rather than stand at the shopfront with a phone in my hand, pointing, declaring to this guy that I’m a concerned citizen who lives just around the corner, and I’m calling him in.

I turned the corner into a small park which borders my street. At the entrance to the park, two stocky teenage boys stood around a green council rubbish bin, which was on fire and collapsing into an acrid, molten mess. Metre-high flames lit their faces in orange and white. Their eyes followed me the whole time I walked through the park, daring me to remark on their freestyle bonfire.

I got home and paused on the street outside my fence, facing back in the direction of this evening’s transgressions.

What on earth was up with tonight?

While I waited on the line for someone at the police station to pick up, I frowned at the fresh tracks mashed into our grass verge. People around here drive their utes and vans up the gutter, often crossing a neighbouring verge, and park hugging their own fence. When the ground is soft, their tyres carve deep ruts, exposing the bare earth.

Why can’t they just park flush with the curb, on the actual street? Like us.

Through the window I could see the yellow glow of a household folding into its evening routine. Vic was chopping something on the bench of our caravan-sized kitchen. Mango sat yawning on the windowsill, his legs tucked beneath him. Teddy stood on the sofa next to the window, front paws on the window frame, regarding me silently with his caramel eyes, like I was a figure in a painting – Dog’s spare human holds phone in cold dark street – part of a gallery collection of neighbourhood moments, all interesting pictures but ultimately of no relevance to a dog within his warm wooden den, with his main human nearby in the kitchen, completely at peace on a black leather sofa.

The call connected. “So, I heard a window breaking and I’m pretty sure someone is inside that op shop on Kāpiti Road, the one a few blocks from the police station. And there are two boys standing around a plastic bin on fire in the park,” I said. I worried that I’d confused the operator, running the two stories into each other like that, but she just said, “Thanks for letting us know.” I’d hoped for some pledge to take action, but her tone suggested my live double-crime report was merely good to know.

I wanted to mention the damage to my verge while I had her on the line, but I stopped myself. Sure, it’s a breach of street etiquette, but no crime.

The tenor of the neighbourhood worries me less than being thought a snob. Or worse: actually becoming one. This cataloguing of local indiscretions might be turning me into a more judgemental person.

Teddy’s existence suggests that our family already sails dangerously close to haughtiness. It’s the unnecessary fanciness which makes me nervous. He’s a groodle, sometimes also known as a retrodoodle or golden doodle. It’s not just that there are three names, which is already excessive. It’s also their shameless whimsy, their absurdist innuendo, like the creator of these names is just daring us to laugh. Say it airily with a straight face and an oat milk latte in your hand, the creator whispers.

The way Teddy behaves in front of breeds closer to the ancestral wolf – German Shepherds, Huskies, Malamutes – suggests that he, too, understands pretentiousness. He doesn’t rush up to such dogs to circle and sniff as he normally would; he hangs back. This wariness might be a form of embarrassment. The dog version of emasculation. Perhaps Teddy imagines these dogs saying: “You look a right sheep with that perm, not to mention that fetching orange fur, and the cutesy white patch on your chest.”

Mango also casts us as pretenders to the upper crust. I understand that it’s not free to pick up a moggy these days, but it certainly doesn’t cost thousands of dollars a pop. The running joke in our household is that Vic has her Trade Me listings set to sort by “Most expensive” first. What’s worse is that Mango is a “red” oriental shorthair, bred to look like your average ginger tomcat, only with a sleeker, posher body. Where does this lead? Will we one day be the suburban neighbours who park a Lamborghini out front?

I don’t see the messages from our friend Anna until the morning after the mob smashes through our street. One of them had a machete and he hacked up her letterbox, Anna writes. “There were about eight guys. Sounds like they were working themselves up before charging on that crack house up the road.”

Suzie, who lives closer to the crack house, texts that her thirteen-year-old son, staying up late for some covert reading, witnessed the ordeal outside his window. The man with the machete hacked at a man from The House, and cut his hand wide open. The injured man got taken for surgery, Suzie heard.

“They ran up the road smashing stuff up,” Anna continues. “This includes our car and unfortunately yours too. Wing mirror and dent on the driver side.”

The level of detail observed by our friends makes me feel a particularly lazy neighbour. It’s 10:30am and I haven’t bothered to go out and scout for potential damage to our car. Although this does accurately reflect how much I care about cars.

Last night I’d been concerned about the mob momentarily, but after the noise had died down, I’d just checked on my children and gone to bed, thinking not of the mob or the street, but of a looming writing deadline and whether I’d turned off the fan in the lounge. I hardly have the right to quibble about Teddy’s inadequacy as a watchdog.

The machete incident makes the news, although the article is so indirect with the details it sounds more like a bored diary entry.

“A teenager has been arrested and charged after a person was found seriously injured at a Wellington address on Friday night,” the article begins, clearly written by someone who doesn’t know much about the Kāpiti Coast. Or geography. No one here calls Paraparaumu “Wellington”, because these are entirely different cities, with a 45-minute drive in-between. To be fair, perhaps the journalist doesn’t have access to a map.

The injured party was taken to hospital, the article adds. A spokesperson states: “Police believe this is an isolated incident and there is no ongoing threat to the community.”

The next paragraph really ratchets up the tension.

“Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man has been arrested and charged with presenting a firearm, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful possession of ammunition after armed police raced to Nairn St in Mt Cook on Thursday after being told someone had shown a firearm from a vehicle.”

I’m not sure what to make of these lurches in tone, the clumsy juxtaposition of disparate factoids, the abrupt change of location from my street in Paraparaumu to Nairn St in Wellington. I normally skim over news stories like this. But when it’s across the road...

I mull over that police statement: “Police believe this is an isolated incident and there is no ongoing threat to the community.” It sounds like we’re being told: “Yes, there’s smoke here folks – and a gun, and ammunition – but there’s definitely no fire.”

In the sharp-edged morning sunlight, the kind which dispels all ambiguity, Vic and I inspect our blue-green 2005 Mazda Premacy, squinting against the glare. I’m barefoot, wearing black stubby shorts and a threadbare grey t-shirt; Vic is in her dog pyjamas. Teddy casually pads back and forth on the other side of our fence, walking the perimeter. The back-rear panel on the street side is scratched and partly caved in. The wing mirror is fractured, part of its glass hanging off by a thread of plastic.

I stroll up the street to assess other cars. Those hugging their fence are unmarred. The cars parked on the street like mine – politely I had first thought, but now I know naively is the better adverb – had attracted the ire of the mob, which had roiled down the street’s centre.

Vic has the car keys in her hand when I come back. “That’s it for the electric door,” she predicts. “It’ll never open again.” Vic is typically upbeat, and correct about most things, so such doomsaying suggests to me that we now have a three-door car. But we test the door and it still opens and closes, which is all I really care about.

We don’t immediately notice the policewoman arrive. Teddy, just metres away behind the fence, sees no reason to herald her approach.

“Sorry about your vehicle,” the policewoman says, and we look up from trying to push the fractured side mirror temporarily back into place.

The policewoman is in her thirties, pale, with white-blond hair and a neat row of piercings through the cartilage on her right ear. The smooth, unmarked leather on her boots has a distinct sheen.

We ask about the previous evening’s violence. I still have the machete in my mind, and especially the hacked-up hand. It’s the hand that transforms this affair into something far more worrisome than jerks bashing cars.

“One person sustained very minor injuries,” the policewoman says, and pulls out a notebook. “Do you mind if I grab some details?”

We agree, and give the policewoman our names, but we don’t ask for her name. Do you ask a cop for their name? It doesn’t feel like a normal introduction. I don’t know the decorum.

The phrase “Very minor injuries” just doesn’t line up with what the news article said, or with what Suzie’s son saw. It’s possible that this policewoman is employing tactical euphemism, downplaying the details to avoid people getting worked up. Then again, she might just be more laissez-faire about machete attacks than me. She might have more experience with knives, perhaps even guns, and doesn’t share my sense of drama. But it bothers me, this use of the word “minor” to describe a machete attack across the road.

Mango slinks out across the verge, right through the middle of our conversation, and into the open car, a space he’s naturally drawn to, like it’s his personal incubator. (We once discovered him partway to Palmerston North, behind the front passenger seat.) But Mango doesn’t find the car to his liking this morning. He steps back onto the grass, and starts rubbing up against the policewoman’s boots.

The policewoman stops writing, smiles, then starts scratching away with her pen again.

I smile back. If Mango trusts her, I guess I should too. Perhaps an animal rubbing against a leg or curling up in someone’s jersey is the purest form of communication, one which requires no decoding, and I should just be happy with that.

The policewoman suddenly stops writing, and lowers her notebook.

“Did he just... nip me in the ankle?” she asks, gesturing at Mango with her pen.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “That’s weird. He’s never done that before.”

“I’m totally okay with it,” she says. “I have three cats at home.”

She leans down to stroke Mango, but he turns the elegant angles of his expensive head away from her, and saunters off up the street.