During a lull in upstairs’ installation of what I assume, by the relentless fucking racket, is Cambodia’s first Large Hadron Collider, I took the opportunity to balance the monthly accounts. It’s a mildly criminal task that requires laser focus anad a tomb of silence because I don’t know how to play Excel, plus I have the attention span of me watching Khmer TV.
Ledger cracked, pencil licked and receipts stacked in a ramshackle Jenga weighed down with a bracing crock of Panda plonk, the books simmered along nicely for about 10 minutes until my computer pinged. Shit. Like Pavlov’s bitch I strained towards its siren tug. Was it some tweaky Sinville codge ranting over the price of the visa-run bus to Nana Plaza? Maybe Gwyneth sharing a colon poultice recipe and news of her Kickstarter to upcycle Taittinger corks into yoga mats for street people? Perhaps someone had posted a… Oh, nevermind. I lifted the lid and damn that Pandora – she’d sent me 600,000 pixels of adorable fluffy bubby wittle wabbit holding a wittle cawot.
I’m a shallow sentimentalist at the best of times, and this was one of them. Like an emotionally superficial deer transfixed in the potent wash of hormonal headlights, I was compelled to witter and coo, out loud, as though that fuzzy, virtual poppet would, at any moment, shamble wuffling into my arms and suckle each weepy heartstring dry. Like Homer in drooling thrall to a dozen Krispy Kremes, resistance was impossible. Even with a real life furball of pet-crack at my feet – to wit: The Bunster carb-loading the brand new Bambillo mum gave me for KNY – I still couldn’t drag my zombiefied peepers off that kawaiiest little tyke.
You can never touch too many animals. I proved this on my recent trip Down Under, where quokkas, bilbies and poteroos – our ratty ersatz lagomorphs – were routinely fondled on my way to the outhouse, and where you could, say, force the whole family to go on a picnic at the park and then pat anyone’s dog and then eat a sandwich straight after if you absolutely had to without washing your hands and not get sick. My friend has a cockatiel called Ian.
CharmingVille is sadly not Bunning’s on a Saturday morning where the local Girl Guides host a Petting Zoo with piglets and everything. If the urge to mingle with our friends on all fours goes beyond trawling the PPAWS Facebook Page for miraculous success stories (saints, I tell you, saints!), I make up an excuse to drive to Suriya via 63 so I can glimpse the encaged furries at the roadside pet penitentiaries. It’s not ideal. Seeing those poor little panters cooped up in the heat makes me feel worse. As much as I’d love to bundle them all up – doves, cats, dogs, bunnies and toitles, oh my – I know that stepping away from the tuk tuk will likely end in tears, and more of those little fellows cranked out to replace them.
If you’re animal crackers my mother-in-law lives across the river in a bucolic stilt house ankle deep in peeping chicklets. They’re not much fun overall, but will do in a pinch and you can corral them into a basket for a gentle rummage. She also has a nice creamy Cambodian cow I can go look at – they’re so pretty from far away but get closer and they’re just cow-shaped wasp magnets with flies orbiting in biblical swarms. Nothing says I’m comedy gold like a big fat white human flailing at invisible insects ‘round the backyard where the whole commune is sat down for a blessing lunch. Absolute pants cacking, Heimlich-manoeuvering fucking hilarious. I can’t tell you. And even if the insects are elsewhere, the family bovine supervises a posse of murderous canines, including a half-blind moppet so vicious he possibly poked his own eye out just to show everyone how tough he is. Santa’s Little Helper he ain’t.
So in general I’m less inclined to run my hands through the local wildlife. I’m not being racialist. It’s just they hate my guts. The mean-streets cats in my building sidle past, all eyes and colossal testicles, lashing out at the mere thought of me disrupting their ear-mite colonies with a wittle tickle. There’s a yappy, no good shitzudoodle that sits at the head of my stairs, bedraggled and underbit, sporting an apple-green satin cape and a laser death stare dripping with seething resentment. Its natty owner, Ron the bookie, also finely attired in a knife-pressed shirt with fags in the pocket and the moist pallor of heart trouble in his stars, always giggles and offers up the little bugger for me to pat. I think you’re a top bloke Ron, but sorry mate, I’m not poking my wee fandanglers into that vicious little sneerbag now or ever.