Shelter

Shelter

Aniruddha Deb

1

She was an old cat. She was not as quick as she used to be. She was a tired cat. She liked to curl up and sleep. She often slept all day.

She didn’t feel hungry like she used to and that was a relief. Hunger meant looking for food. Even that was difficult now. Until a few days ago, the people who lived in this house used to feed the cats and dogs that lived on the streets. Cats were fed at the back door. The dogs crowded around the gate in the front. The people had moved. The house was empty and dark. The dogs and cats had waited for some days, hoping someone would come to feed them. They had given up already. Soon they will forget about it all – the people and the food – everything.

Only she would never forget this house. She was born here. There were four of them. She remembered the day her mother had moved them from under the stone slab on which the people washed their clothes. She had carried them in her mouth, one at a time, to the shed at the end of the drive. Only three of them. She didn’t know why Mother hadn’t brought the fourth. She also didn’t know what had finally happened to the other two. As she grew up, she started moving about in and around the houses in the neighbourhood. By and by, the entire neighbourhood became her territory. There wasn’t a single cat who did not fear or respect her. The old dog of that white house used to run inside if he saw her. Not any longer, though. She was not that strong any more. She found it difficult to fight or run.

She leapt off the stone slab and stretched. Her joints were stiff. There was an ache in her back. The sun was about to set. She needed to eat something before it was dark. It was easy when she was young and her eyes were sharper. She could kill three or four rats in one night. She could climb trees and hunt sleeping birds. She could climb on to the parapets and kill the pigeons too. Not any more, though.

Slowly and silently she walked to the gate. The black dog was sleeping across the street. She did not want him to chase her. She did not want to have to run. She slipped through the gate and walked under a car parked beside the road.

She stopped.

There was a mouse under the car. Where could it have come from? Mice do not come out so early! Unless… sometimes they are poisoned and then they die beside the roads. It is not safe to eat a poisoned mouse. You feel horribly sick if you eat a poisoned mouse.

She crept up to the mouse. It tried to run, but couldn’t. Its eyes were bright.   Its mouth did not smell of poison. This was an old mouse. Quick as a wink, she picked it up in her mouth and broke its neck. Then she slipped back into the empty house with it. No more worry about hunger tonight.

Back on the steps, she sat down to eat the mouse. Earlier, the people did not allow her to eat there. Now she could sit here and eat in peace. There was no one in the house.

Just as she put the mouse down on the step, a flash of orange-yellow jumped on to the low wall in front of her. An unknown cat. His eyes were angry yellow. She tried to pick up the mouse in her mouth again and run away, but in a trice the orange cat had jumped on her…

2

It was dark now. An orange-yellow cat was lying on the step of the empty house and cleaning himself. A couple of cats had tried to see who had come into the locality, but a hiss had sent them scurrying away.

The old cat had limped away by then. She would not survive long if she left her locality. She also knew that the orange cat would not let her live long if she stayed. So she had gone, one step at a time, hiding in bushes and behind walls. Now she had reached a place quite far away.

She noticed the house because of the three cats in the balcony. The light from the street-lamp showed them clearly. She crept into the flowering bush in the garden. This was far away from her old locality. She had never come here before. She sniffed carefully. No, there was no dog in the garden.

She licked herself clean, especially the cuts. She could not clean the cuts on her face. There was a slash that ran from below her right eye up to her lip. He had tried to take out her eye. She had been saved by a whisker.

She had to rest for a long while before her pains reduced. The hunger came back, though. Just when she was thinking of looking for some food in the garden, the door to the balcony opened and a girl came out with a large bowl in her hands.

The cats jumped off, mewed loudly and rubbed their heads against the girl’s legs. Then they ate. The girl went back inside.

The old cat came out of the bush. She was famished. The three cats had finished eating and jumped into the house through an open window. She jumped up to the balcony gingerly. Her right front paw was sore.

The bowl was nearly empty. There was some food stuck to the sides and some had fallen out as the cats had eaten. She ate it all up. It was very tasty – fish and rice.

Then she peeped inside the house, jumping lightly on to the railing of the balcony. Through the open window she saw a well-lit room. The people were sitting and the cats were asleep, on the sofas or on their laps.

She did not like this life. The garden was good enough for her.

She hurt her leg as she jumped down. In great pain, she dragged herself into the bush again. For a while she thought she would not be able to run away if she was attacked in the night. Then she did not think any more. She slept.

3

She stayed on. The house cats found her the next morning, but they did not mind. She hid in the bush during the day. She would not go to eat breakfast. Only after dinner would she clean up the leftovers. The people had noticed her too, the day she fell down heavily, trying to jump up to the balcony. After that she realised that there was more food leftover.  She felt quite full every day. The people had started serving extra for her.

Slowly she noticed that even after serving breakfast the people seemed to look at her bush and call, “Come.” One day she crept up to the balcony and found a lot of food. She ate it all. The balcony was cool. Much more than the shade in the bush. She had fallen asleep.

She stayed on the balcony from then on. The house cats became her friends. The tiny one slept close to her. She quite liked it.

She did not allow the people to come close to her, though. She had heard that they wanted to take her to the doctor, a vet. What’s a vet? What’s a doctor? She had no idea. She didn’t even want to know.

She thought of them as nice people. They had let her stay and fed her. She should give them something in return. After she recovered her health a bit, she wanted to bring a rat for them one day.

4

The afternoon that day was very hot. She was lying in the balcony. The earth was radiating heat. The sky was grey. She hoped it would rain in the evening. She felt glad she had found this house. She would have died long ago if she had not. She slept.

A light body jumped off from the tree on to the grass. She woke up with a jerk, but lay back again. One of the house cats, surely? She was dozing off again when the cat jumped on to the balcony. She woke up with an unknown smell. She saw a flash of orange fur, two cruel yellow eyes and then she did not wait any more. She jumped off from the balcony and ran on her three good legs towards the wall of the garden, to the hole at the bottom that let rainwater out…

She did think, as she ran, that if she had remained on the balcony, she might have been saved by the people. It was too late, though. By then she was already on the road and the orange yellow cat had jumped on her from the wall.

The people ran outside when they heard the screams of two cats fighting, but there was no one on the balcony or in the garden.

5

She had fainted. When she came to, she felt terrible pain in her face, neck, head and left foreleg. She could not put the leg on the ground. Her paw was red with blood.

She dragged her tiny body to the road. The house was there, across the street. Cars whizzed by. She could not run. She would have to wait until dark.

She crawled slowly across at night. She had no strength to climb on to the balcony. She crept underneath. The cats came to see her but the people did not know that she had come. She heard them talking about her the next morning. That she had not come for two days. That she had come from somewhere and gone away again, no one knew where to.

She dragged herself on to the balcony again at night. They had kept food out for her. Hoping she would come.

When they saw her the next morning, they said that they must take her to the doctor. They brought a box, but she was scared to enter it. They could not push her in, so they left the box with her. It was a tiny box, closed on all sides except the front. She peeped in. Then she crept inside and curled up.

It was cool and dark. It felt safe. Her eyes closed. She slept.

She woke up when the box moved. She tried to come out but realised that the people had closed and tied up the lid while she was still asleep. She understood that they were taking her to that doctor.

There was nothing she could do. She lay down again and closed her eyes.

6

The doctor picked up her left paw. “This happened at least two or three days ago,” he said. “This is due to a cat fight. She is very old. Look, she has lost so many teeth.”

The doctor carefully washed her paw in warm water, put some medicines and tied a tiny bandage. She felt so good! “She is very cold,” said the doctor. “I will give her an injection to warm her up.”

She felt a tiny prick. She felt warm. She felt sleepy. They have done so much for her, she thought, but she had never done anything in return. She remembered that she had not yet brought them that rat. She will not be able to bring it any more. Now, she will have to go away.

She lifted her head and saw that one of them was holding her head gently. With great difficulty she brought her tongue out to lick the hand.

Then, she put her head down again and closed her eyes.