Skip to main content

Cats and Love


No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company.

“In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look after having their food.

I love cats in spite of all that. In spite of their being sophisticated without being civilised. In spite of their beating my alarm by waking me up just about half an hour earlier and asking for food. As soon as I get out of bed, Kingini and Plato will escort me, one on the left and the other on the right, to the cupboard where their food is kept.

Usually my cats spend most of their time outdoors. They love to play on the terrace which is roofed. But this evening witnessed heavy rains. Maybe that’s why they chose to spend time indoors and let me pet them a bit too. Here are some pics from this evening.

Little Dora making herself cosy in my lap under her brother Plato's vigil.

Kingini and Plato - Mother and Son
Dora - Kingini's new arrival, nearly 3 months old now

Quite many of my friends and relatives don’t understand my love for cats. They think me crazy. The truth is – my truth, of course – cats are like music. You either love it or you don’t. Love can’t be explained any more than the pleasures of music can be.

 

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanNovember 4, 2024 at 8:29 PM

    Hari OM
    Quite so! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Samuel GeorgeNovember 4, 2024 at 10:23 PM

    Indescribable how these little creatures add to our life experience. I have one and he's restless. Loves chasing hens around him. Recently, he became acquainted with another cat in our locality and now they share the same plate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Liz A.November 4, 2024 at 10:34 PM

    I'm more of a cat person, too. You don't have to entertain cats. They can take care of themselves, mostly. Dogs are very needy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. magiceyeNovember 5, 2024 at 7:13 AM

    Lovely cats!
    Humans keep dogs and cats keep humans!

    ReplyDelete
  5. rupam sarmaNovember 5, 2024 at 11:13 AM

    So beautiful post, Cute Cats :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. marietta pereiraNovember 5, 2024 at 3:42 PM

    My sons are cat lovers. Once they let a stray cat into the house and offered it a saucer of milk. More recently the younger boy shot a video of himself playing with a stray kitten. I liked your post even though I don't quite share your love for cats.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...
9 comments
Read more

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...
8 comments
Read more

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...
8 comments
Read more