A lot of noise is made about the stray dog menace, but when it comes to stray cats, it is they who make all the noise. Ask unfortunate residents of areas where cats regularly hold musical concerts at odd hours and watch them froth at the mouth as they recollect the caterwauling that keeps them awake all night. There isn't much of the gentle purring and meowing you associate with cats here; it is a cacophonous combination of growls, snarls, hisses and plaintive calls that starts from deep down their throats, rising to an ear splitting crescendo composed specifically to take your head apart.
But doubtless there’s something special about cats. After reading my article on dogs, a student asked, ‘Why dogs? They are so boring and predictable.’ Ah, clearly she hasn’t been chased by one. ‘Cats are way cooler and more mysterious.’ She’s bang on there. Even a dyed-in-the-wool dog lover would be forced to admit that when it comes to style and dignity, the cat will win paws down.
I’ve had cats. In the house, I mean. Quite a variety, and each was a stray that walked into the house and didn’t walk out. The first feline visitor went on a self conducted tour with its nose in the air and soon curled up in a corner. I smelt a rat. Quite likely it did too, for it decided to stay put. My husband and my son, cat lovers both, were delighted by these encroachers turned denizens.
The pattern for looking after them was set with the first resident cat and never changed thereafter. It was based purely on the principle of division of labour. My husband and my son took care of its emotional needs – petting it, stroking its head, tickling its neck and tummy, saying sweet nothings to it in a language that neither they nor the cat understood but which gave deep satisfaction to all concerned, and of course lifting it onto their laps where it would promptly go to sleep.
I was assigned the job of feeding it and brushing its hair off cushions, bed spreads, rugs and wherever it chose to sleep, which was everywhere and all the time. Ogden Nash, the American humorist, said, ‘The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually becomes a cat.’ I beg to differ, for the best thing about a cat is its toilet manners, its love for the great outdoors, its habit of burying its poo, all of which a kitten needs to learn. All strays that took up residence here were females and flirtatious to boot, keeping my hands full.
The other day, quite out of the blue, a friend asked, ‘How do you get rid of a cat?’ I was taken aback. Was she writing a murder mystery or did she want a solution to a practical problem? We’ve had about six cats and all except one had died, some of old age, some of disease. Whenever one cat died, another would arrive, with uncanny timing, to take its place until this happened.
The last cat was a small built stray that came meowing in one rainy evening. It looked sick but quickly got better and began, to our great delight, to target lizards. One day it took ill. Too much gorging on lizard, likely. The vet we consulted prescribed some medicines and antibiotics. Use antibiotic drops, he said. That’d be swift and effective. He didn't know how prophetic his words were.
My son held the cat firmly in his grasp. When my husband tipped its head up, I handed him the drops and he swiftly put the required number in one eye. But before he could drop them into the other, the cat that had been lying motionless got miraculously energised and tearing itself free from my son’s hands with a terrified yowl, shot out of the room, out of the house, out of the compound and into the wide open spaces.
It never came back. We hunted high and low. We heard it had been spotted at a very busy junction close by; it had been spied on top of a three storied building, seen near the railway station... We wondered if it was contemplating suicide. But obviously it not only survived, but passed the word round. Since then, though some make faces at us and mew expletives as they run along the wall, not one cat has walked in.
I told my friend, ‘Try antibiotic drops.’
(khyrubutter@yahoo.com)
[A fortnightly column by the city-based writer, academic and author of the Butterfingers series]
