Tomichan Matheikal's blog

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 af...

Book Review Title: The Travelling Cat Chronicles Author: Hiro Arikawa Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2019 Pages: 249 This book will touch the most tender core of your heart. It is a love story with a difference: it is love between a man and his cat. Right from page one to the last page, this novel gives the reader a feeling of tenderness. Reading this novel is like sitting on the side of a beautiful mountain brook and listening to the gurgling of water while feeling the gossamer caress of the cool breeze on your body. I bought this book precisely because I have four pet cats who all have a special place each in my heart. If you love cats, this book will keep you hooked. Even if you don’t have a soft corner for those creatures, you will still love this book for the tenderness it makes you feel. The author, Hiro Arikawa, is a cat-lover, obviously.  Hiro Arikawa with her cat Satoru Miyawaki is a young man who takes care ...

Brownie snuggles up against me every evening. Whenever her pregnancy advances, she does this: get close to me. She has a way of getting me to pat her forehead and belly. She will rub her head against my palm until I start patting her.  Eventually she will get me to prepare a safe and comfortable set-up for her kittening. She has a way with me, so much so that Maggie says Brownie is the only creature who has succeeded in making me toe the line. I want to celebrate Brownie today. With some of her pics. Brownie was just a month-and-a-half old then. Her siblings Dessie and Denny are here too. Dessie is still with us in robust health while Denny disappeared long ago. Male cats are not quite loyal, I learnt.  With Bobs, her son, who also left us eventually Let me conclude this celebration with a short video in which Brownie displays her majestic indifference to Kingini, the latest addition to my feline family.  Related posts Kingini The Story of Kingini

Kingini Kingini has a story to tell though she is only a kitten still, less than 4 months old. She was born in a hole on the wall of a land terrace far away from all human presence. Her mother (whom Maggie named Kiki because whenever she was hungry she came outside our kitchen and produced a feeble noise, ‘ki-ki’) had had a lot of traumatic experiences earlier. She lost all her kittens in the previous two parturitions. Dogs and humans did that to her, I learnt later. It is from a person who worked in the farms that I came to know about Kiki’s last kittening. “There are two kittens,” the person told me. This person felt pity for them and made the hole as secure from nature’s furies as she could with the help of leaves and twigs. Kiki was a nobody’s cat. She came from somewhere, slept in one house, birthed in another, and ate from our house. Having lost all her kittens two times successively, she chose to give birth this time far away from all hostile elements of the manmade world. ...