King of cool: Review of ‘Cat People’ edited by Devapriya Roy

Humans pay heartfelt tributes to their feline masters in this quirky collection

February 05, 2022 04:00 pm | Updated 04:00 pm IST

Vincent loves wet paint; Smoky prefers perfectly diced sausages; Eecha has his own training schedule; Rahat is very generous; Heena’s presence is healing. They all don’t live together, but belong to the same feline family. Cats, they adopt you. And, before long, enslave you. They are cool, curious, have nine lives, they land on their feet when they fall, they dream when awake and asleep, they know every trick in the book, they are therapeutic to the cat-lover, a nightmare to the one who isn’t.

Cat People , edited by Devapriya Roy, is a collection of many essays and a few stories by over 30 authors, each capturing the myriad moods, expressions and tones of the most memed creature — the cat. Each piece floats on experience-turned-memories that detail a tailed, four-legged, independent being, whose language of love is very different from ours.

“If I crawl deep enough into my blanket, I can still smell her: a combination of tea tree oil shampoo and fallen fur,” says Payal Nagpal of Spotty, the cat who barked.

“The fat cat, Caesar, stared at me. He was furry, and his fur was the same colour as Alpenliebe,” says Kulfi Mohammad Saidali of the tabby he briefly met at a seaside house in Chennai.

M.K. Ranjitsinh’s moving piece is about his friendship with Khairi, the tiger cub of Simlipal Tiger Reserve, who knew how to hug without hurting.

Though movies have been made worldwide with iconic cats, Bollywood dreads the small c for their inability to get into action mode on cue, feels Gautam Chintamani.

“Living with cats is undoubtedly fun but away from Instagram cameras, it’s many other things too,” jokes Varun Grover.

“I don’t treat cats as children,” says Nilanjana Roy of her battalion whose “interior lives are just as unknowable, and sacred, as our own.”

For me, who breathes better in cat company and grew up just like them, each jotting resonates with a memory I count precious. I’m reminded of the nameless tom on Noah’s ark who went about spraying on every corner of carefully-crafted furniture, regardless of who said what, driving the most righteous old man on earth to turn down his calling — well, almost.

The tom who owns me is supremely handsome, with black and white patches in the right places. A linguist and a baritone with telling eyes, he knows the ways of the world. He remembers how far he has come from being a rescue and graciously accepts how grateful I am to have him around.

A book on cats should make you want to tell your own story. This one does.

Cat People; Edited by Devapriya Roy, Simon & Schuster, ₹499

subajayanthi.wilson@thehindu.co.in

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