ENTROPY - Design of Decadence

Friday, March 11, 2011

almost two years ago, a 6 week old kitten strolled into our home and our hearts.

one morning, the garbage woman rang the doorbell and asked if i could spare some milk for some strays. i stepped out of the apartment and saw him running in the opposite direction. as soon as i stepped outside the gate and looked in his direction, almost instinctively, he turned around and ran up to me, meowing profusely. i took him and his sister in, fed them both milk (which i later realised i shouldn't have), gave them both a bath and suffered their wrath in the bargain, and looked at them amazed as they cleaned each other and fell asleep on the living room mattress. i left them in a plastic container in the study, and when i came back home they were right there, looking at me with the same wide eyes.

their mother was circling the house, looking for them. i selfishly left only his sister in the dry area thinking that the mother can have one of them back and i will keep the other. the doorbell rang and i turned away for a split second, and in that split second I heard loud hissing and when i looked back in her direction, she was gone. To this day I don't know for sure if that cat was indeed her mother or a tomcat, who eat little kittens.

the one who stayed back had big ears. we named him spock.

it is safe to say that you don't know anything about yourself, or love, or life, or anything about anything, if you haven't had a pet.

my wife recently told me she wanted another. spock was lonely, apparently. we kept on the lookout for a kitten to adopt but it didn't happen. until borat, the building stray, showed up pregnant. she delivered three little ones in january, one with a grey head who instinctively we decided to adopt once borat abandoned the kids, as is the norm in the cat world.

we waited. we fed borat regularly and watched over the little ones as they grew at breakneck speed. then one day when we went down to rub tea tree oil on them to kill their fleas, they were gone. i told my wife that if we were meant to adopt, they would come back. we named them amar akbar anthony, since borat had apparently separated the three of them.

they did. several days later. nice and grown up, at 5 weeks. pottering around the building lobby, wide eyed. grey head and his brother brown head, amar and anthony. dirty as ever. cute as buttons. while these two meowed their heads off and regaled an awestruck audience, their sister akbar sat quietly, scared to bits. we changed our minds. we wanted her. she was so scared. the other two would survive.

we brought akbar home and rechristened her 'stuff'. spock and stuff. we kept feeding amar and anthony food and water. we dewormed them and put another coat of tea tree oil because the damn fleas were back.

amar died this morning. i went down to feed them and found only anthony. i was told that amar was hit by a tyre. i found him lying in the mud. i went home to tell my wife that he was gone.

what if we had decided to take him as originally planned, and not stuff? Would the less frisky stuff stay put and not run onto the driveway like amar did? but then since coming home stuff had become as frisky as ever. I don't know what would've happened but i can't stop thinking about tiny little amar.

by the time we came back down, the garbage woman had put him in the garbage. my wife picked him up and wrapped him in a towel.

we took him to SPCA, where amar, all of six weeks, was cremated.

posted by n.g. at 16:55

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