Postscript to Spying on a Cat



caught in action by little miss muffet



Survival kit



There's a point in life when you cry when your toe is hurt because it hits the pebble. There's also a point in life when you cry because a pebble hits your toe. You forget when your toe hit the pebble, but you never forget the pebble which hit your toe. Why do you think  forgetting functions in such a strange discriminatory way?Why doesn't the mind forget all the hurts and all the burns like a flash flood that leaves no trace of itself except  a vacant land? You will say, the vacant land becomes the memory of the flash flood and hence it is impossible to forget it. You are right. The flash floods leave behind a vacant land, where once there was life and laughter, poverty and pain. And yet, do you think, those who survive such flash floods will die with remembrance of things past? Survival is like betel leaves. No matter how much you wished to secretively have them, the inadvertent red colour hang onto your lips and tongue.

You can not wash off life. But you can wash off despair. You can wash off the pains of being hurt by a flood of forgetting,not by denial, but by acceptance. You need not forget that the pebble hit the toe. Just shrug off the grudge. Because, that is not the last pebble that will hit your toe if you continue walking.

Original image from Scout Notebook-2001 http://www.ukonline.net/scoutnotes/

Modified by self

Spying on a cat

The flat that we share with a once-Belarusian-now-Swedish man and his always-Swedish wife and their two kids has amongst other things a pet female cat that sleeps just beside the aquarium and that meows you out of sleep at 5 in the morning since she desires a morning walk in the dark. She is strangely civilised.

It is strange for me to see a pet so civilised; I only imagined that they could be thoroughly domesticated. She is amazingly toilet trained (though her master informs she had a wet-anything-like-a-bed syndrome once, for two months). She has her own toilet set-up which interestingly looks something like a cage (I am pretty intrigued how she uses it, but curiosity could kill my sense of smell and affect my appetite, so I refrain from probing deeper into it). However the most civilised aspect of her is that, she sleeps in her couch settled just beside the aquarium and refrains from trying to make a catch when she is there.

She appeared to me to be an amazing character, aspiring only towards cat food. I was completely at awe with her mystical ways till a typical windy afternoon when I sat reclining on my bed, crouching on a book, and feeling the inevitable sleep marching down my eyelids. I got up to have my quota of afternoon ice-cream before I dozed off. While passing the room in which the aquarium is kept, I saw an interesting photographic frame.

Angelina (that’s the cat) was sitting attentively on a white stool, positioned near the aquarium, watching intently the fishes. Hearing my footsteps she turned and glared at me, possibly identifying me as an imminent transgressor. That was the first instance of her self-expression when her natural instinct to prey upon the fish became tangentially evident. I was amused to note in the following few days that she locates herself in that position only when she knows for certain that her masters are not at home. In the evenings, she either roamed around the house or curled on the sofa. (I guess, she feels comfortable in her skin when only this insignificant tenant, dressed in strange Indian garb, is walking around.)

A few afternoons later (this time around I was busy cooking), I heard sounds which seemed to be made by scratching of cardboard. I was not sure if the sound came from within the house. But I nonetheless decided to have a look around like a responsible tenant. I peeked into the kids’ rooms whose doors were kept open. They were in their normal states. The elder girl’s room was neatly arranged and the baby sis’s room was strewn with all kinds of toys and princess’s crowns. Finally, I peeked into the room in which the aquarium was, brushing the curtains aside. Everything seemed to be normal and the sound had also ceased. I was about to turn around and go back to cooking when I heard the scratching sound again. It felt weird and I looked around. This time I heard a pitiful meow from somewhere between the cardboard boxes kept in front of the aquarium. Angelina, it seemed, had fallen into the cardboard boxes, while trying to make a leap to reach the aquarium from the quaint white stool. As soon as I let her out of the box, she ran out of the room, across the kitchen, pounced on the chair to reach the cat-door and slipped out of it. This was unlike her. She enjoyed patting on her head whenever anyone was around. It made a smile spread across my lips.

It is true that I do not have any job responsibility and hence have enough time to follow the cat and her homely adventures. But the reason I am devoting this Fall afternoon to ponder upon this feline companion of mine, is that her behaviour intrigued me. She maintained the charm of being civilised in the company of her masters. She felt uninhibited to watch the fishes from the stool when she knew I was near and could come across the room at any point of time. But she chose to be most self-expressive when she heard me cooking and the spices spluttering to keep me busy a while. Cats are more human than I can imagine!

it's raining and windy up in the head

when and if,

you see a clear blue sky,

you will not believe 

rainbows can

climb that high.

yet, 

when they smile,

you believe

they can fly,

and, that

is the reason

the cheshire cat dies.

Image: a rainbow peeping at my window, Budapest

                                                       

Winds of change?!

Whether or not it’s happening in the human political framework, it surely did unfold today, in front of my eyes, in what can only be called the political work of evolution. I don’t remember who told me (or if anyone ever told me at all!) that cats chase rats, and, get chased by dogs. It is possible that Jung would call this the archetype of enmity arising from the Collective Unconscious of all species. But, I don’t know what he would make out of today’s incident.

I was appreciating the bounty of colours brought forth by spring, when movement in my field of sight attracted my attention. The archetypal European with her dog was nothing intriguing. The lady was wearing a red jacket with navy blue tracksuits, and was holding on to the collar of her dog. I have watched her dog very often. He (I assume from his gruff attitude) is a very strange dog. He is a huge dog with a lot of hair, the kind of hair that you can possibly imagine falling on the face of a rock-star and hence contributing to his enigma. It incidentally does obstruct this dog’s face too, and, makes me feel that it’s a mobile bundle of wool, with innumerable loose ends that is. So, this woolly, hairy, black, gruff dog was being held at its collar by his master.

And then, the third unassuming protagonist came into view. It was a she-cat (I assume this from its slender movements directed at attracting attention). She was looking at this disgustingly chauvinist dog from behind the trunk of the tree, with little or no attempt to hide herself from him. The dog didn’t even care to sniff and look up in that direction. This, I think attracted the cat, because she trailed him throughout his walk, keeping the same tactic of hiding-and-not-so-hiding intact. I expected a final showdown when I saw her making a desperate attempt to gain attention, when she mustered enough courage (and also enough readiness to flee in a hopeful way of sorts) to stand within a finger’s distance as the lady led him home. I was ready to see a screaming lady trying her best to control that huge dog growling and charging at that cat, and she gleefully sprinting across the ground. with her mission (of irritating the dog and causally its owner) accomplished.

Instead, what I saw would deeply affect the confidence of that cat if she knew I saw her failure, both as archetypal representatives of her species and of her gender. That dog didn’t even look up!!! He dispassionately walked past her!!!! Her next neck movements validate my assumption that she was at a loss. She looked around to check if anyone of her kin was audience to the spectacle of her absolute failure. What would her father say? “MEOW!!You are not cat enough to provoke a dog!!!” Her mother would be doubly devastated: “O Almighty Bastet *! What is to happen to my girl! If dogs don’t charge her, where will I find a suitable groom for her!!!” Thinking about Jung’s possible thoughts, I presume he would possibly brood over his archetypes and deem the archetype of the Everlasting Maid appropriate to her.

But that surely doesn’t lessen the probability of the dying hostility between cats and dogs (since Jung is not here to validate my observations on what he would have said and besides, you don't presume Jung and I think alike!) That would surely make this world more peaceful. If only humans care to learn from cats and dogs as George Orwell wanted them to learn from pigs! However, if this extends to the domain of cats and rats, frankly, I wouldn’t be too happy. I don’t want to lose out on the Tom and Jerry cartoons after all!.

*Bastet is the Egyptian Cat-Goddess