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| Proud Mummy and Daddy Loaf |
Baby Loaf turned 5 last Friday. Or so we like to think.
Baby Loaf is our eldest and first cat. We arrived at the date of 8th March as his birthday using several assumptions. We do not know his actual birthday, birth month or year. The vets had guessed that he was anything between a year to 10 months old when we took him to be checked. We had found Loaf in our building. He was no longer a kitten by then.
The day we chose happens to be Women’s Day too. Coincidentally the other person in the family whose birthday we do not know is Didu, my grandmother. They did not record the exact date of girls when she was born 95 years ago in a village near Dhaka. This despite her belonging to a family of doctors.
Loaf was asleep when the clock struck twelve. K and I gave him soft pecks on his back and patted him gently at midnight. We did not want to wake him up. He came to me for cuddles next morning. It was as if he knew that it was something special that day. He flopped on the floor and I sat on my haunches and patted him. This played out often through the day. He loves this game.
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| Loaf is a bit of a diva |
I had applied reiki to him and tried to communicate with him telepathically! I told him that it was his 5th birthday and about how happy we were to have him in our life. Maybe it had worked. Sounds strange?
Well, I attended a reiki, animal and plant communication workshop a couple of weeks back at the Kryon Wisdom Centre. I tried to apply that I had learnt. I joined the course in the hope that I could communicate with Loaf, Nimki (our younger cat) and all the furry babies in our lives. We are not conditioned to believe in metaphysics. ‘Trust the process,’ is what they said. I am trying to.
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| At the end of our workshop at the Kryon Wisdom Centre |
I call Loaf a ‘Cattisatva’. He converted me from being someone who was not fond of cats to becoming a cat lover. He converted K from being someone scared of pets to becoming one who loves them. Our love for cats has in turn converted others to become cat lovers. I was in Odisha earlier this week. Folks I met said that they connected with the stories of my grandma that I share on my blog. And those of Loaf and Nimki. I am happy to be in the background.
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| Chatting with Nimki the morning after |
While on the topic of Odisha, I must tell you about something mystic that happened there. I saw several stray dogs in Bhubaneswar, in the artisan village of Raghurajpur which we went to on the way to Puri and at Puri too. ‘Are there no cats here,’ I asked my friends Rachit and Akash. The disappointment in my voice was evident. Rachit and Akash are food experts from Odisha who were kind enough to take me around.
We went to the Puri beach first and then to the Jagannath Temple. We left our sandals and camera phones at one of the shops which store your belongings for a price. I was glad that my friends had recommended going to the temple after sunset. You have to walk barefoot on the stony surface inside and doing so under the blazing sun would be torturous.
We entered the temple complex and guess what was the first thing that I saw there.
There was a ginger cat lying in front of the majestic Aruna pillar which stands at the entry to the complex. I went down on my haunches and patted it. The cat responded by booping my finger and toes. Rachit, Akash and I then went to the gate through which you reach the temple complex. Guess what I saw there.
There was a cat who looked like Nimki, but who had grey instead of brown spots, lying in front of the door. Oblivious to the people walking past it. I went down on my haunches, oblivious to the people walking past me, and patted the cat. It stretched out its neck for me to tickle it. I got up after a while and the cat looked up at me as if to say, ‘Where do you think you are going’? I sat down again and patted it a bit more before getting up to enter the temple. The cat was there at the gate when we came out after the darshan of Lord Jagannath and his siblings. I patted it again. Another gentleman stooped to pat it and it snarled back. I patted it softly to calm it down. It then booped my thighs, crossed past me and went in.
Rachit, who has been to the Puri Temple numerous times, said that he had never seen a cat at the gate before this. He pointed out the fact that cats do not like to stay where there are crowds and yet this one was sitting in front of the gate which had tons of people walking in and out through it. Rachit smiled and said that it was if Lord Jagannath had figured out that I missed seeing cats over the past few days and had sent these two to cheer me up.
‘I should have wished for a sea-facing 4 BHK flat at Bandra,’ I said wryly. I guess the Lord knows what you ‘actually’ desire. And that was, to meet the cats of Odisha. He had fulfilled my wish.
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| On our way back from the Jagganath Temple |
We didn’t have our camera phones and could not capture the moment. We saw a cat sitting by a sweet shop when we walked back from the temple. I patted it and it booped me back. In case you didn’t know, booping means pressing its nose against you, a sign that it loves you. This time Rachit managed to capture the moment using his phone. The next day I went to Cuttack where I met Rachit at a local tea shop. It turned out to be a de facto ‘cat cafe’ as four cats were sleeping inside the shop and one was sitting outside. ‘They have been fed rice and fish before this and are sound asleep now,’ said Rachit. I patted them all. Most remained in deep sleep barring one lady who was in the family way who got up to get cuddled. I showered her with love and told her that her litter better be from one cat and not multiple tomcats. She looked at me as if to say, ‘Papa don’t preach’.
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| The cat on the bench was pregnant Rachit told me |
My fellow cat parent friends call me ‘cat whisperer’ in a light-hearted vein. I think that this is stretching things too far, but cats do respond to me when I reach out to them. Barring some street cats that might have faced some trauma in the past and stay away hence. I respect their (the cats’) feelings in such cases and let them be.
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| A bit before he turned 5 |
Coming back to Loaf’s birthday, we called Erika and Gia over for dinner. They are friends who have become like family. We had first connected with each other through Loaf. We got burgers, onion rings and fries from Louis Burger and mini cakes from Le 15 for Loaf’s party. We enjoyed the food.
I think Loaf had a good time too.
