Cats plague me. They greet me with loud vibrating purry meows when I get home, hunt me excitedly around the house tripping me up, when I'm desperately looking for my sandals, spray my motorcycle jacket cheerfully with nauseous civet musks and drop suddenly out of the ceiling onto my dining table when I'm entertaining important but cat averse guests….
I look around and wonder to myself how I ever got so surrounded by this many smelly mewling mangy excuses for former Egyptian Gods. The answer perhaps is I love my kids and they love playing with kittens and bits of newspaper tied onto strings. I too love kittens, I admit, and from garbage dumps and temple corners they all seem to be asking me to take them home. The problem is that these kittens I bring in mutate alarmingly within four to six months and for the next decade I am hounded (there's just no other word for it) by large, obnoxious feline predators calmly decimating my crockery and waving insouciant, in – your –face balls, or "cutlets" ,as they slope off on private after dinner cat business.
My cats embarrass me and stink up my house but keep me warm if ever I am cold or lonely(admittedly not often).However there's good reason to believe I may be totally single in future: I have had to reject at least two and a half perfectly good marriage proposals (not easy to find for a chubby, middle aged, divorced broad in Colombo-) due to the fact that I knew or found out in the nick of time, that these otherwise excellently suitable and suave suitors hate cats and such a marriage would probably end in catricide- and/or worse.
Cats hypnotize us. My worst cat is a half Persian Garfield –wannabe with a tail like a Christmas tree, named Patchy because she is black with tabby patches and has a yellow eye patch rather like a pirate in negative.(She is also called Tally's Pussy, after the lovely young lady who gifted her to me, but that is just too long a name to keep repeating). She will not lower herself to the level of common cats who use the reeking sand patch in our front yard. She uses our bathroom instead. I have Nokia videos of her peeing leisurely in the bathroom sink, which I always wanted to send to atapattama but am not sure if they will clog bandwidth, or actually what their email address is.
Solid waste is quietly deposited in a corner behind my laundry bucket, and followed by a brief absence from the domestic scene. That is until she gets lonely and broody and wants to do the kneading thing.
I call it that from want of any more scientific term but what I'm referring to is the slightly psychotic purring /kneading /claw digging Massage scenario that cats subject you to once they get you under them in the evenings. Evolution has mutated a whole totally weird group of sub-humans who actually tolerate being pinned under a heavy cat, and being pawed and kneaded firmly and rhythmically- and I admit to being one of them, perverted as it sounds. I do believe, thought scientists have not researched this, that they include a mildly hypnotic and decidedly sedative chemical in the substantial clouds of fur they release in the process otherwise why would I be under my cat for stretches of up to even 15 minutes? Some one tell me I'm not the only one that does this?
Call me paranoid, but I think they can communicate, like the raptors in Jurassic Park.
That none of them bother with recognizing man's superior intellect and power over all small and vulnerable creatures, is an old story. I honestly feel that this lot is actually conniving among themselves against me. I know that just like in the horror films, the last thing I will hear, when the salmon runs out and I am lying helplessly at the bottom of the stairs, will be a very apologetic, bug eyed feline telling me in Mewish**, not to take this personally but they have decided to finish me painlessly after all, and transfer my funds on line to someone who will ensure them a comfortable, fishy retirement…
In my heart there is space for all the cats who have owned me down the ages: I have taken the liberty of naming them and I'm sure they had good names for me too, such as Big Time Suckerette , Freaky Friday or Looney Tunes perhaps(latter because they are the only life form I will dare subject to renditions of my musical talent or conspicuous lack thereof).. I remember Kiichi Miyazawa (named after the then Japanese Minister of Finance) Meechu, Wooshu and Pheobus (from the Disney classics) Abeyratne (named after our rascally coconut plucker,who objected to it) & Chincha Maanika( lady in Buddhist mythology who got a block of wood dropped on her toes for saying dirty defamatory things-Chinchy for short) and currently: Curious, Serious, Pitchy (Black) and Ginger-Nuts, ostensibly named after a type of biscuit …at least that's what I tell the kids…and there are more where those names came from….
So why do I put up with them? Well…they are comforting, and they tell me how to relax, and scientists have proved that just watching a cat stretch out is a stress reliever. They are wonderful living feng shui as long as they don't defecate under my bed, or turn rabid.
My cats tell me that this rat race is not really as urgent as I imagine. They remind me that as long as there is cheap smelly fish in the freezer and a warm patch of sun or lap to sit in, Maslow can roll his set of wants and stuff them- they will be happy and snug as bugs in rugs and so could I be if I only realized this. Now that's a deep thought if any*.
*Of course, another more honest reason may be that unless the author trimmed their whiskers, put them in thick "gunny" bags and left these in the Wanni, they probably would track her back. But she's too much of a softie to do things like this, our Ally.
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