Remember the lockdown of March 2020? When things started to happen to you and you had no control over them unless you were rich and influential? Where regimes did things to people that were too absurd to comprehend but you just had to agree to their cruel tyranny? In Sri Lanka we were told that we could not take a vehicle to the supermarket but must walk there and walk back. And only one member per family could do this. I saw old people struggling to carry their food, pushing wheelbarrows. We went along with this, like sheep. Where governments all over the world suddenly started treating people with absolutely no respect as if they were so many ungulates, which of course they are, only until now there had been an illusion of free will….? Where people were told how they would inevitably choke to death and float down rivers because oxygen was in short supply…?Just to terrorise them and make them do what they were told? Well, surprise surprise - it worked. I was terrified.
I did watch a lot of social media at that time and it had a very bad effect on me. Paired with untreated PTSD from previous experiences in Kenya(2 bloody coups), Uganda (Idi Amin vs the Asians), Sri Lanka during the LTTE time and during the JVP insurgence (30 years of violence, bombs and more mass graves than almost any other country in the world) followed by a Tsunami which killed 200,000 people in my country - there was this development. And I was incarcerated in a building from which I could barely emerge without the terror of either germs or the military getting to me.
2020 was the pinnacle of anxious paranoia as far as I was concerned. (and I'm only 52)
Bunny found us just when I needed her.
She was an extremely weird somewhat smelly kitten, with a bob tail and a broken leg, which appeared to have been either caught by some machinery or she was born like that. The thing about the wound was that by its nature it could not heal until it was operated upon and this was in the middle of a pandemic where we had no access to vets. It leaked blood continuously and also seemed to be suppurating. It stank. But it probably didnt have nerves and so she didn't care.
Bunny was completely unstoppable.
Bunny has an attitude about life in general.
It is a happy and cheerful attitude.
She simply delighted in life, and bounced gaily about on her remaining three legs regularly scraping the bleeding, pus leaking stump across our tiles and couch, completely ignoring her problems and reveling in her freedom….She had after all been living for a few weeks in a crockery cabinet because having been thrown by our nice religious neighbors into a house with 16 rescue dogs, that was the only safe place left.
Every evening in the middle of the pandemic, stuck in a building near the beach, my daughter and I would make it a family ceremony to go and sit on the rooftop watching the ocean. We had a few peanuts and rice crispie biscuits which we had ordered online because we were privileged people with internet and online banking. We talked about what we would do when we got through this. Maybe run away to the hills.
Bunny would catapult out of whichever room she was in, and skid her way up the stairs to join us, not wanting to be left out of our family event, for a moment. Once on the rooftop she would twirl around and roll on the warm cement floors deliriously happy in spite of a bleeding moldy stump. She wanted to give all of us her love so she would try to spend equal amounts of time near the feet of each family member. She also plainly enjoyed the rooftop. Nothing could hold this kitten down! She wanted to be a part of this party! I would meditate with the hypnotic Shri Shri Ravi, we would discuss the meaning of life and impending doom and Bunny would purr and head butt us from under our legs as we sat on low wooden stools on the rooftop.
I dreaded having to re-bandage her stump three times a day, and I found it incredible that she could lose so much blood (and pus) all over the floors and still be quite cheerful. She was infected, so it hurt and the cleaning ceremony involved some growling and swiping with claws. We worried that she would come of age and we couldn't fix her in the midst of lockdowns. And that there would be minibunnies. The thought added to my nightmares and anxiety, but she remained completely cheerful and matter of fact.
Bunny distracted me from my own paranoid meanderings.
And over the course of the pandemic as lockdowns came and went and various terrible things drifted over our planet and about 4-6 million people died horrible deaths, Bunny survived because she was a survivor.
She didn't have a tail or four limbs but she did have us to love her.
She bounced across rooftops as I watched close to apoplexy, because between our roof and the next roof there was a pack of angry German Shepherds kept for backyard breeding and if she lost her balance she would fall directly into their jaws….She insisted on her freedom.
Have you read that cats need their tails for balance? That must be nonsense because Bunny has no tail and only three and a half legs and she balances fine as she parkours onto the neighboring roofs. She still does it and at least I've given up worrying. Definitely some daredevil leather clad biker-chick reincarnated….
We advertised to give her away because our policy is to make room for further rescues. But no one wanted some silly constipated looking half-cat.
Of course, if you even imply that she is disabled that is nonsense too because she is as frisky as any normal kitten and somehow much more agile, sensitive, intelligent and in a word, DOGLIKE. Time passed, lockdowns opened up, we got her leg amputated and fixed her and then realized that we had no intention of parting with her. She had grown into our little family, firmly settling into our hearts and we could not give her away. We were beyond that stage.
Bunny has attitude about food.
She will not eat anything processed by humans. No biscuits, ice cream, milk, condensed milk, cheese, you name it she won't eat it, and as for those factory produced dry pellets, purrish the thought. Except for a particular kind of fish, called Bollo which is expensive and we have to drag home, in rain or shine. That is all.
She has attitude about Her Chair.
If anyone sits in it she will stare them out of it, politely and pointedly. With a steady almost accusatory gaze. It's HER chair. The one next to the balcony door with a good view of all family happenings.
As I write this, she's out there on the stairs monitoring the neighborhood in the moonlight, and checking out the various cat calls from nearby houses. Of all the cats we have adopted or rehomed, it's safe to say Bunny is simply the most unique, in personality, temperament and absolute charm.
And we are so grateful for Bunny, coming in at the time she did, when we badly needed her happy-go-lucky good cheer and unapologetic, furry adoration: There's nothing quite like having a cat come racing at you and crash into your shins when excited.
So to anyone else she may look nothing impressive, a broken, lopsided half cat- but to us, she is a character in a million…
