The Cat Nuisance.

The Goat Nuisance was a long-standing torment to colonial Queenslanders. Goats provided milk, small-cart transport, and a free mowing service to their doting owners. To those who lived in the vicinity of a goat-owner, the manure, noise and destruction of innocent flowerbeds was intolerable.

Cats were kept to keep the mice and rats down, and as family pets. They didn’t wreak havoc on petunias or soil verandahs (much), but they did like to raise their voices in moments of intense conflict and/or romance. These moments generally occurred at night, when hard-working colonists expected uninterrupted sleep.

A chorus of cats.

AI generated image. A relatively sane one, considering…

The Courier thundered in 1860:

Whilst vigorous efforts are being made to abate the dog nuisance, it seems only reasonable to enquire why some attempt should not be made to abate the cat nuisance.

The nightly concerts with which these animals are in the habit of favouring the citizens during the present fine winter weather must have left a very strong impression behind that sleep in many cases has been thoroughly “murdered,” and that in some neighbourhoods the influences of “nature’s sweet restorer” are but easily enjoyed.

The worst of these feline performances is that they will persist in holding their ‘al fresco’ concerts at most unseasonable hours, and if possible, on the roof of your bedroom.

Naturally, this is the sort of thing AI came up with when I asked it (nicely, mind) to illustrate the previous paragraph. Never mind the noise – I’d be a bit more worried about the weight of those enormous moggies on one’s roofing.

The terror visits the west.

AI did its best. I had to turn it into a black and white image because the image it generated initially featured a bright blue cat. Naturally.

Nearly 20 years later, the performing cats of Old Queensland visited Warwick for an extended season:

A correspondent who resides in a cat-infested portion of the town writes to us complaining in dismal terms of the persistency with which the Municipal authorities refuse to take steps for the abatement of the cat nuisance. He says that no sooner does night close in his quarter of the town than whole armies of larrikin cats congregate in back yards and make night hideous with their howlings.

The way in which they evade bootjacks, brickbats, and such-like missiles is, he asserts, most disheartening to the thrower, and these are the most effective weapons at the disposal of the annoyed ones, since a would-be slayer of cats came very near to slaying one of our most respectable storekeepers some time since.

What? Oh, I would love to find the article reporting that. (I couldn’t. Sigh.)

AI came up with this image when I asked it to illustrate a chorus of cats on the moonlit roofs of old Brisbane. I do like those dainty little gold bow ties. Come on, “One – singular sensation….” No? OK.

The Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1846 – 1861), Saturday 14 July 1860, Page 2.

Warwick Argus (Qld.: 1879 – 1901), Saturday 20 September 1879, Page 2.

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