Skip to main content

A Requiem for my cat

I buried him yesterday morning. His body was found lying dead and cold on the roadside. A speeding vehicle had killed him in the night. 

 He walked into our life as a little kitten five months ago. Someone had abandoned him on the roadside when the autumn sky was turning dark. He walked towards the only light he saw, the one outside our house. Maggie and I were baffled a bit. He was too small, would he survive? That was our worry. We had no choice anyway but adopt him. Thus he became our Kunju, the Little One. 

 He stole our hearts with his playfulness. He would climb into our laps and make himself comfortable there for as long as it pleased him. When Maggie worked in the kitchen he would jump up behind her and untie her apron knot. He thought we were his playmates. We allowed him to use us as such. We loved the game as much as he did. 

 We miss him immensely. Memories don't die. Even a cat refuses to die from memories. "Kunju has made you a different man," my friend said once. He was right. I learnt to be like a little boy when I spent time with Kunju. That was Kunju's gift to me: purification of my heart. 

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairFebruary 10, 2020 at 11:11 AM

    So sad to know this. We also used to have cats. Not now. And when they go, it leaves a big void.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 10, 2020 at 1:35 PM

      I had another cat which disappeared a few months back. I consoled myself that it must be living somewhere. Now, this departure came as a trauma.

      Delete
  2. magiceyeFebruary 10, 2020 at 11:40 AM

    Heartfelt condolences.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JaiFebruary 10, 2020 at 12:03 PM

    Condolences Tom.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 10, 2020 at 1:36 PM

      Thanks, Jai. Your personal message came as a soothing balm.

      Delete
  4. Vartika GoyalFebruary 10, 2020 at 4:27 PM

    Condolences.. hope you will feel better soon

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sreedhar BhattaramFebruary 10, 2020 at 5:39 PM

    Sorry to hear the sad news.. Pets do steal our hearts and often show us an entirely different life.. My condolences.. Wish you speedy recovery!

    ReplyDelete
  6. wingsFebruary 10, 2020 at 8:54 PM

    Deeply saddened to know about Kitty's demise. My condolences to you and ma'am.

    ReplyDelete
  7. rifle range boyFebruary 11, 2020 at 3:31 AM

    condolences on Kunju's demise

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ira MishraFebruary 13, 2020 at 4:34 AM

    I never had a pet.... But I can imagine it must be devastating to lose someone or something you have grown an emotional attachment for...!!May the good memories give the strength... For that's what holds the promise to be everlasting!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 13, 2020 at 6:15 AM

      It is devastating, memories linger on like numbing pangs.

      Delete
  9. Rajeev MoothedathFebruary 15, 2020 at 10:20 AM

    So sad to learn of Kunju's death. I can understand your loss having cats as pets myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 15, 2020 at 3:13 PM

      I'm yet to overcome the grief. He refuses to leave my memory.

      Delete
  10. Aishwariya LaxmiApril 18, 2020 at 9:38 PM

    Ohh! I just came across this post. I love cats and I'm so sorry to hear this:(

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grandeur of the dooms

John Keats by William Hilton [Wikipedia] One of the poems included in CBSE’s class 12 English literature is an extract from Keats’ Endymion . A question that has come to me again and again from students as well as teachers is: What does “the grandeur of the dooms…” mean? It is a line that has perplexed me too. I have been amused by the kind of interpretations given in the guidebooks for students. Quite many of these books interpret the word ‘dooms’ to mean the Doomsday. Look at the following answer given in one such guidebook made available online by a well-known educational establishment.  That is very amusing considering the fact that Keats was an agnostic, if not a confirmed atheist. Keats would never accept a God who would come riding a majestic cloud on the day of the Last Judgment to apportion the good and the evil souls to Heaven and Hell. Evil is an integral part of life, Keats knew too well. No human can avoid evil any more than “a rose can avoid a blighting wind.” How...
7 comments
Read more

Anyone for a better world?

The above video was sent to me on WhatsApp by a friend who also asked me to write a blog post on the injustices of capitalism. The friend quoted Lenin: “Capitalism is going to give us the rope with which we are going to hang them.” I wasn’t particularly enthused by the message or the demand for a blog post because I am like Benjamin the donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm . Benjamin is cynical when it comes to politics. He knows that no party or ideology is going to make any substantial difference as far as the common folk are concerned. What can be an alternative to capitalism, for instance? Socialism/Communism? Benign dictatorship? Theocracy? The video above shows the absolute heartlessness of capitalism. But has socialism/communism been any better in the erstwhile USSR, China, and present North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba? Dictatorship and theocracy are not economic systems, but have they saved any nation from injustices? I believe the problem is not with systems or ideologies . T...
12 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
45 comments
Read more

The Innards of Spirituality

When a huge concrete cross was being shattered with a demolition hammer, I laughed rather raucously. I was watching the breakfast news on TV as usual. Most of the time, breakfast news is depressing with news about drug addicts, rapists, murderers, and politicians. This video of a cross being brought down in a very unceremonious ritual officiated by revenue mandarins was unique in a country of people whose religious sentiments are more brittle than dry leaves in an Indian summer. Maggie was not amused at all by my laughter because she misunderstood that I was laughing at a religious leaf being crushed with a political hammer. “This is the same cross in front of which our X (I named a very close relative of ours) fell prostrate a couple of months back during their picnic to Parumthumpara,” I explained. “She is a very spiritual person and so she respected the cross, that’s all.” Maggie’s spirituality is more like a leaf in a storm: I am the satanic storm and she is the tenacious ...
10 comments
Read more

Insecure Leaders

Yakshi in Pinterest In his book The God Delusion , Richard Dawkins argues that nationalism, religious bigotry, and other forms of zealotry are often the result of insecurity, a lack of self-confidence, or a deep-seated fear of insignificance. Quite many of today’s world leaders, who are all extremely and unwarrantedly belligerent, reminded me of Dawkins though I’m no fan of the man’s scientific extremism. Dawkins is only one among many thinkers who expressed similar ideas, however. Eric Hoffer says in The True Believer that mass movements, including religious and nationalist ones, attract individuals who seek to escape their own personal failures or anxieties by identifying with a larger cause. There are too many people suffering from personal insecurities in today’s world, it appears. There’s so much nationalism and even more unhealthy religious fervour. In India, both nationalism and religion have got mixed into a lethal concoction. M any Indian newspapers of today have give...
10 comments
Read more