JOIN USThe memory of that evening does not fade, instead it keeps revisiting me to affirm that cats too are capable of handling a crisis.
That was a year of plenty of rains in Mysore. All the storm water drains in our neighbourhood were overflowing. The one drain which was very close to our newly built house was under construction and clogged, but could still carry some water. That evening when the rain stopped, my young son and I stepped out to buy vegetables and reached the drain under construction. My son insisted on seeing the water flowing in it. Amid the gush of the running water we heard, ‘meow…meow…’ – the feeble cry of a kitten! But we couldn’t locate the source very easily. Dusk was slowly slipping into darkness, while we searched for the hapless creature.
When we found it, we saw that it was billeted in a water filled crevice fighting for life. In the growing darkness I couldn’t spot it correctly. My son rushed home and returned with a torch. Asking him to focus the light on the kitten, I stepped into the drain and risked the whole length of my right hand to reach for the little one. It didn’t protest, nor did it scratch my hand as unfamiliar kittens would do. When I finally pulled it out, the kitten I saw was a beautiful thing covered in golden fur. But it was completely wet and shivering.
We carried it home, wiped it with dry cotton and offered warm milk to drink – which it happily slurped. It then went around our new home once and enrolled itself as a new member of the family.
This is not all about our endearing pet. One evening, a couple of years later, I was standing behind the main gate of our house lost in my thoughts. Our ubiquitous and ever alert feline – now as big as a hare in the wild – bristled and snarled to draw my attention. Who says pets cannot warn against lurking danger? A four-feet long wheatish cobra had entered through the wicket gate and was inching by the compound towards me with our dear cat following it!
For a second or two I felt a chill running down my spine. I was exactly in the line of the reptile’s approach and all it needed were only a few seconds to reach my motionless feet. It’s difficult to say what would have happened had I remained standing there. My own assessment tells that the snake would have bitten me. But I withdrew from the snake’s path in a flash while our the lovely feline followed the reptile till it reached the nearby ditch and disappeared.
Did my cat repay the debt it owed me? Or was the circumstance in which the cat entered our home was contrived by an invisible hand only to save me? If the latter is correct I feel I still owe it something more.
These days where people dislike or detest pets as a nuisance, cats continue to be members of our family and keeping intruders like snakes or scorpions at bay. Whoever says that dogs alone are champions of loyalty and fidelity? Cats are too. And, I have a small collection of instances to prove it.