Offbeat (07): Cats Fill Empty Nests

By John B. Monteiro
Bellevision Media Network

Confound the cats! – always –
Cats of all colours, black, white, grey;
By night a nuisance and by day –
               Confound the cats!
Rev. Orlando Thomas Dobbin, 19th century Irish author.

30 July 2012: Cats may be nuisance at night when they scream loudly to mark their mating with the roaming Romeo which services many cats in a single night because the ratio of tom cats to female cats could be one to nine. That is not because cats have nine lives instead of one as noted in Replay’s Fables III. But, Clifford D’Souza, founder and head of Prem   Chaya  Trust, whose campus at Bajpe rescues and nurses to health scores of stray and sick dogs and cats, says that cats are very vulnerable and die miserable deaths feeding on garbage and putrid fish and meat residues around city markets.

 
Now they have found new role for cats and dogs – filling the void in empty nests where children, for good reasons, desert their parental homes, leaving the generally old couples or widowed singles to fend for themselves, pining for their children and often descending into depression. They are recommending pet therapy involving dogs and cats. My wife and I live in an empty nest, our daughter and son having married and living in Mumbai.

 

Cats having group breakfast of curried rice

 
But we have not come to the stage of despair and depression, partly because we interact with a dozen cats and two dogs during our waking hours and feel their presence, though with some irritation, during the nightly mating of cats and dogs (in season) and their orgasmic high-pitched screams.

 

Cats having sardines separaetly

 
My introduction to, or rather confrontation with, cats goes back to about five years. As we were playing our daily after-siesta game of cards with our senior-citizen neighbours in the basement foyer of my cottage, I was distracted by a cat jumping up to the window-ledge of the out-house, freshly painted white, leaving brown mud paw marks on the wall. Angered, I chased it away only to see it retrace its way back to the high perch and I again chased it away with a hail of pebbles. By this time it had planted a seed of sympathy in my wife who, in my absence, enticed the cat with fresh sardines from the fridge, calling her Puss-Puss – to which name she had responded ever since. If the wife loves Puss-Puss, can the husband be far behind or does he have a say at all? That association, started on a sour note five years ago, grew into a lovely bond and ended on a sad note on a recent night when a neighbour phoned to inform that Puss-Puss, the cat with attractive black and white fur and bushy long tail, had been killed the previous night by some dog or other wild animal which apparently wanted to gobble up four of its freshly delivered kitten in a niche at his residence. His concern was to save the four tiny kitten. Knowing my attachment to Puss-Puss, he asked me if I would look after the lovely kitten? I expressed my inability to do so, explaining that I am already feeding, with curried rice and fresh fish (sardines), thrice a day, eight cats including children and grand-children of Puss-Puss and her cousins through the tom-cat who impregnates local cats with single-minded zeal.

 

Puss-Puss pleading for food

 
Unlike dogs, which have to be owned, and cost between Rs, 10,000 to Rs. 50, 000 to acquire, cats stray into your life, if my experience is anything to go by, and do not depend on your exclusive patronage. They are none the worse when we go on our twice-yearly fortnight-long holiday. In our compound dogs and cats co-exist in great harmony, with cats sleeping on the dogs, eating together and the cats breast-feeding the litter of the female dog. But, that is a story in itself for another time.

 

Chew on this!

 

John B. Monteiro, journalist and author, is Editor of his website, www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) – with provision for instant response. Try responding!