The following story is about a cat that became a member of my family, and it is a form of tribute to him, detailing the entire episode we had with him:-
My cat went out of the house one night and never came back.
I still remember the day I met him, although I would not know it was a male for a couple of months. My mother opens the door for me as I return from school, and I knew from the strange grin on her face that she had been awaiting my return. She beckons me inside, our library room, and points at an old shoe box out of place in one corner of the room. I peer inside, my eyes still adjusting to the half-darkness, and see a pair of blazing green eyes peer at me from inside the box.
The kitten had been found by my father and mother while they had gone for a stroll to the nearby field, although whether he had been abandoned or had wandered off himself was and is a mystery. He adjusted well enough to the house and was a little shy at first, but he broke out of his shell pretty quickly. Although he looked starved and nothing more than bones at first when he arrived, his body filled out rather quickly, and what a spectacle he truly was. His fur was a slight yellowish grey hue of a lynx, his coat marked with beautiful stylish black spots of a snow leopard. His large eyes were greenish-blue, his ears ever steady and twitching to hear the slightest sounds, and his tail ending in a snowy white tip.
I was quite young when he was around the house and was forbidden from touching him too frequently since he tried to scratch anyone who picked him up in their arms for longer than he wanted them to. My mother was the only one who could pet him anytime without much fear, my father often used to joke that it was because she always was the one to serve him food. But the most memorable incidents were when he brought food from outside. Rats larger than his size, neck broken, laid down on his dinner plate from his mouth, himself covered in complete filth. He used to be so furious whenever we threw the rats out or washed him to get the scum off of him, meowing and growling endlessly the entire night.
His second favorite person in the house was our pet squirrel. Our deadly cat had caught the squirrel somehow, and brought it to us while we were having lunch, the poor creature trembling in fear, his neck between his teeth as if to show off to us his expertise in hunting. Its fate was to survive that day thankfully, for while ten full minutes of us wrestling with the darn cat, and another five to calm down the trembling squirrel with water was enough to save it, no amount of saving would have saved the sparrow he brought next week, which as it turns out, had already been killed before being the afternoon presentation. My parents decided to not let him in the house for an entire day for that one, which did not matter much because like his usual coming and going, he did not come back for two. His new favorite pastime became, after returning home, to paw and claw on the outside of our squirrel’s cage while the happy creature chirped tauntingly. Our new ‘pastime’ became, now, to help him get his nails unstuck from the metal a dozen times an hour.
One drizzly night, our cat started to meow again at around midnight by the bedroom window, a sign that he wanted to go out. And he did go out and did not come back for a day, then two, then three, slowly a week and then a month. Our rabid impatience in the first month slowly turned to patient wait after, as we still had a small spark of hope that he would return. We lost our squirrel a month after that night as well. He took his once adversary’s disappearance unkindly too, sitting forlornly in his bed without a sound after just a week of the latter’s absence. My parents buried him in the garden while I was away at school, writing my exams, but it was better that way, because I know I would have been much more heartbroken had I actually seen his dead body then.
We shifted houses to the city as the school year came to a close. Even now when we visit the old house in the holidays, I remember so much fun we all had in those rooms once. The memories and laughter as if etched onto the very walls, the hallways a haunt of both good and bad times which we passed through. The cage sits in a corner of the room now, it’s metal rusty, and its inhabitant in a better place. I still hope years later that our cat went away to a happier place, maybe another home where he was cared better for. I hope that he is happy wherever he is, on this plane or the next. I hope he remembers us just as fondly we remember him. And I hope that we will meet again someday, somewhere else, happier and better than we were then.
