INCONSEQUENTIALITY

                                                               Huh?

A friend urged me to write stuff about my life on my blog - this blog. Small, stuff, trivia even, as she was captivated by our journey, my wife and my journey from Africa to the smallish enclave of Adelaide, South Australia.
I thought about it. I mean, I'm already writing a book about this, I mused, precipitated by our disastrous honeymoon in 2008, which, in hindsight kicked off the sequence of events that led us to settle in Australia.
I've always said (in the ethos of Desiderata) everyone has a story to tell, sometimes many.
Some people just don't see it.
My life is a story - every day I see and experience magic around me, not least of which originates from my wonderful wife and our seven cats.
Then I realised something that's become manifest recently, kind of risen up and carped my diem - the idea of remaining in the present and talking about that.
The book is the appropriate forum for our anecdotal legacy, the trials and tribulations that got us here but the blog, I decided, should be a chronicle for the here and now...
until tomorrow then it's legacy once more.  
I wrestle with the demons that haunt me over a decision to become fully vegan, for example, when outside the magpies, my new friends greet me each morning hoping for a morsel of the pet's meat I've been buying to feed them....I've even resorted to donning latex gloves (my wife's artistry sometimes requires hand protection) such is my revulsion at dipping into the bloody, flesh-filled bag to hand out chunks of meat. It makes me gag at times.
Even owning (nay, WAITING on) cats has that inbuilt dilemma - they're natural carnivores, domesticated for man's pleasure (and what a consummate pleasure it is) so must it follow that one be part of that horrific cycle of abuse that is the meat industry? How does one get round it? How does one reconcile with the awfulness that is rife within it and still provide the necessary nutrition to the cats who are oblivious to my wistful agonising? Scour the highways and byways for likely roadkill or take out a classified requesting any donors who might have access to birds and rodents that have died of natural causes...?
Hardly seems plausible or even mildly pragmatic now does it?
I've started some research on the topic of animal veganism and have been surprised at what I've uncovered, however, I'd never subject my babies to anything without embarking on that road myself - no, not eating vegan catfood - simply becoming vegan myself.
This post wasn't meant to be about veganism or the debate over whether cats and dogs can thrive healthily on such a diet - arguably they can - it just seems to have meandered here of its own volition.
The magpies on the other hand, have no such quandaries to overcome - should I elect some day to proffer them non-animal titbits of a morning, they're free to reject them and forage for themselves, carrion and prey animals notwithstanding.
I can already hear the rampant carnivores among you rising up in protest, howling at how cruel that would be - forcing cats to become vegans when their natural instincts and biological imperative is premised on carnivorism and hunting. 
But that's all bollocks too. We abdicated that argument when we commenced the domestication process. The fact that we have all evolved culturally since then - yes, even cats - puts forward the potential to thrive healthily without contributing to animal suffering. We have developed alternative products and natural foodstuffs that allow this.
Here in Australia they have a love-hate relationship with cats. They bang on about how domestic cats, allowed to roam uncontained, decimate the local wildlife so they should be banned or at least confined or at the very least, restricted in their numbers. I'm all for that - all of it - to a degree. I personally think it's more cruel to confine cats to being housebound when their natural instincts are to roam and explore and hunt. Yet this is, by nature of urbanisation, a very prevalent phenomenon where cats are confined to apartments and houses for their entire lives. Is it cruel? Many a doting cat owner will vehemently disagree. And, like I say, it's become a normal lifestyle for millions of cats worldwide. They still thrive. They're the ultimate adapters - not for nothing were they accorded nine lives and a penchant for aeons of snoozing, you know.
I've circumvented that particular issue, however, by building the cats an external enclosure which, although not as large as I'd like it to be, allows them the freedom to explore in the fresh air on grass and soil and up trees and to come and go as they please through the cat flap in the scullery door. No cruelty there then.
I've also built a very large litter box in the form of an elevated corrugated steel planter which is embedded in the garden and roofed off so the critturs can enjoy the freedom of outdoor natural soil-filled ablutions without getting rain-drenched or having to use nasty, overworked kitty litter. All good so far.
Most cats, by dint of their domesticated confinement in suburban environments, don't have the luxury of hunting as they might have done in the days of their ancestral wildness - our cats are similarly restricted unless some hapless creature ventures into the enclosure through the fencing - then it's everything for itself.
So we play with them and we amuse them, not to mention the fact that they amuse each other. All the time.
So I ask - if they have the freedom to come and go as they please, have all the stimulation we can possible muster (there are jungle-gym improvements I intend adding - watch this space,) and are loved and cared for beyond all imagining, why would it be at all cruel to have them try vegan food if it has all the necessary nutrition and protein any domesticated feline might require?
I can't see the cruelty there except to imagine that the carnivorous human horrified at the prospect of themselves having to forego meat and animal products, imagine that that deprivation is in and of itself a terrible thing ergo it must by necessity be cruel.
I simply don't agree.
The crux of the biscuit (to coin a Zappaism) will, of course, be getting any feline with a particular palate such as ours have developed, to eat a new type of food other than Hills Science Diet original formula... vegan or no.
We've tried switching their diets once already when we bought a different type of Hills - the furball management pellets - our menagerie was horrified, down to a cat. They hummed and hawed and strutted purposefully away from the dishes harbouring the offending product until we caved and drove many miles to reunite them with old familiar.
I dread the thought of this potential again - but face it I think I must....
I guess it's only fair to say - me first then the cats, then the magpies...
Watch this space...