I had never taken to Cats. Until a stray Cat showed a peculiar affinity. It was of course, selfish on her part. But honestly, we’ve seen much worse from humans. Why grudge a Cat her selfishness, which is possibly only her survival instinct?
So Cat, like most cats in season, got pregnant and this bearing saw her being even more so exceptionally kind to her human. She was tended to and much fussed over.
Gradually people realized that inspite of several deliberate efforts, she wasn’t going away anyplace in a hurry. Besides, the promise of tiny kitten paws going pitter-patter got Cat even more attention from even more humans.
Soon Cat delivered a litter of 4 blind tots, who were also much tended to and much fussed over. Everyone wanted to adopt them. Everyone wanted to share their homes with them. Everyone canoodled and mollycoddled them. Everyone saw them trying to crawl, trying to stand, trying to walk, trying to run.
And they ran. They grew strong, in the small way that kittens can. Cat hunted mice, pigeons and even the occasional crow. They fed, they hopped and skipped. They grew. Grew adventurous, grew brave, grew curious, ventured beyond the safekeeping, out into the open, into the sunlight, into the wide-wide world.
To see a feline (of any size) gnaw raw flesh to the bone can be graphic. There is something savage about it, to see the food chain in action, to see one tiny form of life ravenously consume another. Kittens lost a few notches on the love points. No one wanted to share their homes with them. No one canoodled and mollycoddled them. No one wanted to see them feed.
The animal shelters did not want them either. We only tend to the weak, diseased and dying. We don’t have many volunteers ourselves. We cannot take the kittens to get them homes.
They’re becoming Cats. Let them be. They need to fend for themselves. They need to learn the ways of the world. They need to become rugged. They cannot be dependent on humans. They’ll never be able to make it on their own. I was told.
It was right. Animal experts the world over tend animals, in most cases for rehabilitation to natural environs.
I rested my fretty-ness. I rested the over-bearing urge to look after them every couple of times a day. I went complacent on my compassion.
Soon I got traveling. Soon I got back.
I learnt that three of the kittens had died. No one knows how. Or when.
I went to look for them.
Cat spotted me from a distance and sprinted to me without a call. I spotted the fourth kitten. Now a weakling at 3 months, she has lost the claws that never sprouted. She is now part blind with an eye infection. Her flesh is ash dusted parchment stretched over the cage of her bones. I don’t have to chase her anymore now that she can barely crawl over to me. Which she does; which given her form, is a great show of her tiny spirit, however flailing.
I’m a little at odds at what to do for her. Well, the audience who loved her, if I can find them, I cannot make them stay. She would certainly qualify for the animal shelters now. She seems headed for the trash heap.
Perhaps I can try and tend her back. Perhaps she can be resilient. Perhaps she is still alive, because she has willed it so far. Perhaps to not be written off.
It’s a bloody cat! Just another stray! Animals die everyday. People die everyday. Why a blog post about it?
Well, in retrospect, this eventful non-event made me stumble onto some non-generalizations first hand,
Individual compassion can only go for far.
Collective compassion, when not convenient, is comprised.
The homeless only have a place to go when dying. If they’re fortunate.
The world is full of people who make promises they cannot keep.
The world is also full of people who believe in them.
The worst thing you can do, to anyone you care for, is leave them to their own devices.
If it’s alive somewhere, even in only one heart, the cause is still alive.
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And on kitten?
Yes, I will do what I can.
