Minding Is Catching

There's a lot of “minding” going on around P-NG these days.

Apart from the professional “minders” there are even dog-minders, cat minders as well as baby-sitters for dogs.

Professional minders—of children—in all centres charge £3 per week for looking after small charges while Mums go out to work. A reliable baby-sitter can earn a £1 a night for looking after juniors while Mums and Dads have a bit of a break at a dance.

Charge made by most male baby-sitters is usually just a few cans of beer. Male baby-sitters are not always so popular though. One in Moresby was fired after lacing the baby's milk with rum in a desperate bid to get it off to sleep.

And how about the dog-minders? There’s Buster the Alsatian whose job it is to stand guard over Ngaire and Nia, the Curtis twins of Lae. Buster is descended from a long line of watch dogs. His ancestors were introduced to the Territory as police dogs by the Japanese during the war.

But it is not always babies who have dog-sitters.

Some dogs have baby-sitters! Like Toby and Trixie, two pedigree foxies whose owner says she can’t go out of an evening without her dogs “playing up”. On one occasion they chewed up two mats and three cushions between them. So now she employs Koki. Koki is an excellent “minder” and makes his charges go off to sleep. His fees? One shilling per hour. Several other people interviewed admitted to employing baby-sitters for their dogs at night!

And the cat-minders? Here’s a battle-scarred Red who once terrorised Lae’s R 2 area with his misdemeanours of stealing and fighting. All that has changed now—since Lucy, a little white stray kitten with a ginger tip on her tail walked into his life a few weeks ago.

Red adopted Lucy and looks after her like a mother, now stops home

minding his small charge and minding his own business.

NC.