At my hospital quarters, where four rooms are inhabited by
me and three interns, there is a kind of a small common place in between the rooms.
While at Peradeniya, we had a spacious common room equipped with a comfortable
sofa and an ancient but still functioning television, the space here only is
large enough to hold a dustbin and a mattress discarded by one of the interns. The
dustbin itself was merely a cardboard box and thus was an easy prey for a lot
of wondering cats who wanted a snack. So almost every morning we would open our
doors to walk on tip toes over a mess of leftover food scattered all over the place.
Being the volunteer caretaker of the place since I have more free time than the
interns I decided to put an end to the mess by bringing in a huge plastic
dustbin to replace its previous representative. The cleaning lady further added
a cord tying the dustbin to a wall, so that it was pretty difficult for the
cats to turn it upside down. Problem solved, I thought ,sighing with relief.
Well, most of the cats abandoned their efforts to spill the
bin, except one, a pregnant female.
May be like most of the pregnant ladies ,
she wanted an exception to the rule. Anyway, there she was meowing pathetically
whenever we opened our doors, now that she could not spill the bin by herself. And
all four of us being sympathetic creatures, me with the added guilt in my heart
for being the cause for obstructing her source of food, started leaving out
meals for her beside the dustbin. After all how can we turn a blind eye to a
pregnant lady who is hungry (which she constantly was)?
Time passed on, and eventually she had given birth somewhere, we had no idea to how
many. Months have passed with her having no intention of letting her offspring
meet her food sponsors. But there she would be every time we open our doors,
singing her melodies, purring and tangling between our legs as we dash to and
fro trying desperately not to fall down after tripping over her. It is obvious
that it is time to send her away now and sometimes when you are in a real hurry
she becomes a real nuisance, but still we keep on feeding her, pretending it is
just for the day.
Two nights back, I opened my door half asleep on my way to
one of my frequent nocturnal visits to the bathroom, an extremely unwanted side
effect of my pregnancy. Lo and behold, there in front of me was the ugliest
looking tom cat I had ever seen, polishing off the remainder of our lady
visitor’s dinner.
He looked so big, ugly and wild that he almost frightened the
hell out of me. I did not hesitate at all to throw a handful of water at him
which sent him off, growling his displeasure at me. Since then, I have seen him
several times, sneaking up our stairs whenever he thinks I am not here, to gobble
down what we leave for “the lady who was pregnant ages ago”. Every time I see
him I chase him way, even if our lady friend had finished her meals way before.
I have never encountered our unwanted prowler chasing the lady friend away, or
trying to harm her. He has also not dirtied the place in anyway even once. Yet
even though I keep on feeding the tabby that is obviously using all her cat wiles
to extract food from me, I tent to chase off the tom that does no harm to me, but
feeds on whatever leftover the other has refused to eat. Really funny how my
mind works.
