Latest news with #ExplodingKittens
Otago Daily Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Former lawyer's Red Herring board game hooks players
Simon and Belinda Mortlock in the middle of a game of Red Herring. Photo: Geoff Sloan From business lawyer to board game inventor, Governors Bay man Simon Mortlock has made quite the post-retirement shift. The inception of his board game, Red Herring, came from seeing the card game, Exploding Kittens, last year. 'I thought now that's a stupid game. If someone can make money out of a card game like that, then surely I can make a board game as well,' Mortlock said. Red Herring is a strategy game played by four to six people. The object is to be the first to construct your own jetty in one hour. The Governors Bay Jetty. Photo: Geoof Sloan Mortlock designed the game in a fundraising effort for the Governors Bay Jetty Restoration Trust. He is the trust's current patron and its former chair. 'If you haven't got it, you've got to make it,' he said. Mortlock was a lawyer for 53 years and a founding partner at Mortlock McCormack Law before retiring in 2021. His lawyer's skills translate to the game, where strategy and managing risk are crucial to winning. Mortlock, who lives in Governors Bay, compared the game to Monopoly but said it is more complex. The board is a map of Lyttelton Harbour with 36 different locations around the bay labelled in English and Te Reo, designed by Governors Bay artist, Russ Harris. 'It's a staggering amount of detail and there's very fine craftsmanship,' said Mortlock. Each player is given a coloured jetty and 20 planks worth of differing points to start the game. Players gain more planks when they complete a circuit or land on certain locations. Players can take planks from other players and use them strategically to decide whether to build their jetty first or maximise their points. It took Mortlock six months to iron out the rules while Harris designed the board. 'We played it over and over and over again to perfect it. 'I'm really thrilled with the quality of the outcome,' Mortlock said. The Caxton printed version costs $90 while the limited edition handcrafted board costs $345. Forty-nine handmade copies and 33 Caxton printed versions have sold so far. They have raised $13,000 for the Governors Bay Jetty Restoration Trust. Mortlock is meeting with retailers this week to get Red Herring into stores. 'It would be great if it took off and helped raise a lot of money for charity,' he said.
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Telegraph
Water pistols and fence spikes: The battle to keep cats out of gardens
Exploding Kittens is known – in my house at least – as a fast and furious card game. James Garner, however, decided to make the game a reality. Suki, a pretty little 11-year-old tabby belonging to Garner's neighbour, had a habit of climbing up his bird table. And so this formerly upstanding member of the parish council in Whittlebury, Northamptonshire, tried (according to Suki's owner) to blow her up with a birdbox stuffed with explosives. Garner resigned from his parish council post last week after the sordid incident emerged. Poor Suki was left with singed whiskers and possibly a little trauma. Extreme? In the world of cat wars, Garner may have temporarily shot to the top of the list for his innovative approach to cat deterrence, but there are plenty of other anti-feline fans spending a large proportion of their time and effort on keeping the beasts away from their own gardens. 'I've tried most things,' sighs Freddie Harlen, who has had enough of neighbouring cats using his garden as a lavatory; 'pepper, hair [cats supposedly perceive the scent of human hair as a threat], garlic, citrus, marigolds, mothballs. The only things that have worked are small-animal repellent and a motion-activated sprinkler I built so that anything that walks by gets instantly sprayed with water.' 'My garden is now full of plants that cats hate – lavender, oregano, rosemary – although it doesn't seem to have worked that well,' says one green-fingered girlfriend. Another confesses to buying a dog partly to deter the neighbour's big ginger tomcat; one pal's father-in-law keeps tennis balls in his utility room for the express purpose of throwing them at passing moggies, while another irascible parent silently lets his bull terrier loose every time a feline casually appears on the lawn. 'Cats will not pay any attention to our boundaries' A Mumsnet thread on the topic, started by a desperate mother trying to keep her children's sandpit free from cat poo has more than 40 replies, advising everything from installing specialised 'cat-proof' fencing replete with spikes, to keeping watch with a water pistol. My friend Rowan messages me a picture of two lethal-looking electronic devices: ultrasonic deterrents that emit high-pitched sounds only cats can hear, which he swears has done the trick. Perhaps the most outlandish-sounding suggestion comes via my old schoolfriend Anna, whose dad purchases lion poo to spread on his garden, obtainable on Amazon and marketed with the express purpose of keeping cats at bay. 'How to stop cats coming into your garden is the question I get asked the most,' admits feline behaviouralist Lucy Hoile. 'It's tricky. Cats will not pay any attention to our boundaries. They can scale our fences. And I tend to find the commercial deterrents you can buy don't work.' And while the theory that cats won't soil their own territory isn't quite true, 'Why would you poo in your own garden if you had the choice to go in someone else's?' asks Hoile, quite reasonably. The trouble is, you can't take a cat for a walk. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, the cat walks by himself (and poos where he likes). For many feline fans, this independence is why they love their pets (although whether you can actually ever own a cat remains a debatable point). Cats aren't needy like dogs are; they wash themselves; they're quite capable of exploring and returning home when they're ready. And yet, 'people hate them,' says animal behaviourist Zoe Willingham, who has 67 rescue cats of her own. But cats are also clever, opportunistic chancers who can cause rifts between neighbours that makes Leave vs Remain look like a playground spat. And it's not always about keeping a cat out either. Last year a dispute over a Californian cat called Mercury went viral, with Mercury's owner accusing his neighbour of being a 'cat pervert' and holding his pet hostage – all because Mercury quite liked hanging out in the neighbour's yard. In 2020, a couple in Hammersmith, south-west London, waged a legal battle to prevent their neighbour from stealing their Maine Coon Ozzy, after becoming convinced she was taking Ozzy into her home and feeding him. My parents' large and greedy cat Moriarty was much mourned by their neighbours when they moved two years ago: Moriarty had effectively set up a second home at their house, enjoying double his usual number of meals a day and the odd catnap on their outdoor sofa thanks to their largesse. 'The thing with cats is they're very quick learners – if there's food in a house the first time they go in, they will try again,' says Hoile. 'I don't know any way of training a cat not to eat food when it's in front of them. They're only partway domesticated, really.' The same thing applies when it comes to chasing birds and wildlife (if you're a birdwatcher, Hoile advises installing nests and feeders high up in trees or onto a really high bird table that a cat can't get to). Or doing their business. Which is where cat owners also need to make sure they're providing for their pets. 'It's no good saying my cat doesn't need a litter tray and it doesn't wee in my garden – that's not very neighbourly,' Hoile points out. 'A lot of cats prefer a litter tray to going out, but if there's no provision in its owner's home, that's not the cat's fault.' And if you live next door to a cat owner but hate the creatures, 'give some thought to that before you create a giant litter tray in your garden' – i.e. perhaps that sandpit, or nicely gravelled front garden isn't such a good idea after all. Not all cats are so independent – or clever. We once had a half Burmese named Kipling, acquired in part to deal with the mice that plagued our flat, who was nevertheless so dappily stupid that she once spent two days up a tree because she couldn't work out how to get down, and eventually got herself run over because she couldn't work out what direction home was in. 'My neighbour threw my cat's corpse at my feet' Still, having to identify her poor squashed body was probably less traumatic than the experience of one poor anonymous soul seeking retributional advice on one internet forum. 'The relationship between me and my neighbour has drastically deteriorated in the past few months; we fell out because my cat kept going into his garden to do his business,' wrote the heartbroken poster. 'I couldn't control where my cat roamed or c-----d and he's been walking the neighbourhood for nine years, so I didn't do anything. Then yesterday, my neighbour came round and threw my cat's corpse at my feet.' James Garner might have to move down a place in the cat war league tables. Exploding kittens is one thing. A dead cat strategy is entirely another.
