Pets – munira's bubble

Floating

Life will go on, no matter what.

My mother marveled at the depth of grief her four daughters experienced, and the extent to which we missed and remembered our father when he passed. She wondered if we would feel the same way when her time would come. ‘You will remember me for a while and then get busy in your lives, and soon you’ll forget all about me. Life will simply go on.”

We never expected our parents to die when they did. My Mom followed my Dad after four years, when we all caught the dreaded virus. For months on end we avoided meeting each other, but it was January 2021, and it was her 81st birthday, and we simply had to be together to celebrate. So we gathered, bringing gifts, for a delicious tea party with Mummy’s favorite food…..chaat. Eldest Sis baked a cake for her in the shape of a sewing machine, to honour her lifelong devotion to stitching all our clothes. It was wonderful to be in each other’s presence after so long, though I was a bit doubtful about the funny cough I suddenly developed while driving to the birthday get-together.

One by one, we all fell sick, including Mummy, who suffered the most. Oh, how she suffered. A month later, after caring for her diligently at home, Eldest Sis felt the worst to be over, that Mom was on her way to recovery, and she began to plan delicious, nourishing meals she would make for her. She made her soft scrambled eggs for breakfast early one morning, and felt so happy to see her finally eat something peacefully. Little did she know that was to be my mother’s last meal.

It was a devastating, disorienting time for us all, though there was a greater sense of acceptance than when my father died. His death felt too sudden, our minds and hearts refused to take it in. Even my mother, while in her period of seclusion, would sometimes muse out loud at the idea of him being simply….gone? How could that be. He was so…here, always.

I remember I was on the rooftop, tending to my tomato plants in the soft morning sunshine, when Huz came to tell me. My brother-in-law wrote the message on our extended family group, announcing our mother’s passing. It felt unreal, like it couldn’t be happening, and yet it was. That was my mother, the deceased. How could this be? She was so…here, always. I sat holding my mother’s beautiful hands for a long time, those creative hands, her familiar fingers, always busy with something, finally lifeless. I wanted to imprint the feel of her hands in mine.

The strangest thing that happened was how little I cried then. I felt as if I had a howl trapped inside my chest, my sobs were dry. Grief felt like a huge wave that refused to come crashing down. I looked at my sisters and I saw my mother in each one of them. I looked in the mirror, and I saw her in me. It was as if her spirit flew into us all and there was no separation. We were all one.

It is the 1st of June., 2025. Since the last two weeks, I have been coming to terms with a very different sort of death, one that I felt I should write about since it affects me so much. But the story that spilled out is of an older grief. I was watching a video about the loss of animal family members, and what I heard was, ‘when we grieve, we don’t experience one loss, we experience them all.’

This is an obituary for Mowgli, my dear beloved soul-cat. My companion for the last eight years. She was plonked into my life a week before my father died, and I couldn’t help feeling that these two events were somehow linked. My father had often lectured me about my propensity to rescue kittens and keep them in my house forever, his logic being the more time I spend with cats, the less time I’d spend with him. “You’ll regret not visiting us more often one day!”

When I spotted this tiny creature huddled along the side of a road in June 2017, I slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the car to go pick it up. The poor kitten was a dreadful sight…skin and bones, sweating from every pore under a hot sun, dehydrated, one eye bulging out of its socket, mouth open in a silent scream. I often think that at that moment, it was as if the me that was I had moved aside and Spirit took over. I didn’t think …I just knew that if I didn’t stop she’d be dead very soon. It was the month of Ramadan, I was in the midst of a spiritual crisis, but turning a blind eye was not an option. So Amu and I took her home and proceeded to shower her with love and care and protection. In retrospect, my own healing lay in her healing.

We named her Mowgli, I don’t know why the name just fit. Her bulging, infected eye healed and went back into its socket, but stayed hazy and unseeing. It was a magical eye, and Mowgli was a magical cat, a beautifully spotted calico. Not a fur-baby, a person. She was crazy, playful, curious, feisty, intelligent. She got herself into so much trouble so often. We had to rescue her so many more times from all sorts of dangers. The years went by with these three cats of mine, Fuzzy, Minnie and Mowgli, wreaking havoc on our hearts, our nerves and our furniture.

I don’t feel like talking about what happened to her before she died. I don’t even want to talk about the way she died, or all the trauma she had to go through during her treatment. Amu wrote about the whole saga so poignantly on her substack, beautifully embedded with photographs from her life. It’s too painful for me to regurgitate, so I’ll let her be in peace. It goes without saying, we loved her too much, and couldn’t accept her death, it feels like too soon. She was woven into the very fabric of this home. All was well with the world as long as Mowgli was in it. I wanted many more years of her curling up like a loaf on my lap, or perched on my hip. Many more years of seeing her beautiful body, basking in the sun. I can picture her now, happily rolling around in the dust on the courtyard floor.

It’s been two weeks, and the intensity of the ache has softened. I cried nonstop for three days, and on the fourth I finally smiled at the memories, the photos, the videos. After the initial shock wore off, there was the void. Grief for an animal companion is usually of the disenfranchised kind, meaning it isn’t ‘openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned’. But my sisters offered so much support, so much empathy, such concern for our loss. They knew what this cat meant to us. They had been witnesses to her short life. And my fellow cat-loving neighbour dropped by yesterday with a box of cake and a big hug. She knew too.

I see Mowgli everywhere, and I long to see her again. I don’t want her to be gone. The house doesn’t feel so familiar anymore. I’m trying to find solace in Minnie and Billoo….but neither of them is Mowgli. And life….what can I say. It is full of endings.

Chaos

The zen stillness I was able to access for a couple of days while Huz was away, was shattered the day he returned when in a moment of mindlessness I caved in to Minnie’s insistence to be let out for a romp. Lately, she doesn’t seem to like being inside all the time and when I think about it, she is a captive animal after all. Would she have been a happier cat if she was free to roam and explore, be the feral cat I sometimes glimpse? I do wonder. In my minds’ eye, I see her happily rolling about on the sun-baked steps, pottering about the plants in the courtyard before settling on a low table to look lazily up through the tree twitching her ears to the sounds of flitting birds. It isn’t even beyond the periphery of the building, that isn’t too much to ask, is it? My mistake was, I did not chaperone her little excursion because I was too distracted by all the Levantine goodies Huz had brought back for me: za’atar and tahini, and those iconic Palestinian scarves.

Moments later, my blood curdled to the sound of two cats grappling viciously. I didn’t think the horrible gray tomcat was occupying the courtyard this time of the day, waiting to brutalize Minnie if she dared show up. Key words: I didn’t think.

Huz and I flew downstairs in a panic to rescue Minnie, hearts already sunk with the knowledge that our efforts to disengage them wouldn’t work until Minnie was left battered and bleeding. This tomcat is some kind of demon, a killing machine, built like a solid tank. No matter how many times or how hard we thwack him with a stick (or a watering can as it may be) he is unaffected….the only cat I have ever come across that I think of as truly Dangerous. He simply Does Not Back Off. The skirmish seemed endless, escalated blood pressures, dilated pupils, racing heart.

Life is strange. From one moment to the next things can change from peace and tranquility to violence and utter chaos. The tomcat loped off over the fence, leaving a trail of overturned pots and broken plants in his wake. Minnie, bruised, scratched, subdued and in obvious pain, limped back into the house and spent the rest of the day in a corner of my bedroom, licking her wounds, blue eyes downturned like the day we found her. The stress of the morning dissipated slowly. I went back to my khubz, spreading it lavishly with a mix of za’atar and olive oil. So delicious. I ate it with my new keffiyeh wrapped around my neck. While students across the United States bravely protest against the complicity of American universities in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this is as close to solidarity as I can get.

The day Huz left for Jordan, Billoo the new kitten stepped out into the balcony for a bit. When she realized she couldn’t get back in due to the screen door being closed, she tried to get my attention with soft little meows that I couldn’t hear. I was peacefully reading a book elsewhere, oblivious. I did hear some funny sounds, and figured she was whacking a ball around, playing with something as she often does, happy little kitty. Little did I know she was trying to get back in the only way she knew how with the only tools she had….her claws.

When I took a little break and stepped out of my room for a snack, Billoo was back in. However one glance at the screen door was enough to tell me what those mysterious sounds were, the ones I ignored.

Smithereens, an evocative word, though I had no clue as to its etymology as is probably the case with most users (it comes from the Irish word smidirini, meaning ‘little bits’, I googled) Little Miss Edward Scissorhands had torn the netting in a way it had never been torn before, many little tears and one L-shaped gaping rip that she finally managed to make her way in through. In the absence of Mister Fix-it aka Huz, my stop-gap measure (pun intended) was to take some safety pins, pin a piece of cloth over the holes and hope for the best, i.e fool the mosquitoes.

Huz returned from his trip in five days, and immediately skedaddled to the hardware store to buy new netting. We spent the afternoon replacing the old with the new, a painstaking job involving precision and dexterity, physical and mental. Those being my forte, jobs like these are usually handed over to me, even if they’re not really my job, and I usually end up, thankfully, rising to the occasion. My arm ached by the time we were done putting it back up, but the satisfaction of the end result made it all worth it.

Tired, I went back into my room for a little lie-in, only to find it smelled a bit off. I picked up some clothes that were lying on my bed to put them away and they felt wet to the touch. Even after all these years I still feel disbelief when I sniff something and know instantly why it’s wet. Minnie must have been in too much pain to make the effort of dragging herself all the way to her litter tray, with the result that she eventually peed on my bed. The next half an hour were spent cleaning up.

The next day, due to unforeseen circumstances, Billoo was stuck in Amu’s room with no access to her personal litterbox. I suppose Amu’s hats were deemed a good spot to deposit a little pile of poop as a surprise for her when she got home.

“If Thich Nhat Hanh had to save his pet cat, he would have thwacked the tom too,” says Huz. It gave me pause to reflect. Indeed, what would the greatest mindfulness teacher in the modern world have done? What would Gandhi have done?

“The cats keep us on our toes,” he said another time. “Imagine not having a reason to keep working.”

Imagine indeed, I think wistfully.

Getting to the core

Since the last couple of nights, the hamstring muscles of my right leg have been feeling tight enough to cause discomfort, due to which I’ve been having trouble getting to sleep. This bothers me on many levels, but especially because our bodies NEED sleep for repair and restoration every night. A little search online led me to find out that hamstrings tend to tighten when they are trying to protect your back. So why did my back need protection? Well, it’s because I have been experiencing pain for months, and I’ve been doing yoga to help with that…only it hasn’t really been working. I’ve also noticed other pains cropping up, in my heels and my knees. Last night I finally understood what the problem actually was though, and the clue lay in the feeling of weakness I have also lately been experiencing in my middle body as I toss and turn at night. A little voice inside me whispered…it’s not about your back or your knees or your feet my child……it’s about your core.

This little voice was all I needed to hear to guide me to seek out a very short 10 minute core yoga routine that would target the abs, and as I practiced I came to realize how much I’ve been neglecting them. Or perhaps it’s the 50’s telling me to wake up and get busy doing some real work.

It’s very easy to overlook one’s core muscles apparently, and I can’t believe I am guilty of this, knowing all I know, having heard countless instructors talk about strengthening your core to strengthen your back. And yet, I’ve never really delved into the actual anatomy of my core muscles, what they are, how many there are, and what function they each perform to keep my entire trunk working properly. Another little search provided me with all of this crucial info.

I also realize that I’ve been using my back to lift heavy things instead of my core muscles, so it’s been a loop of misuse. it’s one thing to have information stored away in your brain and quite a different thing to begin to grasp just how connected everything is. Feet, knees, hamstrings, glutes, spine, core, all working in glorious cohesion, and one weak link affects all the others. The thing to pinpoint is…what is that weakest link? Hint: It’s not where the pain manifests …

So here’s to committing myself to a much more intentional, aware and targeted daily workout routine for a month and see what difference that makes, not only to my overall strength, but also my nightly sleep. Quite excited about this! It’s time to stop scrolling fitness reels and mindlessly consuming content on Instagram and consciously put into practice all the wisdom I glean now instead of saving posts to look at later. I never visit later.

In other news, I acknowledged the loss of two very old trees I used to know, one a majestic gulmohar I used to climb and hang out in between the ages of 8 and 12. This tree died a very tragic death, apparently due to an underground gas leak that killed many trees in the entire neighbourhood. The other was a very tall and old jamun, diagonally across the’ gulmohar, which harboured a lot of birds and dropped a lot of fruit on the road below. Heaven help your car if it was parked underneath. The people who lived in the house behind this tree had it chopped down a couple of years ago, but for some reason I registered the absence of it yesterday when I happened to park my car in that corner after a long time. Without the protective foliage of both these old trees, the street outside my old home felt hot and inhospitable in the mid morning sun, as if a deeply familiar place had become a stranger. It used to be really beautiful once, with the vermilion flowers of the gulmohar and the cool shade of the jamun.

Eldest Sis said that when the neighbours chopped down that tree, they found a hollow in it filled with socks. The socks had all been stolen from the clothesline in her balcony and deposited in the tree hollow by crows. What a cute thought 😊

Jimmy has not returned. My ambivalence has given way to a deep grief that we may actually never see him again. It’s strange sometimes to realize how alone we are in feeling our feels. A few evenings ago I actually socialized and those who know me well asked how my cats were doing. I mentioned Fuzzy’s death and the loss of Jimmy but talking about it fell short of the depth of sadness felt, and my voice trailed off when I realized these things can’t really be conveyed…and I make peace with this. It boils down to this: Jimmy was love, and his presence in and around our home had a value that only those who loved him could feel, and this feeling is precious to me and the only other person privy to this very visceral knowledge is Amu, for which I am very grateful. Huz shares the sadness too in his own way. Together we will keep our love-flame lit, that eternal one that binds us all.

Mysteries

It’s been a week since Jimmy and Minnie had a very physical fight, the kind which leaves behind clumps of fur, detached claws (!) and puddles of pee in its wake.

It has also been a week since Amu brought home a very pathetic little malnourished puppy. He was standing by the road all alone, dazed and weak, looking rather abandoned. So we cared for him as well as we could, figured out a way to feed him, bathing him gently with baby shampoo to remove a multitude of fleas, keeping him warm, cozy and safe from the harshness of the streets. It felt good to see him so clean, to watch him sleep, at peace without the relentless fleas. But he remained inconsolable, crying in a most human-baby-like way. He had such soft ears, such potential to grow up and be beautiful, such an unusual gray coat. And how extraordinary to be fostering someone other than a cat, much to the horror of our resident lot. Except Jimmy of course, who was unfazed by this new presence.

Fading puppies exhibit signs, and this one showed them all. We found his mother and slightly healthier brother close to where he was found and placed him on the sidewalk to see how he would be received. The mother sniffed him with recognition but barked loudly if he tried coming close. His little brother did totter up to him to cuddle, and that was heartwarming, but the mothers treatment of him simply broke our hearts. Of course, her rejection was quite natural; this little puppy was not healthy, and she herself is rather thin and bony-looking, so she had to conserve her scant resources for the survival of the fittest as it were. We had no choice but to take him back home for the night, and he cried himself to sleep, fading some more, only quiet if he was cuddled. Of course I was more than happy to cuddle him, but sadly, he needed his own mother. His bowels finally released everything that he had eaten, and that was the last sign.

There is always a lot to think about in situations like this. Sure, we can rush to a vet, get x-rays, blood tests, drips, medicines….but the understanding has always led to this: sick little animals come to us for some love, and in doing so they help us feel the depth of it. It’s not always about trying to save them, they’re usually beyond saving anyway. We live an urban life, but we are part of Nature, and we will all return to Mother Earth won’t we, hard though it is to imagine. I visualized him melting back into Her. And so it came to be that we wrapped the puppy in soft flannel and placed him back where he was found, in a heap of leaves. Let his mother hear him cry, he belongs to her, and we don’t need to tear ourselves up witnessing his slow death. We lingered nearby for a long time, just being there for him a little longer, reluctant abandoners, mommy dog still invested in the other one. As we finally turned away to go back home without him, I don’t think I was mistaken in sensing her gratitude for our kindness to one of her own, even if he wasn’t destined to live. I wonder if his only purpose in this short life was to make us be kind, to make us love him with all our hearts. I didn’t expect to see him again, but one of the last things we saw him do was get up and try and get closer to his brother, tiny tail wagging, and then he fell over and crawled back to flop again on his flannel cloth. He wasn’t there anymore when we drove by the next day.

“We’re all just walking each other home.”

Jimmy, our cherished outside cat also came to teach us how to be kind and loving more than a year ago, but has been missing for a week now, ever since that skirmish with Minnie. I’m beginning to think something strange and mysterious happened between them, for ever since he disappeared, she has taken over the courtyard, almost as if their higher selves came to some sort of agreement about exchanging lives. It’s hard to explain, really. All we know is, he was last seen with another cat.

One should stop looking for lost cats and start looking for the other half of their shadow, said Haruki Murakami. That’s kind of what I did when Minnie got lost a couple of years ago, and came back a whole month later as if from the ether. I don’t know where Jimmy could possibly have gone, he has simply vanished into thin air and I don’t know how to feel anymore, for as lovable as he is, taking care of Jimmoo has been a fraught and often expensive affair, full of drama and stress. For the first time in a year, I have a poop-and-pee-free outside area and it feels rather relaxed. I admit I have often wished him to simply be gone…and now he has. I won’t be going looking for him. He appeared out of the blue, and back into the blue he has gone. If he ever chooses to return, I will probably feel something somewhere between relief and despair. If he doesn’t, I will never forget the abundance of love he bestowed on us, the simple joy of his companionship.

What’s strange is how quickly Minnie is back romping her favorite spots, almost as if she knows he won’t be back anytime soon. Are all these cats in cahoots? Is Minnie really in on what’s going on behind the scenes?

Life seems to be in great flux from day to day, one never knows what’s going to happen next.

Cat life

Someone wise once said, ‘Cats are like potato chips, you can’t just stop at one.’

If there are two things I am very sure of in my almost-50 year life, it is that I like chips. And I like cats.

Long time readers of my blog know so much about my allergies and at least two of my cats. But a lot more of them have entered (and gone) from the picture since I lost the ability to write with joy and humor about my day-to-day six years ago, and almost all of my blog community has vanished into thin air too. When I revisit old posts and read the comment section now, I feel so happy to remember that I had so many friends here once, and I miss them and their familiarity with my idiosyncrasies, and all the conversations we got going.

I am told (and I agree) we should greet each day with enthusiasm and positivity by saying hello to everything we see, it helps to set the tone for the day. I may not always articulate it, but my heart always does send a greeting to the sun, the sky, the sunbirds that visit my courtyard, the plants in my house, each cat that graces us with its presence.

Today I met Fuzzy first, petting his soft head. He stands by the fridge patiently until he is served a tiny saucer of cold milk, which he sometimes finishes, sometimes not. Having been around the longest means he has had to get used to an increasing number of feline presences in the house, first Minnie, then Mowgli, and now Jimmy Choo. Being the only long-haired cat in the house (a little on the threadbare side now) makes him the only recipient of brushing and bathing (the others take care of their own grooming.) He is also the only one who will be hungry and there will be a bowl of kibbles at hand but he won’t touch it. However, he will happily polish off the entire bowl if I pick up a kibble at a time and let him snatch it from my fingers. Once he is satiated, he will look disdainfully at my proffered kibble and slowly back off as if to say ‘get the f*** away from me hooman’. Fuzzy likes to sleep in a corner of the kitchen and is probably very proud of the fact that he has never used a litterbox in his entire life. A few years ago, a vet told us he had only 4-5 months to live, diagnosing him with kidney failure after his pee puddles started to show some blood. I should probably go tell that vet Fuzzy is still living his best life, munching the occasional spaghetti and watermelon, french fries and little pieces of uncooked zucchini, still eating raw chicken like his life depends on it, with gusto and entirely without assistance.

Jimmy Choo gets the most love nowadays, as he is the most unfortunate of the lot. The man who guards our gate drew my attention to him earlier this year, telling me I should take him under my wing or he would surely die on the streets. One look at the little guy was enough to indicate he had some serious issues with his back legs. He could only get around by dragging his whole body using just the strength of his front ones.

I am now familiar with the feeling that comes over me just before I adopt a cat. Perhaps this is what divine guidance feels like, I don’t know. I really don’t understand this mixture of resignation and responsibility, but I knew in my heart this beautiful black and grey tabby could do with some love and care. I know there is always a choice to be made, but often if feels like the choice isn’t really available to me. Like the ‘me’ drops away and Spirit takes over. And it seems Spirit doesn’t want me to be a normal person who gets to travel with abandon or have nice furniture.

It was evident that the cat had a misaligned spine, either from birth or perhaps due to some injury. An x-ray confirmed this, and the vet said chances were he could very likely recover his mobility if he received some care. How fortuitous for this little cat to have found people like us, as Amu and I proceeded to administer lots of physiotherapy, soft food, cuddles and love. By the end of a month he was back on all fours, his personality swung from pathetic to playful, and we laughed with delight when he began to dash about with the zoomies, something we never could have imagined when we found him.

He still has issues though as he is not a normal cat, unable to use a litterbox, which means there is a lot of cleaning up to do after him. So far Jimmy has been treated for a series of afflictions which he is prone to because of his situation in life, the latest thing to strike him down being the most horrifying to witness (I cannot bring myself to go into the details as I am trying to erase the memory of it as quickly as possible.)

But I love him and I love seeing his cute little burger-face (his nickname) every day. He has brought with him plenty of distress but a lot more joy. And he welcomes and receives my morning affections happily, unlike Minnie and Mowgli who quickly turn predictably vicious when they’ve had enough. Jimmy seems incapable of snarls, and always keeps his claws retracted. I love watching him sitting quietly in the dappled sunlight under the tree, looking up at the sunbirds hopping around on the branches and the butterflies flitting by.

Minnie being a nocturnal cat sleeps all day in various locations around the house but will show up at my bedside at night, meowing for attention. She has a way of looking deeply and meaningfully into my soul with her blue eyes almost next to my face. Her sweet spots for being scratched are her cheeks and her chin, but the sweetest spot is the one right above her tail. I think she doesn’t know what to do with herself when I scratch that and will headbutt anything that’s close enough. A very vocal cat, she will even talk to me while fast asleep. I love playing with her, and she enjoys the interaction too, but things can get painful very quickly when her bunny kicks turn violent and her playfulness brings on her teeth and claws. I still let her grab my arm and have some fun with it for five seconds though, but heaven help the vet if she ever needs any kind of treatment.

Minnie is a very dangerous cat indeed, and yet the only one who gets to sleep next to my pillow. I call her my snow bear and I know she secretly adores it when I smother her with my love, picking her up and flinging her over my shoulder for a little stroll around the house. Huz only pets her tentatively on the head when she lolls around seductively on the floor inviting a belly rub, but sadly for her, her cuteness doesn’t fool him much.

Perhaps it is Mowgli’s response to my morning greeting which I find the cutest. She has a way of winding about my feet, stepping on them as I stroke her head and back, rubbing against my leg as her tail twines around in ownership. She is just as vocal as Minnie and will talk to me endlessly if I speak to her. Mowgli is blind in one eye, and I think that’s what makes her movements more abrupt, almost edgy, and I approach her slowly and gently so she doesn’t get spooked. She is the most intelligent cat in the world I think. There are so many things she does that the other cats can neither do, nor display the desire to. She will come running from wherever she is if she hears the tv being switched on , and will watch whatever I’m watching with avid and unwavering interest, especially if there are fellow animals on the screen. Mowgli has very short hair so I think that makes her the most sensitive to cooler temperatures, and she is the only cat who will purposefully climb onto a warm lap and snuggle in cozily. She can open doors by jumping up and putting her weight on the handle till she manages to turn it down, one trick that just doesn’t get old. It is astounding to me that she figured it out.

This post was meant to be an introduction to the cats that co-habit the bubble, but I haven’t even mentioned the ones that got adopted (Mano) or abandoned (Emmet, Molly and the Scruffies) or the ones that crossed the rainbow bridge (Georgie and Grey) It has been very difficult to shortlist a few pics from amongst the hundreds in my collection, but I must figure out a good way to showcase more of them here. They’re my legacy after all… After Amu of course! 😉

Return of the Cat

Sending Fuzzy away like this became the means by which I learnt something integral about myself. I was horribly saddened that night, but my tears (and fears) gave way to a slow dawning of realization, that I must find another solution to deal with my Fuzzy problems that didn’t involve him no longer being a part of our lives. It was the comfort of this realization that allowed me to finally get a little sleep.

I woke up in a good mood with a glad heart, happy in the knowledge that I wasn’t a horrible pet owner after all. There was no chance of being doomed to a life of self-hate. Fuzzy was mine and I loved him fiercely.

Meanwhile, Nazish stayed half-awake and kept an eye on Fuzzy most of that night. Neighbouring relatives had come around earlier to inspect the exotic new cat, but got bored and left when he refused to come out and be beheld. He emerged from his hiding place in the bottommost shelf of a small cupboard when everyone was fast asleep and the house was finally quiet, prowling the courtyard in the moonlight, fascinated by the mice, I heard.

He was back in his hiding place in the morning though, and since Nazish didn’t want to be scratched, she left him there and came to work.

And that’s where we found him when we went back to fetch him. He came out after a few minutes of confusion at seeing me again, and I’m not sure who was more relieved. I felt as if I had abandoned him for a year instead of a night, and a burden lifted from my heart as he jumped into his basket, ready to be taken back home.

A couple of Nazish’s cousins dropped in to meet us and say hello, and to see the curious cat Nazish had brought home for a while. Persian cats aren’t common and do paint a pretty picture…..the cousins looked suitably impressed at the sight of such a fluffy cat. It was a moment of pet owner pride that overcame the long-running shame and embarrassment I normally felt at having a cat that peed all over the house.

(Nazish didn’t care if Fuzzy peed on her bed. She said her little one peed on it every night, so what was a little more?)

I chatted with the cousins about various things while sitting on the edge of the mattress in Nazish’s room, playing with the little baby boy of the older of the two. The younger shy one, I learnt, was to be married soon to another cousin who had already been married (and divorced) thrice before, even though he had been engaged to her since she was little.

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Amu and I drove back home with Fuzzy safe in the basket in the back seat. He jumped out grumpily back in my own courtyard, blinking in the breezy sunshine. Of course, he immediately proceeded to sniff around and spray his favourite potted plants, but I just smiled (exasperated, affectionate) as I left him there, heart feeling light and happy, brain already forming vague ideas as to future course of action. The cat was back to stay.

(All pictures taken by Amu) 🙂

What was I thinking?

It was a twilit hour and there was no electricity in the Colony. I felt a bit nervous about entering the narrowish roads leading in and my car seemed conspicuous by it’s incongruousness.

I asked Nazish if there were any chances of getting stuck somewhere in there, but she confidently assured me I wouldn’t, that big trucks navigated these alleys without a problem. I drove slowly, taking in the dimly lit shops, the groups of men, the odd animal tethered here and there. I crossed a railway track and then I was totally in, entering completely unfamiliar territory with no idea what to expect. I realized I was thrilled to be there.

We drove along a wide main road for some time while Nazish familiarized me by pointing out shops owned by her relatives, one being a tailor, another a car mechanic, a tv repairman. We turned left, then right, then left again, the lanes getting narrower and narrower, shops and warehouses giving way to homes until finally she told me to stop halfway down a dirt road. I switched off the headlights and the world was dark.

Everyone got out of the car and Nazish unlocked the door that led into her little house, welcoming us into the open courtyard. She unlocked the door to the only room in her house and ushered us in, insisting we sit on the charpai while she took off her burqa and hung it on a hook on the wall.

In the light of her cellphone and mine, I looked around the small square room from my perch and discerned a mattress on the floor next to the charpai, a small tv on a dilapidated cabinet wedged between. Behind the door was a steel cupboard, and a smaller one that I had given her to keep her daughters’ clothes in. Next to the door was a fridge and if I remember correctly, a washing machine too. Nazish took the lack of electricity in her stride, apologetic about her house being messy. It was something I’d say. The apartment we lived in and which I wished was bigger seemed like a palace in comparison.

She had nailed an old curtain I had given her to hide the small enclave in the wall next to the charpai, where she stored blankets and other paraphernalia. This was her store room.

And this was to be Fuzzy’s new abode. I uncovered the basket and he poked his head out curiously, then jumped out and immediately started exploring the peripheries of the room. It struck me how incongruous even my cat looked in that setting, a fluffy majestic Persian, followed by a fascinated Sidra who just wanted to grab him in her arms and cuddle. To escape her slightly-bordering-on-violent ardour, Fuzzy jumped into the store and sat down on a pillow stack, refusing to budge from there.

I have never seen Fuzzy hiss at anyone before, so it was a shock that he hissed at little Sidra, who burst into tears. I was scared he might have scratched her, but he hadn’t. He was just confused, and I turned to Amu. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it too.

In the meantime, Ailya had run off with some money Nazish had slipped into her hand and come back happily bearing a large bottle of cold Fanta. Nazish rinsed out some glasses in her tiny kitchen and poured some out for us. Here, in her house, I felt awkward about the fact that she washed our dishes, swept the floor and cleaned our bathrooms every day. Amu was smiling though, and looked perfectly at ease, in no hurry to leave. The child was more adaptable than I had thought. Ailya and Sidra munched chips, happy to have us there. Both wore identical but differently-coloured butterfly clips in their hair, one blue, one pink.

The plan was that Fuzzy would sleep in their room at night, along with them and all of their possessions. I thought about this, as I felt myself internalizing the panic Fuzzy was probably feeling. My mind meandered through all the possible ways Fuzzy could meet a grave end, or at least, all the ways he could potentially suffer. I imagined him prowling the concrete courtyard of Nazish’s house at night, stalking mice, getting infected by fleas and all manner of parasites, escaping out the door and slinking around the Colony, terrified, getting into fights with feral cats, ill-equipped for survival in the Outside World.

I suppose we left Fuzzy there as an experiment. What could possibly go wrong in a night after all? I instructed Nazish to take the next day off and spend time with Fuzzy, acclimatizing him to his new environment. We took our leave and got back in the car, headlights seeming harsh after the moonlight in the courtyard, reversing all the way out of that dirt road. Nazish had given us instructions on how to find our way back out onto the main road, but I took a wrong turn and had to get directions from some men, who didn’t seem too taken aback at the sight of two ladies driving around their neighbourhood.

I don’t know what I felt when we got back home from our surreal expedition. We sat around, listless, not talking much, looking around with new eyes. Going out for dinner with friends wasn’t a good distraction, eating expensive Thai food made me think about Nazish’s dinner, and coming back to a house with no Fuzzy in it was sickening. Mini’s presence exacerbated the guilt.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Nazish and how she lived, couldn’t stop comparing my privilege with her lack of it. My mind was abuzz with all the stories I had heard from her that day and her life seemed rich to me, devoid of the moral shackles of the middle classes. Her children didn’t have to go to school if they couldn’t afford it. If they were unhappy with their marriage, they could easily have affairs or divorce and marry again; relationships seemed so fluid despite the rigidity of the implicit rules they lived by and age didn’t matter either. So many cousins had committed suicide by drinking pesticide when life seemed too unbearable to go on living, and that was okay. Relations within the family were fraught by tensions due to cousins being forced to marry cousins, as marrying outside the family wasn’t permitted, yet they could all get together at weddings and dance and crack jokes and laugh at the latest scandals, elopements being passed off as kidnappings, babies being produced to keep up a supply of future brides and grooms.

It was no use trying to sleep. I lay awake most of the night, realizing through my tears how attached I was to that stupid, beautiful, pain-in-the-ass cat. I still had no idea how I would deal with him for the rest of his life, but I couldn’t wait to go back to Nazish’s house the next day and bring him back.

A weird turn of events

Of course Mini had to go. That was a foregone conclusion for Huz.

But for Amu and I, the story was far more complex and fraught with emotion to have such a neat ending.

With great half-heartedness, we started a campaign to find adopters for little Mini. But I was becoming more and more certain that Fuzzy’s presence in the house was no longer something I wanted to tolerate. I felt like I was done with him. Even Amu was indifferent by now. He was just a badly-behaved, spoilt-rotten cat, hell-bent on making sure I couldn’t have a pretty house. I found myself looking at him with a mixture of sadness, frustration, anger and despair. I began to neglect him and stopped brushing him, esp since he had begun to flinch and back away even from the thing he loved the most. I didn’t care that this was only a manifestation of his anxiety at Mini’s presence in the house and began to look for a shelter to give Fuzzy up to. I just didn’t want to handle his spraying and marking anymore. I even thought of abandoning him somewhere, immediately dismissing the idea even though urged by well-meaning but ultimately misguided parents and siblings to do just that.

The dissonance in my head over the cat conundrum was causing a great deal of just-under-the-surface stress, the kind that makes you broody and think dark existential thoughts. I was really tired of cleaning up cat pee on a daily basis, failing at administering antidepressant, failing at finding another home for Mini, failing at not loving her so it wouldn’t be difficult to give her away.

So it certainly didn’t help that Nazish had begun to come in later and later for work. Her expected time of arrival had gone from 12 to 2, and I was getting increasingly irritated by what had really begun to seem like her taking advantage of my good nature. I decided I would let her go too.

I told Huz and he looked at me like I was hysterical, sternly telling me to calm down. Nazish was a good maid, trustworthy and quiet to boot, so what if she always looked depressed and we barely communicated with each other? Firing her at a time when we needed help keeping the house pee-free and dust-free was the stupidest thing I could possibly do.

So of course, I proceeded to do two stupid things.

I wrote to the only animal shelter in Karachi to ask that if they would take Fuzzy, we would not only donate money on a regular basis, we would even provide a cage to keep him in.

And when I opened the door for Nazish to enter on Monday, (the day after Fuzzy and Mini’s poopy battle) I waited till she had begun to wash dishes before breaking the silence between us by saying she should start looking for other work as her schedule was no longer acceptable to me.

She took the news stoically, only asking if she should leave immediately or stay on till the end of the month. I was immediately regretful, as I felt I had somehow failed her by not understanding her problems and her reasons for coming late, failed her by making her feel so disposable. But all I said was there was no need to hurry, she could take her time finding another job. Then I left the kitchen and left her to mull over her immediate future as she continued washing dishes. Huz just shook his head and warned me that my imminent housework-related stress would only mean he would have two stressed creatures to contend with in the house, one human, one feline.

I avoided Nazish for an hour, but then she struck up a conversation as I chopped veggies, confessing sheepishly that she knew my anger was justified and that she really had troubled me greatly with her erratic timings and that she was willing to ask around and get me a replacement.

It was as if she had only to speak for me to soften. Of course I didn’t really want to fire her, I said. I liked her work and I trusted her and had no desire to go through the hassle of employing, training and getting used to the presence of another person in the house at all. Come to think of it, did it really even matter what time she came as long as the work got done? I told her how stressed I was about Fuzzy and Mini and how I was thinking of giving Fuzzy away as a solution to my problems.

Nazish looked at me and asked, “Kitne mein deingi? Main le jaoon usse?”

She had mentioned once or twice before how much her little daughter adored cats and how she loved playing with one that lived at her mother’s place, where she left both her daughters each day before coming to work at my place, as she couldn’t possibly leave them alone at home in an environment like the Colony where she lived, a dense settlement of mostly Pashtuns.

I looked back at her, incredulous. She actually thought I was selling Fuzzy! But my incredulity turned into hope…giving Fuzzy over to Nazish and her little daughters seemed so much better than giving him up to a shelter….

We started talking nitty gritties. All talk of firing Nazish had been banished, and I figured her sudden talkativeness and animation stemmed from nervousness at having come very close to losing a job she really depended on./

She reassured me that Fuzzy would be safe in her ‘store room’ and could romp in her courtyard if he liked, and that as long as I provided his kibbles, they would take care of him for us.

I bounced off to tell Huz what had just transpired. He looked at me and shook his head again, laughing at how rapidly the situation in our house managed to swing with such mercurial changeability, but completely approving of Nazish’s acquisition of the errant Fuzzy.

I set about packing his things, his bath towel, shampoo, food and water bowls, his brush…not allowing myself to feel the slightest tinge of wtf-am-I-doing.

It was decided that she would fetch her daughters from her mothers house and bring them back to my place, after which I would pack Fuzzy into his basket and drop them all home. I had never seen where she lived, in a year and a half of her working with us, and it seemed this was the day I would finally make the leap across the class barrier that divided me from Nazish’s world.

She sat down on the floor in my room, where I was brushing Fuzzy for the last time, feeling the first glimmers of sadness at what I was doing. It was late afternoon and the sun’s presence was waning as Nazish began to talk to me in a manner she had hitherto never done. I listened as she started telling me detailed stories about her life and her childhood and her complicated family dynamics, her husband, her marriage, her parents and siblings, her uncles and aunts and cousins, all caught up in traditions full of patriarchy and misogyny. I listened to her talk stoically about the difficulties she faced, the bad choices she had made or that had been made on her behalf and which she was now trapped in. She talked about her daughters birthday and how she danced with her uncle, the weddings that she loved to dress up for, the intrigues and scandals that were the fuel of their family get-togethers. She told me about all the places she had ever worked at, the kinships she had formed with men who never disrespected her, the employers who helped pay for her elder daughters schooling and rebuked her for getting back together with an uncaring, sometimes abusive husband. She had been engaged to him when she was little, but he had defied his betrothal to her by eloping with her erstwhile school friend, then divorcing her out of remorse at being ostracized by the family and marrying Nazish eventually. It was as if she had been propelled into self-disclosure by the faith I was displaying in her, by entrusting my pet to her.

We talked till it grew dark, me asking curious questions that she had no qualms about answering, and I confess I found myself fascinated, witnessing and undergoing a complete transformation in my perception of who Nazish was, not a mournful, depressed girl, but a thoughtful yet feisty individual with strong convictions and aspirations despite the challenges life was constantly throwing at her. But more of this in another post.

For now we finally got to meet her daughters, 9-yr old pretty Ailya, who shared her birthday with Amu, one of the reasons I felt Nazish was destined to work for me, and 3 yr-old pixie-faced Sidra, the future mistress of a fallen-from-grace Fuzzy. Little humans and cat were introduced to each other and I spent some time explaining the do’s and don’t’s of dealing with him.

Nazish and her daughters slid into the backseat while Amu cradled Fuzzy’s basket in front. I smiled uncertainly at her, she smiled uncertainly back, and then we were off to Nazish’s house in the heart of a slum we had never set foot in before.

(to be continued…)