15. Cat in the Bush
It has been a week since I got back from leave where I had stayed with a friend on Waiheke Island off Auckland. I had gone to my nephew’s wedding. Since returning, it had not stopped raining. Two people who should have been sent back at Mintaro, the DOC hut before the Pass, refused to walk any further than the Pass. They feared for their lives as they thought the strong gusty wind would blow them off the mountain. They refused to leave the day-hut until a helicopter came for them, which it did eventually. They paid $1400 for the quick flight back to the lodge at Mitre Peak.
"There's no heli-tramping here!" the Lodge Manager said, as we were discussing the situation. "Anyone who can't make it to the next hut is taken straight to the end; we can't have them using helicopters to do the track!" she explained.
Then there was a medi-vac helicopter called for a walker who had injured his ankle. If its an accident, it's covered by ACC, but if its a case of being too sick or unfit to continue, the walkers will be charged by the helicopter company.
I had a sore knee after kneeling down to clean the water filter by the two water tanks and planting my right knee on top of a stone. I had to put up with the pain and keep working. I was up there because we had run out of water in the tank after an Aussie group used up all of the water after taking half hour long showers. It then created air bubbles in the pipes which affected the flow, and then it dragged up silt from the bottom of the tank.
The Lodge Manager talked to me once I was back saying the gossip back at HQ is that there were some lodgees wanting to leave. I think she was wanting to know if I was one of them. When I realised this, I told her it wasn't me… despite wanting to resign a dozen times with the stress of the job and environment.
Not only is the physicality aspect of the job challenging, but we are just a small team of 12 people, ten on-site at one time, eight working. We have to get along, we have to pull our weight, and we have to let go of many things to survive here. One lodgee told me she was sad, no bored, no... depressed. Yes, I said, you can feel all of those things, especially when it has been weeks of rain here. She decided to go for a swim with another bored lodgee and see who could stay in the freezing water the longest.
There are small things that occur here that can make bush life more interesting. One day there was a feral tabby cat seen sitting by my flat as a guide walked past. She mentioned to the Lodge Manager.
“A cat!? A cat?! What? What is a cat doing out here?” she yelled, alarmed. A day later, another guide confirmed he had probably seen the same cat, a tabby about a kilometre south from here near Prairie Falls. She put a trap out that evening but we never saw the cat again.
There is a competition between the lodges as to who can catch the most pests, ranking in order from the lowest: rats, possums, stoats, and heaven forbid, feral cats! They are careful not to put traps out that weka and kea can get into.
I saw a National Geographic magazine that had been left behind by a walker and read an article called, "The Thing About Cats".
It highlighted the growing concern about the damage cats do to our native wildlife. I was surprised to learn that we have an estimated 2.4 million feral cats in New Zealand, and about 200,000 strays. The argument was that strays are abandoned pets, once loved and maybe loved again, versus those at the other end of the spectrum insisting that any non-microchipped cat should be treated as a pest and euthanised.
Living up in the mountains here has made me realise how vulnerable our native bush and animal life is and I found myself wondering about my cat back home. I missed her.