The Meowsters of Our Home

Whiskers

Lola and Shadow

“One cat just leads to another.” – Ernest Hemingway

The cat, nature's most proud, sassy, demanding and many a times, clumsy creation. Ever since I was a baby, I have been surrounding by dogs, birds and cats as pets. My first cat was a tom named 'Whiskers'. A really mild sweetheart, the poor fellow was also at the receiving end of my torments. From suffocating hugs to being forced to be a part of my games, Whiskers never once hissed or scratched me. He and my previous dog, 'Poppins' got along really well and always played together. Unfortunately, we had not neutered him and one night he ran out a window and simply vanished. We went around the neighbourhood looking everywhere for him but never did find him.

Shadow and Patch are brother and sister. After many years of losing Whiskers, when I was in the fifth standard, we brought the two home from an acquaintance's house. Shadow was very protective of Patch, never letting her out of his sight in the initial days of them being brought to ours. Whenever she used to cry in her sleep, he would always comfort her by sleeping next to her. The two of them together were a force to be reckoned with. From knocking down vases in the living room to playing "Tarzan" on the curtains, they were a real handful. Patch used to be on the milder side while Shadow used to royally bully her. Patch had the habit of sitting on my lap whenever I used to be seated. when Shadow used to notice, he would be up my legs and would sit on her if there was insufficient place left on my lap. 

On 5 January, 2010, we found ourselves with another cat, who we named Lola. She had somehow managed to get herself entangled in the wires of our metre boxes at the entrance of our building. From the minute her paws stepped into our home, there was a silent agreement that she was boss. Even thought she was small, she acted as though she owned everything. Shadow became her right-hand man and was always around her, often times leaving Patch out of the picture. The only problem with Lola was that she was a free bird. She loved roaming the neighbourhood and would often not come back home for a week on end. If we were to leave the house even for an hour, Lola would leave the house herself and upon our return would throw tantrums to enter the house. There have been so many times when she was chased by the neighbourhood dogs, so she would run up our staircase, howling all the way. We had to open the main door to let her in.

Since Lola and Shadow were always a team and would many a times leave Patch out of their picture, on December 26, 2011, my mother brought home a pure white kitten from the SGPDA market, Fatorda. Apparently, she had gone to a plastic shop where this little fellow was hanging around with his mother. My mother found him really adorable and picked him up, thereafter placing him on a stool next to her. Once she did that, he kept meowing at her and somehow, she decided to bring him home. Now Pixie, as we named him, did not make Lola happy at all. She simply couldn't stand him. Whenever he would go running up to her, she would always hiss at him. In her defence, he was always biting her or chasing her around.

When I was in the seventh standard, we lost Lola. It was a normal sunny afternoon, when I was returning home in the school bus. As it neared my building, my eyes caught sight of something lying under a Bolero parked in front of the building. I got off the bus and just had to glance in the direction of the vehicle to know it was Lola. she must have been on one of her adventures and was hit by a vehicle. That day and the days after that were simple horrible for us. Losing her was like losing a family member. Losing any of our pets is like losing a family member. The other cats were well aware of her absence, and just like in a hierarchy, once Lola was gone, Shadow was the next heir to power. It remained that way till Sunday, 26 June, 2016.

On Monday, June 27, 2016, Shadow took ill, very ill, and all of a sudden. He could barely walk, he hardly ate, he would howl and could barely open his eyes. We couldn't tell what was wrong with him and at first thought that he ate something that disagreed with him. We took him to the vet who just gave him an injection and prescribed some medication. He said that it was a genetic problem and criticised us by saying that we should have brought him in earlier. However, when we told him that Shadow has a sister and asked him if we could do something for her, he said there's nothing that can be done. On the morning of 2 July, before I could go to school, Shadow was lying on the floor in our open-terrace room, tossing and turning from one side to another. I stood next to him and told him that I was leaving for school but that I would be back soon, to take care of himself and that I would see him later. When I got back home from school, he was gone. 

In a way, I am relieved he passed, because that put an end to all his suffering. Thinking about it even today chokes me up. I think it is that way because with Lola, death came quickly, with one hit it was all over, but with Shadow, it was a wicked, prolonged suffering. 

Dealing with it has been tough. However, two days after Shadow left, my mother took us out for a drive around Margao. It was a Sunday, and next to the "Pastry Palace" outlet, before "Ana Fonte" garden, the Goa Animal Welfare Trust were having a pet adoption camp. We decided to check it out. A father-daughter duo had a basket of three kittens which caught our eyes. As my mother and I bent down to pet the little balls of fur, one of them had plans of her own as she decided to climb out of the basket. I picked her up and she clawed her way to my shoulder. Needless to say, she became our new addition. We named her Zoey, and, in some way, she provided us solace in our loss.

Currently Patch has become the new kingpin in our home. Zoey is four years old but still looks like a kitten and is the clumsiest among the cats. While Pixie has a ball of a time playing around with her, Patch isn't so keen on it, except for the times when she deems Zoey a worthy playmate. 

Our days pass by with them by our side, keeping us sane and being the best possible stress busters, we could ask for. The memories of Whiskers, Shadow and Lola are with us every day. There are many times, when Zoey does something which reminds us of either one of them, and that takes us back to the time when they were still with us, and that's all we have, memories of three cats who we lost, three members of our family that are no longer with us.