What we say to animals when nobody else is listening

Thursday, 9 April 2026

Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington.

OPINION: I’ve recently been spending a good part of my working days eavesdropping.

It’s not the sort of eavesdropping that my mum tends to think I do at work: pressed against the window with a notebook and sense of civic duty, or intruding, ears flapping, on strangers at the supermarket.

Truth be told I do all of that too, but that’s not what I mean in this instance. Mostly, I’m simply in my chair, trying to write, when the outside world drifts in. Specifically, what drifts in are conversations with my cat.

Grey Cat — named in a moment of tactical, foster-care restraint that has quite clearly failed – has taken to spending most her days stationed either on the letterbox like a small, furry gargoyle, or halfway up the tree beside the footpath.

She’s a funny sort of cat at the best of times: floppy, over-friendly, and what us cat-folk call a talker. Grey Cat trills and pips and squeaks, reserving her actual screaming for 3am in the hallway.

But during the day it's from either the tree or the letterbox that she chats with the passing public. And they, in turn, chat right back.

“Well hello there, beautiful girl.”

“You’re not meant to be up there, you know.”

“Aw, don’t you look cosy.”

I love listening to all of this, and not only because it gives me another excuse to stop typing. Mainly, I think there’s something about animals that urges us to talk.

I like to believe that people who walk past other people without a word will stop for her, bend slightly, and offer up a version of themselves that is warmer and sillier than the ones they’ll allow each other.

I don’t know most of the people who stop to talk to her. I couldn’t pick them out of a crowd or even attempt to describe their appearances. But I do know their voices and the small things they share when they think that no-one else is listening.

One of the people is a man, an older one I think. “Right” I hear him say sternly, usually at about 11am, “down you get, silly thing”.

Another man calls her Sooky: “Where are you, Sooky? Here you go, Sooky.” I suspect this man is feeding Sooky, or at least that’s what it sounds like.

And the woman who asks her things. “What are you doing, Puss?” and “What do you think about that?”, and “how are you today, sweet girl?”

There are children, too, their shrill voices announcing Grey Cat like a celebrity sighting: “Mum, the cat! The tree cat!” This is followed by urgent negotiations about whether they can stop, try to coax her down, and whether she might, in fact, come home with them.

Given half a chance she probably would because cats, at their very essence, are traitorous and disloyal creatures. Grey Cat is no exception.

Sometimes people confess things. Not terrible things – no murders, infidelities or that they voted National – but small, passing secrets. They say that they’re tired. That they wish they could also lie on a letterbox all afternoon in the sun. That Grey Cat, or Sooky, or Puss reminds them of another one.

And from my chair, I hear all of it, pausing my tapping to eavesdrop.

It is such a strange and lovely thing to know people in this way – only by their voices, softness, and what they offer up to a cat hanging about in a tree or stretched across a letterbox.

All these sweet, unguarded moments drifting in through my window.