Speedy

She came home one rainy afternoon in the monsoon of 2007 – dripping wet, extremely famished and very pregnant.

There she was in our backyard, with a piteous face, either too weak or too proud to make a sound and ask for something. My wife, having a soft corner for her species of the feline family, prepared a fresh chapatti, ground it in milk and offered it to her. She gulped it down quickly, looked up as if to say thanks, and ran off.

Three hours later, she was back again!

The routine went on for two days; and the third morning, as I was leaving for office, I realized I could not take the car out of the garage. Because there she was, with four cute little babies, who most probably were born early that morning itself.

My son – who loves fast cars – decided he would call her Speedy. My daughter – who loves to agree with her brother on most things (which irritates him no end!) – concurred. My wife – who anyway loves cats – decided to feed her till the babies grew a bit. My dad – who loves his daughter-in-law – decided to protect the babies from the neighbourhood stray dogs. My mom – who, incidentally does not like cats – decided to take pity just this once.

And that’s how Speedy came into our lives.

It has been three years now, and the house has seen an assortment of cats, due to Speedy’s propensity to have a litter every four months, with an amazing variety of experiences for all of us.

While they are generally very well-behaved, the babies have spoilt my mother’s carefully tended plants from time to time. Speedy has once walked into the kitchen and spilt all the milk. The feline family has torn away my expensive car cover. And the tyres of my car, my brother's mobike and the children's bicycles are their favourite nail sharpeners.

Every day, Speedy has to sit on the kitchen window sill and look through the glass at my wife or my parents, till she sees them preparing her milk and chapatis, or getting the pieces of chicken. At the point they do so, she jumps down from the first to the ground floor in the agile way that only cats can do, walks through regally through the back door, out the front, to have her food.

My father gets mutton from the neighbourhood butcher every alternate morning, and it is a sight to see the cats following him with their tails up in the air till he reaches their designated eating spot, and waiting for him to empty the contents of the bag before slowly starting to eat their fill.

It has also led to regular daily visits by the neighbourhood cats and stray dogs, with mixed feelings.

I have had to answer my children’s questions and have also been a witness to my son’s hilarious explanation to his sister, cousins and other neighbourhood kids on ‘how are her babies born’. After crying bitterly for days when some babies died initially, my daughter has now accepted death as an inevitable part of life (which sometimes frightens me!)

And now, three years later, we can safely say that Speedy and her children can now count me, my wife, parents, brother, our neighbours and the assortment of our children, and those of the neighbourhood – as their pets.