Poocha-paathi Or What the Cat Left Behind

My husband just left home for a script reading. That means he is at that stage of writing where anything as mundane as daily life goes over his head. And yet, he stopped to send me this picture on his way out. That shows the importance this cat has in our world right now. Meet Chakki the cat.

I am no cat lover. In fact, I would most decidedly call myself cat-agnostic. I am more of a dog lover. Which means I can tolerate them in small doses especially when they are really really small. And yet the most important person (yes, to the point of calling 'it' a 'person') in my life right now is this cat. She came into our lives about a month ago - a tiny, mewling, scrawny little prototype of feline persuasion. My husband, hailing from a family of cat lovers, excitedly dragged the kids down to see the kitten and bade me bring some milk and bread for the clearly hungry little creature. My motherly instincts kicked in from all directions - for one, here was a tiny life crying out to be fed! And then there was the possibility of my kids getting to have the closest thing to actually having a pet - a kitten that they could interact with at close quarters without the responsibility of actually taking care of it! Besides it would give my flat-bound bundles of energy a reason to be outdoors (meaning the concrete paved grounds of the building we live in) for at least a short while in the day. Let's just say my mommy-book of expectations was in overdrive as I fetched that milk and bread. The kitten hungrily lapped up the milk and coyly hid under one of the parked cars as the kids tried to get too close. That too was a cause of satisfaction for me - I was not too comfortable with them actually touching the stray. Day 1 ended happily enough.

Day 2 dawned to reveal three bowls of milk in three different corners of the parking lot and bread strewn about liberally all around the place. Clearly, my children were not the only ones who had discovered 'Chakki'. She was playing with the security guard, curling up in the shoes in front of the ground floor neighbour's flat and evidently full and spoilt for choice! 

Day 3 saw Chakki right at the doorstep of our second floor flat! Ours was in fact the only door where a bowl of milk was NOT laid out for her. Suddenly my next door neighbour opened her door and Chakki was like one possessed! The magical aroma of freshly cut fish was calling out to all her primal cat instincts and she dashed into the neighbour's flat before any of us could react! We had a tough time getting her out and that is when it dawned on us: cats and fish! We could probably never leave our doors open again without fear of the cat sneaking in! Other issues were also beginning to arise - Chakki was liberally leaving behind cat droppings everywhere - also knocking down the flower pots with delicate table roses that had been daintily placed along the edges of the staircase. In just three days Chakki's likeability graph had taken a major hit! 

Soon the old lady who cleaned the common areas of the building started loudly protesting the additional tasks entailed by the kitten's presence. The bowls of milk and bread started disappearing. There was tacit approval when the old lady declared that she was going to get rid of the cat. Chakki was trapped in a cloth bag and let out at some distance from our building. But the old lady obviously did not know much about cats. In two days, Chakki was back in residence - tougher, meaner and much more self-reliant than before. She did not wander around the building looking for food anymore. And though she still curled up among the shoes, she was equally at home atop the parked bikes, under the cool metal of the gate and perched on top of the boundary wall when the fishmonger was on his rounds. Chakki had, of her own accord, established herself as a permanent feature in our building - but not yet in our lives. How that came about is what I am getting into now.

Since Chakki was now wild and free, she was not seen as often as before. So any time she chose to make an appearance, the children would be excited to see her. She still did not let anyone get too close to her and the children were happy enough seeing her from a distance. Then one day last week, my little girl spotted Chakki in the garden on our way back from playschool and I resigned myself to ten minutes in the hot sun as she enjoyed pointing out Chakki to me. The cat was sipping water from a freshly watered flower pot, eyes half closed, in the languid manner that cats have. My little girl squatted down at about a meter's distance from her, gurgling on in excitement. All of a sudden, Chakki leaped towards her and I saw the little paw make contact with my baby's cheek. Horrified, I scooped her up in my arms just as she started wailing in disbelief: 'Chakki scratched me, Chakki scratched me!' I could see she was more shocked than hurt. I searched her face for the tell tale angry, red marks but could not find any. To be sure, I dabbed Dettol on a tissue and wiped the entire area - the cheek, the ears, even her scalp at that side in case I had missed the exact point of contact. Any second I anticipated she would howl as the scratch smarted under contact with the undiluted antiseptic. But there was nothing. I heaved a sigh of relief. However, being the over-anxious parents our friends have certified us to be, we decided to take her to a paediatrician, just in case. Once he said it was fine, we could truly relax and focus on the task of keeping Chakki away from the kids - away from the building itself, if possible. The doctor took out his torch and spotted a tiny red mark on her cheek under her ear - an area I had possibly missed in my Dettol therapy. 'Better not take a risk,' he said, 'she needs to get anti-rabies vaccination'. My heart dropped several inches inside my chest. I watched in horror as he took out his prescription pad and wrote down the dates when she would need to get the shots - one, two, three, four, five of them - the first one to be taken right away at the nearest hospital or clinic, two more in the space of a week, the fourth one on the fourteenth day and the final shot of the series in mid-December! I was in shock as we headed home. 5 injections! And this was when we had been putting off the final set in her inoculation chart because we knew how scared she was of the needle! But this was not a matter of choice. There is nothing that makes you more helpless than when a doctor says 'better not take a risk' in relation to your child! With heavy hearts and luring her with all kinds of promises, my husband and I took our child to the hospital for her first shot of anti-rabies vaccination. She cried bitter, angry, hurt tears. First the terror of the cat unexpectedly springing at her and then her parents carting her off for an injection! My baby slept fitfully for the next couple of days. She would cry in her sleep and mumble about appa and amma leaving her alone somewhere. Awake she was cranky and defiant. And then came the second shot. And the third. 

Obviously we were not too kindly disposed to Chakki after this incident. But right now it is of utmost importance that she be alive and well and within our sights. Why? Because the fourth shot that comes up on the 14th day of the incident can be avoided if the cat is fine. Any parent who is reading this can relate to how vital it becomes to our existences if we are told there is an option that can take some of the pain out of our child's life. One shot. That can be avoided if the cat is fine. Which gives us two precious weeks before she needs to get that final shot in the series. Which means she gets some time to forget this whole incident. And we get that crucial interval of time in which to reassure her that everytime we take her out she is not going to be pricked with a needle. Which is why Chakki is central to our lives right now. But Chakki is growing up. Turning more feral with each passing day. She sometimes wanders off. Does not show up for a day or two or even three. Which is why Sanjay was moved enough to stop the car and take a picture of the cat on his way to an all-important script reading. He knows what difference it makes to my life to be assured that the cat is alive and healthy and around. Till the 30th of this month. After which we can go back to our cat-agnostic existence.

In a tumultous couple of weeks when the world was going hoarse discussing Donald Trump's ascension and Modi's demonitisation, we were busy keeping tabs on a stray kitten. Because life has this tendency to get reduced to the most recent upset in our carefully laid plans. Because unshattered glass ceilings and winding queues in front of banks don't pull on your heartstrings quite as much as a baby's quivering lips. Life goes on.

What exactly is a stray kitten capable of, really? Well, it got all the kids in the building excited, got all the adults thinking about the pets they raised and lost as children, made the cleaning lady yell at the residents' association, got the old security guard to quit after a fracas involving an angry father and his over-enthusiastic son with regard to the cat, drove us to the hospital for three rounds of anti-rabies injections for our little girl and finally got the sometimes-bickering, sometimes-indifferent residents of the building to come together to agree not to drive Chakki away till the 30th. It also brought in  a new term to our family lexicon - "poocha-paathi" (Poocha=cat; paathi=half). 

Poet Balachandran Chullikkad, in his autobiographical musings titled Chidambarasmarana talks about a woman in  his village they called thee-paathi (Thee=fire; paathi=half) - a woman who survived a fire with half her body disfigured. I was intrigued by the usage - half-fire. Did they mean the half the fire took away? Or the half that lived to tell the tale? I like to think of it as a salute to the resilience of human life - thee-paathi - the woman who continued to encapsulate the whole of human existence with the half of her body left intact by the fire. If I had not read this book I would not have got it when my friend's father sympathetically called my little one poocha-paathi referring to her losing weight after the incident. Poocha-paathi - or what the cat left behind! It has become a joke in the family, now that the trauma of the incident is almost behind us.  Parenting is made up of so many such stories and I realise how fortunate we are that this one ended with a lingering family anecdote. Will Chakki still be around on the morning of the 30th? That is the question that rules our minds right now.