Last night I was awoken by violent thumps from the ceiling above my bed. It was not Rodents Of Unusual Size that were causing the disturbance. It was a lithe mottled feral cat I sometimes see lurking behind our pumpkins.
Whenever I catch a glimpse of the cat, I have to fight bipolar animal-lover urges. The sentimental kitty-lover in me wants to domesticate the animal: lure it in with milk and sardines, then trap it into a co-dependent relationship where I rub its velvety chin and weep to it about my romantic follies.
My other urge is the environmentally responsible one: to take it to the vet and have it put down humanely.
I don't come to this particular mindset lightly. Until I was 12, the centre of my world was a long-haired tabby called Katie.
She was everything that I was not: elegant, discriminate and, despite her fluffy exterior, tough to the core. She was also slightly brain-damaged, to the effect that she attacked people's ankles without warning. But that's neither here nor there. I am a human being, and so my base inclination is to project my desire onto other species, and to believe that all other species exist to serve me.
Katie probably wasn't the elegant sass-talker I believed she was — it's more likely she was just a cold-blooded killer who was lucky to have her lifestyle subsidised by a small human being dispensing food and hugs.
When she died I was devastated, but I never replaced her. A few years later, I stopped eating meat for ethical and environmental reasons, and for the ensuing decade, I haven't been able to justify the resources and the cruelty of factory farming that goes into nourishing domestic carnivores.
In 2009, a New Zealand study published in New Scientist found that over the course of their lives, medium-sized dogs leave a carbon footprint 2.1 times that of an SUV. Cats leave a footprint the same as a VW Golf.
Cats are also responsible for 33 avian extinctions worldwide, and cause the greatest number of avian deaths every year: one billion birds are killed by cats each year in the US alone (the Gulf of Mexico oil spill killed 'only' 225,000). New Zealand entrepreneur and philanthropist Garath Morgan recently pushed for New Zealanders to pledge to neuter their cats and not replace them when they die in order to replenish native bird populations.
His pledge made international headlines, and sparked controversy among pet owners, as well as providing hours of reading, if you can stand to read internet comments: 'I feel no pity for birds since ... I've had to pick up the pitiful corpses of their babies after they have been ejected from their nest by their parents ...'; 'Hunters actually keep deer populations in check'; 'Cat owners are more selfish and thoughtless than dog owners'.
The problem is not our adorable animal companions — they didn't choose to be both carnivorous and cute, and they aren't responsible for factory farming or their own basic instincts. It's we who are responsible. In sentimentalising cats and dogs, we neglect our own disturbing role in the environmental destruction they cause.
Domestic cats have no natural habitat, and because their food stocks are supplemented by humans, they can reach densities of more than 100 times that of native carnivores. In terms of carbon output, not owning a dog is one of the most significant contributions you can make to reduce your long-term environmental damage.
So how does pet ownership slip under the environmentalist radar, when driving, flying, and meat consumption are central talking points?
The existence of domestic pets is predicated on the sentimentalisation of speciesism: the idea that we are inherently different from, and superior to, all other animal species, and that we consequently have the right to exploit them to our own ends. In the case of pets, the end is companionship. We identify with our pets, and in doing so, prevent them from living according to their instincts, and put other animal species at risk.
I'm not proposing pets be outlawed, but rather that pet owners take the time to consider the impact of pets on their own welfare, other animals, and the environment. A change of heart is urgent. How many cat and dog owners 'love animals' enough to condemn animal slaughter?
Ellena Savage is a Eureka Street columnist and editor of Middlebrow, the arts liftout in The Lifted Brow.