The cat II
I'm feeling catty these days.
My folks bought me a cat when I was a kid.
To teach me the meaning of life, said my mother. We couldn't afford many things in those days. So my parents had hoped that a cat would teach me life skills that the neighbourhood school wouldn't. Like caring for another. Like art appreciation. Like epistemology. Like sign language. And golf. And witchcraft. And lobotomy. My learning journey would be slow and painful at first. Then, as time went by, it would be just painful. For the cat, of course.
It's tough growing up poor. For one thing, you can't afford many books. My parents could only buy black-and-white textbooks for me. So, lacking the vivid illustrations of coloured textbooks, I could never tell apart a frog and a toad, or a horse and a pony. Try spotting the difference between red and blue in a black-and-white textbook. My mom wanted to buy me a colour wheel for my tenth birthday, if only so that I could carry it around to identify colours properly. My dad vetoed the idea, saying that other kids would make fun of me. So my mom taught me to look at the sky if I needed to know what blue was. Quite often, blue was blue. At other times, blue was grey. And at night, blue was black.
I named my cat Cathy. It was a boy-cat, but I couldn't think of a boy's name with the word cat in it. Cathy was not your usual mewing cat. He wasn't even a talking cat (you can imagine how hard it was for me to learn French from him). He was more like a low purry-growl kind of cat. The kind that scares other cats away. But Cathy wasn't an anti-social cat. He'd bounce around and play tennis with my neighbours, read to the blind and make dinner when my mom was unwell. He would even pick out clothes for me so that I wouldn't go out of the house in mismatched colours.
One day, after my weekly blood transfusion exercise with him, Cathy lay on my bed much longer than usual and refused to get up for our tightrope walking lesson. I was surprised. He was always a bundle of energy. Did he need an iron pill? Was he in love? Had he found yet another proof to Fermat's last theorem? I was utterly puzzled. He looked back at me like a shark looks back at a fisherman who's just slain off its fins and was throwing it back into the water.
"Woof."
My folks bought me a cat when I was a kid.
To teach me the meaning of life, said my mother. We couldn't afford many things in those days. So my parents had hoped that a cat would teach me life skills that the neighbourhood school wouldn't. Like caring for another. Like art appreciation. Like epistemology. Like sign language. And golf. And witchcraft. And lobotomy. My learning journey would be slow and painful at first. Then, as time went by, it would be just painful. For the cat, of course.
It's tough growing up poor. For one thing, you can't afford many books. My parents could only buy black-and-white textbooks for me. So, lacking the vivid illustrations of coloured textbooks, I could never tell apart a frog and a toad, or a horse and a pony. Try spotting the difference between red and blue in a black-and-white textbook. My mom wanted to buy me a colour wheel for my tenth birthday, if only so that I could carry it around to identify colours properly. My dad vetoed the idea, saying that other kids would make fun of me. So my mom taught me to look at the sky if I needed to know what blue was. Quite often, blue was blue. At other times, blue was grey. And at night, blue was black.
I named my cat Cathy. It was a boy-cat, but I couldn't think of a boy's name with the word cat in it. Cathy was not your usual mewing cat. He wasn't even a talking cat (you can imagine how hard it was for me to learn French from him). He was more like a low purry-growl kind of cat. The kind that scares other cats away. But Cathy wasn't an anti-social cat. He'd bounce around and play tennis with my neighbours, read to the blind and make dinner when my mom was unwell. He would even pick out clothes for me so that I wouldn't go out of the house in mismatched colours.
One day, after my weekly blood transfusion exercise with him, Cathy lay on my bed much longer than usual and refused to get up for our tightrope walking lesson. I was surprised. He was always a bundle of energy. Did he need an iron pill? Was he in love? Had he found yet another proof to Fermat's last theorem? I was utterly puzzled. He looked back at me like a shark looks back at a fisherman who's just slain off its fins and was throwing it back into the water.
"Woof."