East Indian people, by and large, are not pet owners. This is why, when you visit India, dogs on the street are starving beasts with protruding ribs, while plump cows wander around with flowers on their necks, and are given full reign of the streets to leave their droppings as they will.
My parents abhorred pets, and most of our East Indian family friends had no pets either. When I visited my one friend who did own a cat, she would have to put him away while I was around, since I used to be extremely afraid of things that were not human that moved. Heck, to this day, dolls that blink their eyes creep me out.
This is why I was extremely dubious when my husband brought our first kitten home eight years ago. The bundle of fur bolting around my kitchen at first reminded me of an oversized rodent. Then it somehow found a way to come closer and closer to me, until it finally managed to get in my lap.
“Help, it’s vibrating!” I remember crying out. When I learned it was just purring, it gave a boost to my self-esteem. The animal liked me! I don’t even like me. I have to admit, it won a few points for itself with that. Eventually, it grew into a big fat cat, and that was the end of my brief flirtation with becoming a cat-lover.
Since then, we’ve had five different cats, my least favourite of which was overly fond of rubbing its face against ours with the most odiferous breath. Each time one has moved on or disappeared, I think, ‘Hooray, cat-free again!’ A month will go by before my husband will come home with another one with an abhorrent personality tic or personal hygiene problem.
Our current cat is a most vocal animal; her mews are like a sledgehammer to my head in the quiet mornings. She disappeared for a good six weeks, and I was just relaxing into the peace when all of a sudden, I heard that telltale “Yreow, yreow,” and scratching at the window. The kids were beside themselves with excitement, while I just went to the table, laid my head down, and shed a silent tear. Friends commiserated, or told me of their pet cats that would disappear for months on end, or would even find their way home from a rural area miles away back home. I guess that song is true, “The cat came back, they thought he was a goner, but he just couldn’t stay away.”
Cat number five joined our family recently. It was a frigidly cold night and my husband had to coax it out from under a neighbour’s stoop, bringing it home to much excitement and happiness from our three children. I warned them all it was a temporary visitor, and we would find a forever home for the kitten, that seemed to fill its litter tray on an hourly basis, leave the room after letting loose a silent but deadly fart, and that would nose its way into bedrooms in the middle of the night, and proceed to jump around everywhere like it had been shot up with amphetamines, playing pin the claws on the bedhead.
When I did find a willing victim – er, I mean, loving home – for the kitten, I was sabotaged by a trio of pouting faces: my two children and their dad.
“He’s part of our family,” my daughter said, tears running down her face.
So I’m not a cat lover. But neither am I heartless or willing to be the mean mom. This is how, on Wednesday night, I end up sitting around a table, calmly eating my dinner, when a beast/kitten mistakes me for a tree and leaps on to my shirt, clinging to the fabric and top layer of my skin, and causing me to scream an expletive at the table.
My kids and husband stare at me for a moment in shock, before bursting out into laughter. I wasn’t that amused. It wasn’t that long after that the kitty found itself in its new home. The cat’s out of the bag. I’m a mean mom. But, strangely, I don’t feel a lot of guilt about it.