Memorial to Tanya Burr, killed 15 September 2002

What the cats saw......!

Making full use of Tanya in July 2001 at Blomfield Street, Rotorua 

"'Allo, 'allo 'allo. I'm Detective Doolittle of the (insert place of choice) C.I.B. My brother the veterinary doctor has just loaned me his cat-language/English translation dictionary and I'm here to interview Phoebe and Puffball over what happened at Flat 12, 15 Hilda Street, Rotorua, on the evening of 15 September 2002. After all, it appears only three living people know for certain what happened there that night - and two of them have fur coats and walk on four legs."

******

No such luck on the cat-language/English translation dictionary. However, from the start there has been no doubt in my mind that Phoebe and Puffball experienced trauma from Tanya's murder - and this almost certainly being as direct witnesses.

As the two cats have integrated into our already four-cat home (meaning a total of six cats), both have revealed distinct behaviour patterns  they doubtless followed with Tanya. Where our cats were more or less 'outside' cats, Phoebe and Puffball were greatly coddled 'inside' cats used to being fed inside and overnighting inside if they so chose. The two groupings continue this distinct routine despite the far greater freedom both groups now have in order to keep each group in familiar territory.

Both Phoebe and Puffball become very clingy if the 'their people' are away even one night. Both are ready and waiting for the return of our cars, where the other cats couldn't really care less. Both follow 'their people' absolutely everywhere around the house, garden, to visit neighbours and anywhere else they can access. Phoebe likes tapping on toilet doors. Puffball waits very impatiently outside neighbours' houses demanding admission to keep 'his people' company.

In the evening, Phoebe likes curling up on the couch beside or on 'her TV-watching people'. Puffball is content to lie close by in his current favourite spot (which changes every few days), and to keep a sleepy weather-eye on what is going on.

At Hilda Street, Phoebe apparently liked curling up on the stairs, where she could look down onto the lounge through the banister railings. She also had (and still has if the chance arises) a real passion for sleeping in wardrobes.

Puffball really liked the armchair Tanya had recently been given by her uncle, and which was the first part of the lounge suite to make it to Rotorua (after discovering the cost of shipping it there complete). The other armchair from the set was supposed to accompany Tanya back in the Integra (like its predecessor) after her return from overseas, but her suitcase meant there was no room left - to my regret at the time. So it remained in our lounge, where it had been put just before we went away to allow the Integra to spend the duration under cover. 

Tanya had complained that the first armchair had soon become smothered in Puffball's ever-falling fur, and accordingly, after he adopted its companion (which would have smelt the same I guess) when he first arrived, it also became annoyingly smothered in his fur.

A homesick Puff on the 'left behind' armchair, alongside a bag Tanya brought back from Italy. October 2002

As Tanya relaxed with her last cup of coffee on her couch watching TV on the evening of 15 September, it is reasonable to imagine that Phoebe and Puffball were close at hand. Phoebe is likely to have been snuggled up with Tanya. Puffball might have been too (if Tanya had her way), but certainly he will have been very close by.

******

We (Kieran, Anita and I) brought the two cats with us, arriving home in Palmerston North at about 1:10am on Wednesday, 25 September - after the journey from hell back from Rotorua. Oh how wonderful the lights of Palmerston North had looked from Mt. Stewart. 

This journey had included burning the carpets, net curtains and drapes from the flat's lounge (all having been affected by Tanya's killing) at Mangamingi Station, Reporoa, when in transit. The incredibly loooong day had ended up with neither Anita nor myself really being in a fit condition to drive, but having to because of the presence of the cats. We learned never again to leave for the other destination so late in the day. The cats, meanwhile, were doped to the eyeballs with cat drugs and only yowled if we stopped driving for a break.

Newly-arrived clinging bereft cats with condolence cards

The two cats soon relaxed in our home - where they had spent occasional weekends as kittens. They had experienced the outside world (such as wind, grass and other exciting things) for the first time in our garden, as Tanya was then living in an upstairs flat. As in those days, Phoebe and Puffball were not too happy about the other cats, which had grown in numbers by one about nine months earlier, with the arrival on Christmas Eve 2001 of Phoebe's 6-week-old daughter Jasmine. However, some strange bond evidently remained between Jasmine, her mother and her uncle, as before long they were usually hanging out together in a detached sort of way, and this situation remains.

The two cats also knew us reasonably well, and having Anita around for the initial day also helped them settle in. For example, only Anita can truly mimic Tanya's weird but loving high-pitched cat calls. In addition, gradually things from Tanya's flat filtered through our home and these were familiar to the cats.

However, the behaviour of the two cats also included unusual responses which seem more likely than less likely to have originated on the evening of 15 September. 

While mostly relaxed and contented (unless the cat biscuit dispenser runs out or some still unresolved 'pecking order' issue develops), their calm appearance of the day time can change dramatically if there is a knock on our ranch slider at night!

At first only Puffball reacted this way, and I thought that only he might have been present. However, Phoebe has also displayed similar reactions since then. Perhaps this is all coincidence, but perhaps not. Usually the cause is my brother passing by and hoping for a free feed. We recognise his knock, but the two cats didn't.

My brother duly showed up about two days after the cats arrived. He knocked on the glass door and Puff simply freaked! He remained seriously distressed as he watched my brother (who he'd probably never seen before) closely for the first moments after he entered the house, before finally relaxing - because we obviously weren't panicking, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The same thing happened the next night when my sister arrived and also knocked on the ranch slider and was duly admitted to our house. She was wearing a full length dark coloured coat and decided for whatever reason to vigorously brush something (rain drops, dust, fluff, whatever) from the lower part of the coat, which she was still wearing. When she 'attacked' her coat repeatedly with her hand, Puff again freaked out. This could tend to suggest the point in the reportedly "frenzied" attack upon Tanya that Puff saw.

This is not normal Puffball behaviour. He has always been a very laid back cat, who is generally more 'hard to get rid of', than the reverse. In fact as I type this, he has just strolled across the front of my computer (between the keyboard and screen) and is currently sprawled out across the printer and (given his size) the things on either side of it.

A few days later, Puff was curled up on my lap at one end of the house (he was still very clingy then) and Kieran opened his slightly stuck bedroom door at the other end of the house. The noise that Kieran made sent Puff into a panic once again - until I could reassure him that he was safe and that I was not afraid of the noise.

Phoebe has been less demonstrative. She is a more self-contained cat that her brother. Perhaps motherhood and/or a greater ability as a hunter than her brother that means she assesses situations more realistically. However, she too has an aversion to the ranch slider. Her reactions included about two months after Tanya's death, anxiously looking toward the ranch slider first when her daughter stepped on something on stainless steel sink bench (presumably), despite the ranch slider and the kitchen being in opposite directions. About a month after that, she was curled up asleep on my lap on the couch  in front of the TV, when my brother showed up for yet another free feed and knocked on the door. Phoebe was fully alert and on her feet in an instant staring anxiously  in the direction of the knock and the door. 

The annoying behaviour of the irritating 'big kitten' Jasmine caused one more response of note. About two months after Tanya's death, I was in my office using the computer and Puff was asleep in the armchair close by. Suddenly Jasmine presumably upset some item from Tanya's flat (things were then being sorted here) and it must have hit the ranch slider. From our position out of sight of the ranch slider, it sounded like perhaps someone was perhaps even forcing their way through the door. As I sat at the computer shaking with fright (and trying not to reveal this to the person I was talking to on the phone), Puff jumped off the armchair and strode very sternly across the room to see what was going on around the corner by the door. 

My next reaction was "How do I get rid of that damned ranch slider."

Our ranch slider is somewhat more secure than Tanya's was. My own view of this was backed up by comments apparently made by the locksmith who helped rescue the cats the day after the funeral. They accessed the kitchen ranch slider (the flat has three ranch sliders, all then showing their age and/or neglect). Tanya was raised with an aversion to the lack of security a ranch slider can provide. Like her, we habitually lock ours - even without thinking about whoever we might have accidentally locked out (or in for that matter).  However, a ranch slider's level of security is a waste of time once the door is opened in response to someone's knock.

*****

The police (and/or certainly the cleaners) evidently said that the two cats spent most of their time upstairs while they were working in the flat. Their realistic place to hide was Tanya's wardrobe. When we went looking for them to bring them back to Palmerston North with Tanya and the Integra on the Wednesday afternoon, we could find Puff but not Phoebe. She had presumably buried herself down to the deepest recesses of the wardrobe. In the long run, this was probably a good thing, as we went directly to Poupatete Marae, which doesn't exactly have provision for distressed orphan cats. And so the two cats had remained at the flat, with a large supply of cat biscuits in their dispenser and full use of the cat door in the kitchen ranch slider.

On the Saturday morning (after returning on Friday evening from the funeral at Palmerston North), Tanya's friend Emma went round to check on the cats and feed them. She found Phoebe on the inside of the cat door scratching away at it. This, it transpires, is how Phoebe opens cat doors (Puff barrels through them pushing with his head). However, Emma was very concerned that perhaps the cleaners had blocked the cat door with the furniture they had moved, meaning that the cats were apparently trapped inside. Although this was not in fact the case, we had no choice but to arrange for the flat to be broken into (all its keys were in the lower North Island at the time) to retrieve the cats to somewhere more sensible than an empty flat that was increasingly showing the side effects of a recent murder.

Puff interrupted from his sleep on top of Tanya's favourite rug-like dressing gown during the sorting process at our home, on 25 November 2002. He is pictured elsewhere on this website with Tanya and the same dressing gown in better days.

We had already been in contact with Carol from the Rotorua SPCA, as she was babysitting Anita's two cats for the week. So I arranged with Carol (in her capacity as a Rotorua Animal Control person) and the police etc., for her to get into the flat to extract the cats. With the help of a very, very nice locksmith (Rotorua Locks n Keys), they entered the flat at 3:30pm on the Saturday and before too much longer (they spent a while on the job I understand) they had the cats safe and sound - and in their own large cage alongside Anita's cats.

Thus it was from Carol's much appreciated care that the cats were recovered two days later when we returned to Rotorua to pack up the flat. They must have felt so pleased to hear the words "Puff" and "Feeb" once again as we prepared to stuff them into cat boxes to return to Anita and Nick's home (with their cats). The one night at Anita's - with their two cats and two very sociable dogs - would have been very familiar and in the case of the dogs 'for a change' quite comforting for Tanya's two cats, as they had previously lived together. The cats spent most of their time relaxing in the wardrobe in the room we stayed in, but also strolled calmly about the house, despite never having been in that house before.

After the agonising journey to Palmerston North the following evening, the two cats settled in very quickly (apart from the aforementioned panics), and within 24 hours were strolling in and out of the house without concern. Probably after the previous week anything that even remotely resembled 'settled' was an improvement - and a number of things from the flat were here bringing familiar smells too.

Phoebe inspecting Tanya's suitcase for the first time, and Puff checking out her cartons of clothes etc., 24 November 2002

The view of our four cats was somewhat different though. One (Tammy) moved next door, another (Sam, the boss) found her position soon stolen by Phoebe. The elderly and amiable (except around Tanya who she avoided due to 'unrepressed childhood memories') but apparently studious Mary couldn't have cared less and soon learned how to get in the cat door. And bouncy little Jasmine found herself with two more cats to irritate - once she recovered from her recent spaying (the day Tanya's body was found). Meanwhile, Sophie next door, found herself with two more enemies to defend her territory from - not that she bothers much with Puffball who is much larger and younger than her and not exactly very aggressive. Best sometimes to let sleeping cats lie, they both seem to conclude!

******

Tanya's cats have watched the sorting process with great interest. They sniff everything and curl up to sleep on familiar things. It is impossible not to feel very sad for them, as they try to understand what has happened and why their beloved and ever-dotting 'Mum' has not come home to them - or at least phoned them (as she wanted to do from Norway and did do from Dannevirke on September 14th). Doubtless they miss the screeched out familiar words like 'Treeeeats!', or 'Foooood, want some Foooood!' and so on, that Tanya used to converse with them in her own truly unique manner. 

The most significant example of the cats' memories of Tanya in action was when I first opened her suitcase here. She had only half unpacked it in the course of the last 23 hours before her death. Both cats, in turn, crawled all through the case and its contents, in this instance deeply breathing in the smells from the case with their mouths open as cats sometimes do.

Another question only they could answer is - if cats actually could talk, that is - is whether they were they smelling Tanya's familiar scent on her yet-to-be washed clothes. Or was it simply that her blood-covered killer had probably been into the case first.

Puff and Phoebe (on table) trying to get cool on New Year's Day 2003. The chair Puff is resting under is the one Tanya used to sit on to smoke outside