The Girl and The Runaway Cat

Cats are very interesting creatures. Beg them for affection and they will ignore you. Be uninterested with their presence and suddenly they would be all over your face, licking you as if there is no tomorrow. Sometimes I think cats do not know what they want. They are just fickle minded creatures that want attention when there is none, despise affection when there is plenty.

So much like men.

This is a story of a girl and her cats and a man.

Once there was a girl who could not stand cats. She has no idea where this aversion towards cats came from; she just knew she is not that crazy about cats. It’s not the she despises the furry little creatures. She just has no fond feelings towards them. If a cat comes and nuzzles its pretty little head on her lap, she’ll just push it away disinterestedly. She will feed them, bathe them, clean their kitty box, but you won’t see her playing with cats. The best she had ever done was just danced with one, and even then it was because the song that was playing on the radio was so infectious, she had to grab something and twirl.

Some people would view this as a serious affection deficit syndrome. She doesn’t see it that way. To her, cats are just another aspect of life; you can either live with or without it. It doesn’t pose any serious logistics or emotional problems.

You should get a cat, a friend commented one day, after seeing her failed attempt at gardening. You will love the company, the friend added.

There is a lesson to be learnt somewhere in her friend’s heavily inundated voice, but the girl decided she was going to leave it at that.

One day the friend came by and dropped off three little kittens at her apartment. Just like that. The girl came home one day and saw the cats, shrugged her shoulders indifferently and checked her larder for something to feed the cats. She found a can of tuna and some powdered milk, which was barely enough to feed three hungry feline stomachs. The girl looked at the watch and saw it was barely 9pm, and the grocery store at the ground floor of her apartment would still be open.

So she took the 7 flights of stairs down to the grocery store, bought a big bag of cat food, kitty litter, kitty shampoo and three small towels for the kittens and headed back to her apartment. Here’s the deal, she didn’t even feel obligated to do these things. She didn’t feel like she HAD to do it. To her it was just logical. Here are 3 cats with no food. The logical step was to get them some food. SO what if she had to walk 7 storeys down? So what if she had to spend a small fortune on the cat food, cat litter, cat shampoo and towels. It didn’t matter that she was inconvenienced by the cats’ presence; she was not affected at all. To her it was just another aspect of life; you can either live with or without it.

First she checked the cats for fleas, and found that they were flea-ridden with ticks and other imaginable bugs. So she had to give them a hot bath, lathered them with the anti-tick cat shampoo that smelled a lot like gasoline, and then towelled them dry. Then she prepared the cat basket, lining it with shredded old newspapers and pieces of rags. Next she poured what she thought was a suitable amount of cat food into a container and shooed the cats to their dinner. The girl then went to the kitchen, rummaged her kitchen cabinet for a bowl, found one and poured some boiled water into it. No sense in giving the cats tap water, she rationalized, they might get stomachache.

All these took 2 hours of her time, time that she could have spent taking her own shower, preparing her own bed, cooking her own dinner and making a hot mug of earl grey and tangerine tea that she likes so much.

When the cats finally settled down, the girl watched them intently for bodily clues that they wanted to poop. Each time one of the cats look like he or she wanted to do his business, she’d ferried them to the bathroom, locked the door and waited like an anxious mother. It took her all night to toilet-train the cats, but she did.

The girl never figured out which cat is female and which is female. She called a veterinarian friend of hers, who dropped by at her apartment and gave the cats a clean bill of health and helped determined the sex of the cats. The girl found out that she was the proud owner of 2 tomcats, and one female feline, which bothered her slightly because she would have to neuter the cats to prevent them from breeding uncontrollably. But the cats were still in their infancy, so the girl decided she could put off the decision a bit longer.

The girl never plays with her cats. She’d let them out of their cage and let them romped around in the living room, tearing it apart like tornadoes, but she was not interested in putting them in her lap and caressed them to sleep. The girl was not a cat person anyway. To her it was just another aspect of life; you can either live with or without it.

With the addition of the cats to her life, some of new routines had to be incorporated. She had to feed the cats twice daily, give them a batch every 2-3 days, let them out every morning to poop, then every night put up with three very frisky cats who seemed to have unlimited energy running around her apartment like a loose cannons.

Now this girl had many friends, many of whom likes her company and prefers to spend their time at her apartment than anywhere else. Never mind that her apartment was barely furnished except for some carpets and an old beat up tv. The living room was a comfortable place to be in, sort of a downtown bar where everybody knows your name, a place where you can say or do anything you want without people questioning your motives and thoughts.

They found the cats amusing, partly because the cats seemed to posses so much verve and partly because the girl was able to take care of 3 living creatures without bungling the job out of it. Everyone knows of her famous attempts at gardening. It was a standing joke among her friends, that most of her plants committed suicide rather than continue living in a sorry existence that she put them in. The girl always found this funny, she always knew she doesn’t have a green thumb, so whenever a plant dies she’d just shrug it off and plant a new one.

So it was left to her friends to stroke the cats, to lavish them with affection, to play with them and to cuddle the furballs.

Sometimes she attempted to cuddle the kittens. But they scratched and bit and always struggled to be free. Sometimes she’d just ignored the cats’ existence. But they would nudge her, slid beside her and nuzzled for warmth in her lap. Either way the girl was not overly concerned. To her it was just another aspect of life; you can either live with or without it.

Amongst her many friends, there was a man. He spent a lot of time playing with the cats, kissing them, making cooing sounds, cuddling them and generally providing them with the tender loving care you would expect from a cat owner. He did not own a cat of his own, but he enjoyed taking care of the girl’s cats, which suited the girl just fine because she was just basically someone who takes care of the physical well-being of the felines.

Now this man was a sensitive guy. He watched the girl a lot, observing her, trying to learn how to be around her. But it seemed to him that she did not notice him at all. Oh she’d be nice, sits with him and ask him about his day, laughs at his silly jokes, talks about the things that bothers him at night, worries about his health, fusses about his lack of a companion people termed as girlfriend, messes with his hair and takes the trouble to make him a hot mug of cocoa. She’d listen to his woes, straightens up his financial records, gets his life in some kind of order, answers his cell-phone, interferes with what he perceived as his personal decisions yet he could not shake the feeling that the girl was somewhat emotionally detached from it all.

The man could not understand it at all. In one minute the girl would seem to be so kind and thoughtful, in the next instant she would be so indifferent about everything that the man does. The girl seemed to be bothered by the man’s continuous relationship with what they termed as the ex-girlfriend, yet shied away his every attempt to explain or rationalize the situation, citing that it was his personal decision. The girl would grumble and mumble under her breath yet when the man asked her what he should do now, she’d shake her head and offered no solace.

It confused him greatly. Sometimes the girl seemed so caring; sometimes the girl seemed so indifferent. The man knew he could not ask for more than what the girl was willing to give because their relationship was one based on trust and faith, not one of romance and physical intimacy. But the bizarre nature of their relationship sometimes made the man wished he could read her mind, because he could never seem to be able to guess what she was thinking or what she would do next.

The girl on the other hand had different ideas. She liked the man’s companionship, his physical presence in her apartment and his conversations; although sometimes she wished that he could be less sensitive and more relaxed in his approach towards life. Sometimes the girl felt like the man was wasting his life away, too concentrated on making other people’s life comfortable and happy when what he had wanted was to roll on the hills and lie on the beach watching the crescent moon rise on a bright starry night.

Sometimes the girl felt she was too pushy, cramming down her ideas and love for life down the man’s throat. These were the times she would back off and shrug her shoulders unconcernedly when he asked her what she thought he should do next. Sometimes the girl felt she was too complacent, simply watching the man wasted his life away helplessly. These were the times she would hold his hand and stay by his side until all his fears and insecurities subside.

To the girl, the relationship that they had was straightforward. You be careful with my heart, and I be careful with yours. You appreciate the time and effort that I put in to make this work, and I appreciate the time and effort you put in to make this work. You disregard me, and I disregard you.

But her insensitivity sometimes can be so hurtful. The girl knew this but she didn’t know how much.

One day one of the cats ran away. The girl had opened up her door and while she was busy carrying the groceries one of the cats seized the opportunity to take a hike. The girl quickly put her groceries in the kitchen sink and ran after the cat, but by the time she got to the corridors the cat was nowhere to be seen. She made some feeble attempts to search for the runaway cat but after a while she decided if the cat wanted to run away, then let it run away.

One night as her friends congregated in yet another noisy weekend at her apartment and the girl was telling the story of the runaway cat, the man suddenly stood up and left. At first no one found this particularly annoying, the man was known to have made spur of the moment decisions without any reasonable explanation. But the girl knew right away something was wrong. You don’t spend so much time with someone without acquiring some sixth sense, like an invisible string that gets tugged at your heart when you know something had gone wrong.

Another day passed and then the other. The girl’s wariness turned to anger. When she finally got hold of the man and asked what went wrong, he just shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Nothing has gone wrong, he said. The girl felt sick, she had seen this many times before. She only didn’t think the man would not pull the line on her. Fine, she said. If silence is what you ask for, then silence I shall give.

The cats he said. What’s wrong with the cats? the girl asked? I am just one of the cats, the man said. The girl looked at him blankly. Cats? You are one of the cats? the girl asked.

Yes, he replied. I am just one of the cats. The runaway cat. Something that you took pity on, that you took care of, but never be emotionally attached to. You are being nice to me, just as you are being nice to the cats. I could run away and you won’t even come after me.

The girl looked at the cats sleeping contentedly in their basket. They were huge now, no longer could be called kittens, but not yet full-grown. Their fur was soft and fluffy with a healthy glow, their stomachs always full with vitamin-enriched cat food, their bodies warm and sweet-smelling.

Then she looked at the man.

I don’t belong, he said. I am here but I don’t belong.

And then he left.

The girl then sat cross-legged and watched her cats sleeping. She knew there was a lesson to be learnt somewhere.

So she called up the friend who gave her the cats.

What am I supposed to learn? the girl asked. I’ve cared and I’ve been good. What else do I need to do?

The friend laughed a little.

You need to learn to be loved, the friend answered. You need to learn to recognize love and embrace it. You need to learn when to care and when to let go. When to be affectionate and when to be unconcerned.

The girl put down the phone. The friend didn’t tell her anything she didn’t know. The girl opened up her window and watched the street lights twinkling one by one. The sky was heavy with the threat of rain. She sighed. She looked at the cats again.

Slowly she smiled. Slowly she picked up the phone and dialed the man’s cell-phone number.

You’re not my cat, she said to the phone. Now I am chasing after you.

Her doorbell rang. The man was standing there, still holding his cellphone to his ears, and a cat in his arms.

My runaway cat, the girl exclaimed.

Yes your runaway cat, the man said and smiled.

P.S: This is not done by me but by a friend of mine. Am not as artistic as he is :)