The Catnip Pages: Mud Proof Boots

Emily's mortgage prevents her from living in the home she owns. She can only afford repayments by renting the place out. There is no pay check to spare, which puts the 'negative' in 'negative gearing' and takes out the tax kick-backs. Emily's romantic life has certainly shifted into a gear beneath parked, a conundrum posed by her housing situation to prospective someones: 'Soooo, I would like to invite you back to mine, but there isn't a mine until you move in and, you know, join in my mortgage. Except for what I've paid, lots of paperwork involved. I'm not asking you to skip dessert, I'm just asking you to fit three months worth of salad between dinner and dessert.' Emily cannot rent rooms out to friends because said friends have their own families and accompanying mortgages, or are the most loveable dropkick.

Living with her parents, Emily is the go-to house sitter for said parent's friends. This network of Boomers can afford to travel and will pay fifty dollars a night, because that is cheaper than kennelling dogs. (One Easter she was paid with a loaf of bread, a chocolate rabbit and a half dozen shirazes.)

It is decent side hustle but side hustle: alongside her seven-to-three, her commutes and the miscellaneous (eating, cleaning, Wednesday morning fap, ect.), she must walk dogs, feed dogs and/or cats and/or chickens and then walk her parents' dogs, because they want cute thing things without the responsibility. Who needs children when they have parents?

In the bleachers alongside the swimming centre's lap/diving pool, which had been used for naval free-for-all which the half-time K-Pop girl group had won, Emily found her forefinger curling the end of locks whilst she chatted with a prospective someone. She had started her second Easter shiraz (bottle). The cute someone seemed to keep rerouting conversation back towards Emily's mortgage. She did end up with a decent stretch of kangaroo leather.*

The kangaroo leather came in handy during one housesitting, when an arctic front brought in a week of rain, which freed the daily time spent on three dog walks. Emily found her crocks ill suited to the mud where the grass had been. She left them under the laundry tap and left a trail of footprints on her way to the Piramimma 2015 Tannat.

Notes of black currant, a hint of smoke, an epiphany about making appropriate footwear. A weekend seamstress, Emily felt a touch rugged with climate change's overtures drumming high tempo on the windows. Yes, it was time to rip and tear, then sew and tack, something a bit more serious than Halloween's mugwump costume. (Said costume involved too much papier-mâché and hidden wires that activated the ejaculations. Emily would settle for a bed sheet with two eye-holes cut out.)

Bob the staffy and Harry the puppy cared little about the weather. They grew restless without walkies (and Emily revelled at the opportune sadism inflicted on her parents by their own dogs) and insisted on balls being thrown. Worse, they had doggy doors.

Routine became meditation. Wake, feed dogs, feed chickens, feed herself, commute with headlights on, obey high-ups with 80% accuracy, commute again, feed dogs, feed herself, pour a wine and begin. Shower? Emily would pop outside to sip wine and suck on a dart whilst throwing ball. Then she would don ski jacket and brave the downpour, to find the ball that Harry puppy-eyed her to throw but had forgotten to bring back. Crockless socks left vague puddles of mud on floor and Emily mopped herself back to an improvised workbench. There she laboured for an hour until the nicotine fairy whispered in her ear, having ridden in on the back of the alcohol quokka. She would mop away paw prints before popping outside to sip wine and suck on darts whilst throwing ball. Etcetera until conscious of bed.

Four days passed, three hours cobbling a pot. On the fifth day, Emily finished the requisite 12.5 hours of boot making. The day was overcast but dry, grass came out from water muttering 'what the fuck just happened?' The house she was sitting had Foxtel, so Emily ate two rows of Peanut-Butter Whitakers and acquainted herself with Harley Quinn.

Upon Emily's last mopping, Mud Gods gathered bored around their celestial water cooler. The water they sipped dirtied the carpet. They leaned on walls and furniture, scrolling their phones in search of something interesting.

Eventually, one cracked smile and said: 'Have you seen what this chick has done?

'Bit vague.'

Another read over shoulder: 'Yeah, that's a bit neat.'

'What's that?'

'This woman - scroll down a bit - this woman has mopped her weight in mud. While making shoes.'

'Not bad. Not bad at all.'

The Mud God's reconvened, by slacker chance, at the water cooler the next day. It was a matter of fifteen minutes of dull scrolling before they brought up Emily's accomplishments into empty conversation. Lo, they decided to enchant the boots that Emily made with Mud-Proofness. It happened on a Sunday so nobody noticed, but eventually someone noticed.

'... aw man what a fusion...'

'...targets on the field...'

'...we have charcoal but no firelighters...'

A lawn two-months-due-for-a-mow, so what's another week? One gesticulates with packed cone, another has forgotten the dart on the table and rolls another, the third flicks through Man Alone With Himself (a Nietzsche book not by Nietzsche). A camel walks past and her rider hurls an empty Coopers Mid through the everywhere's-a-window. Tin clicks on bitumen and the three say:

'Hey Judea.'

A pssh metallic snip then ahh gaseous relieved of one standard drink.

The three shake heads: 'That Judea.'

Doris the camel navigates back street suburbia, plucking the occasional last rose off bush before it becomes hip. Left, then right, then left, then pushing over galvo fence separating vacant lots. Leaping creek banks, leaping rooftops. A trail of orange bread crumbs.

Arrival. Doris kneels next to a single boxed hedge and makes a point of not looking hungry. Judea leans on her haunch, unfurls a Catnip Page and prices with a blow of the requisite smoke:

₵$54 Ghost Tobacco (20)

₵$15 Bloody Mary

₵$55 El Dorado Green (1/4)

₵$19 Bug Powder (g)

₵$1 Slut Root (kg)

₵$30 Marital Aid Potion

₵$40 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)

₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)

₵$33 Mythril (g)

₵$14 BZTCN

He contemplates half a mid-strength, the eccentric dart and said prices. When done, he jaunts buzzed and rhythmic to the front door.

Knock knock.