'nother old un with some changes included. Written in Jan this year.
-----------
I've had a strange relationship with this particular feline species. I disliked cats intensely as a child and while growing up but in a very unreal way. I didn't like the idea of cats and I don't think I ever saw a real cat until quite late in my life, and if I did see a cat I don't remember it. Yet I also remember when I was 5 or 6 or thereabouts I wrote a half-page 'autobiography' about a cat and drew a cat as well. Why a cat when the pretend story could have been about anything? I don't know. Maybe it's because drawing a cat is very easy.
At some point - when I was quite old - I started hissing at them. I didn't ever dream of hurting a cat but I hissed at them and they hissed back at me and we were quite settled about our mutual dislike. And their eyes - unblinking and sharp and piercing and quite inhuman, so I told myself. I believed in this too. I also believed that they were not particularly fond of humans or of company. That they were not just solitary creatures, which I may have been able to accept and even admire, but also slinking, mean creatures and pleasure loving and pleasure seeking creatures in very narrow and self-centred ways. I saw them as nasty humans. Nothing like dogs, and I loved dogs - I was sure that I loved dogs and disliked cats, and that cats and I would never get along together.
The hissing at them went on for a while, and in one of the places that I lived in Calcutta - there were both cats and rats that ran around in the compound. The rats were bigger than the cats. I don't know whether the cats killed and ate any of the rats but I had the strong suspicion that some of the rats may actually have eaten some of the cats. The hissing and my deep dislike for cats continued until a young girl who used to teach at a college listened and told me, "read this". I read it. It was Jeanine by Paul Gallico. And I stopped hissing at cats. It happened - just like that. It was looking at the life of a cat from the cat's perspective (sure, it was written by a human)...who knows exactly what clicked. (Years later I was taken aback when a friend, no longer a friend, looked at me like I were an idiot and dismissed my point by saying with a tsk-tsk, "Shilpi, this is not an intellectual issue for me. It's not something that a book can change. It's a deep-rooted dislike and I don't like cats and I never will." Whoever said that books just made an intellectual impression on the human being though?).
I stopped hissing. But I still was extremely wary of cats. In the last place I lived in Calcutta there were many well-fed and seemingly happy cats that prowled around the complex. Their eyes I found just as lifeless and expressionless and yet unnervingly penetrating somehow. And all my "kitty, kitty, kitty" calls (and I did try every now and again) went unheeded. Some of them would look at me and then walk off with a look of complete arrogance and another one would look at me with an intense gaze almost saying, 'Good God, do you have to embarrass me and my friends?! You're a freak. And do you think we don't know? We know you hissed at cats! Just because you've stopped now, you think I'm going to walk over to you, softly purr and rub my coat against your legs? You've got to be kidding." And with that it would give me a long and sudden hiss and saunter off - and yes, insouciantly.
And so that was it until the last four years. First came the big grey tabby. I'm bad at figuring out the age of cats. I honestly assumed that he was a kitten and wasn't too sure about his sex either (which is a difficult thing anyway because most of the stray cats are neutered or spayed, given that they had an owner at some point). He came to the porch one day - somewhat scarred and scruffy and with one eye that was scrunched up and with one eye giving me the 'look' of what I cannot really say. But that look hadn't been expressionless. A glowing jade eye and he had spoken to me with that eye. A gruff, "Ah, I know you". But he turned around and off he was. I'd been leaving out food for him on the porch which he came and ate and he would, I noticed be on the look-out for me. If ever I made the mistake of going out to the porch, he would bolt. But he made fast friends with our neighbour, Kim, and he would sit with quiet Kim whenever Kim would be sitting on the porch on early mornings with his notebook and coffee. I would stare at the grey tabby, from the window, who would be petted by Kim, would settle on Kim's lap or settle amiably next to Kim - and sometimes the tabby would make a fat-face at me but he'd not stay for a second if I tried going outside. There was his pink flat nose, there was his alarmingly large but very well-shaped head (I don't know how he balanced it on his rather thin and battle scarred body) and his noble chin and that scrunched up eye and that amazing green eye which seemed to see, know, and observe. Guha came back from India after a month or so, observed the cat, and quite against his principle of not bringing in stray animals brought the grey tabby in as soon as the tabby came along hopping on the frost covered grass in November.
Then a little over a year, there was a kitten. Not exactly a tiny kitten. But a 9 month fairly chubby kitten who had had a temporary home but was now homeless. His mother and brother had run off and he was there out on the porch on a cold January very early morning, and he looked inside. I remember his look with his head slightly tilted to one side. The grey tabby now sitting on the table in front of the window saw the kitten outside and miaowed and said, "my hedgehog. That's my hedgehog. Please bring my hedgehog inside. I need to take care of my hedgehog." And so Guha very promptly went outside and brought that kitten inside. The kitten is now considerably larger and tubbier and far more mischievous than the grey tabby whose eyes are both in fine form.
Cats do not have expressionless eyes. The grey tabby (Barty/"Baati"), whose name should have been ideally, "Kettle", has the brightest, greenest and most beautiful eyes that I've ever seen on a non-human animal. They are bewitching eyes too. They speak. Sometimes he can make them go all liquid and big and keep making them bigger and he will look up with the expression, "are you going to pet me now? Plea-a-se?" Sometimes it's harder to figure out what he wants me to do when he gives me the look. Sometimes he'll be gazing out of the window with such a faraway expression in his eyes that it seems to me that he's seeing his own planet. Sometimes he'll be looking at me from his place on the counter-top with the regal expression, "I'm king of my castle." and yet at other times he'll shut his eyes tight and open them wide and do it again, and he'll expect you to do the same. It's called a winky-blink - a sign of love and affection. I'm not kidding. Sometimes though he can look quite unreal. His liquid eyes go all black....he never looks mean but he does look quite dangerous. Yet at other moments when I talk to him in gobbledygook, he looks at me with almost ancient fondness "These humans - I have to humour them." while at other moments he'll look at me with, "No, not now. Please not now. I'm having a moment here. Please don't talk with me if don't have anything important to say."
The Kitten (Max/"Ghoti") who should have been ideally named "Bundle" has grown up but never really seems to have grown up. He has his kitten waddle and doesn't know that cats are supposed to protect their tummy at all times. He sometimes exposes his tummy (much like a dog) and expects you to rub him down, pet him, and cuddle him. He's naughty too. Loves to jump on the counter-top and lick a bit of this or that that's been left out on the counter. He'll try and drag a bag of cereal that's bigger than him (although he hasn't done that in a while) and once he tried to take a whole loaf of bread back to his hide-out. Yet the funny thing with him is that he keeps turning around waiting to be caught. And he never tries doing any of the naughty stuff when I'm not at home. It's almost as though he's hatching his plans so I'll go running after him, "Max. Max. Drop that. Now." Or else, "Max. Max. Ekhuni pituni debo," ...and he's thinking "well it gives her some amusement I think, running after me and chasing me around". Max loves running and hiding into the wardrobe. He has a little shelf inside where he sits and waits and sits doing god knows what and all my asking him to come out doesn't work at times, especially when I tell the rare guest that he'll be out in a jiffy (I'm terrified I'll shut the door and he'll be there for half-a-day...one day he'd been trapped in the refrigerator for some minutes but that's another story). The kitten does have the grace to look quite guilty when he's scolded for real. His head drops and he still looks up from his eyes while somewhat guiltily pushing at the floor with his front paws...so I don't think that it's true that cats have absolutely no conscience either. They do. I remember the only time that Barty ever tried to take something with him was a big piece of chicken. He'd never done anything of that sort and later he looked like a sad and old gentleman who'd been caught in a frightfully embarrassing position.
And cats are not unsocial. They look forward to being petted and they make space for you on the bed and sometimes they'll come and snuggle right next to you...and that is one of the nicest feelings in the world. The grey tabby grooms me. He grooms my unruly hair and bites my head just the way he keeps the kitten clean. Sometimes he gets so focused in his grooming regimen - his eyes are closed. Even if I try to shoo him away, he comes back. He wakes me up in the morning or just keeps looking at me even when I try to snuggle under the blankets so that I get out of bed and get to work after feeding him and the kitten. The grey tabby sometimes becomes crotchety if you don't play with him or sit with him or spend some time with him every day and the kitten will refuse to face you if you ignore him for too long. He'll sit with his big bum facing your face. Quite rude but he doesn't care. The grey tabby sometimes does get a scolding from me because he needs petting right when I'm trying to work or getting something done. He sometimes gets quite clingy too....but not if he's given a bit of attention for bits of time...the chicken/kitten is actually a more self-reliant cat although he goes through his odd phases...and he still likes being picked up and carried around the house while he stares intently completely motionless and transfixed at the ceiling and the walls, and at my face for some seconds as though it's terribly interesting before squirming to get down to the ground and go about running off again. Kettle hates being picked up by me.
P.S: Sometimes I think that all they have is a roof over their heads and some water and food.
(Early Jan 2011). Edits October 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment