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Wet food breakfast with the 
Kitty Karmakars

 It was 8.00 in the morning. I was sound asleep. Suddenly I felt soft furry strokes on my face. Was it one of the new age men perfectly coiffured beards? 

I opened my eyes to see what was going on. There was K on the other side of the bed. Fast asleep after putting off her alarm 6 times. 9 times and then up, is her motto I believe.

Then a voice went, ‘dao’ from the other side. Bengali for ‘give me’. ‘Nimku Pinku Ponku!’ I muttered and turned around. Little Nimki, our younger cat, was by my side. Brushing my face gently with his nose. Hoping that I would wake up and give him his wet food. He is very particular about his wet food breakfast and dinner but he’s also very gentle and loving. Unless he is very hungry and we have not realised it in which case he scratches Bertha, the new lounge chair in the house, which makes K frantically run to feed him. This is when we are awake.

I know the drill. I get up and stagger towards the kitchen while Little Nimki jets off like Carl Lewis (the Olympic sprinter from my time) ahead of me. I pick up a can from top of the fridge, two feeding bowls and one of the colourful spoons K has bought for the purpose. I head to the windowsill by the dining table and empty half the contents into one bowl. It’s Little Nimki’s dining table. He eats with a joy which has not diminished from the time we first took him in as a two month old kitten.

Then I go in search of Baby Loaf, our first born. We took him in when he was possibly 8- 12 months old. He is a bit of a fussy eater. Especially when it comes to wet food. I take out a small amount of wet food on a plate and place it below his nose, regardless of where he is. The sofa, the bed, under the bed, the coffee table. K did not approve of this at the start, but now she cannot say anything as her mum does the same for our little prince Loaf. Our shared mission in life (MIL and mine) is to make sure Loaf eats his wet food.

‘Kheye nao baba. Amar bhalo chhele. Lokhhi chhele,’ I say in Bangla. Please eat. He remains impassive. Then I take a morsel in my fingers and hold it near his mouth. He licks the morsel vigorously. Then he looks towards the ceiling. In deep thought. Then suddenly nods and puts his head down and starts eating. I feel relieved.

I head to little Nimki who has finished what I have given him and is waiting patiently. I  give him a bit more. He finishes that before you can say Jack Robinson (a turn of phrase whose origin I have never thought of questioning). We then head towards Baby Loaf. Little Nimki stands at a distance. Arms (front paw) figuratively crossed. Waiting patiently. A big change from the early days when Nimki would leave his own food and charge like Attila the Hun at Baby Loaf’s plate leading to the next episode of the Game of Thrones. I would have to separate the two or even feed them in different rooms! Its ironical that I used the hashtag #thehouseofcats back then given that the prequel of The Game of Thrones is called House of The Dragon! Do you think I can file a royalty suit? Can pay for all the cat food!

It’s been two years since then and little Nimki has a slightly more philosophical attitude to life. He now knows that while he can continue to indulge in mindfulness and treat every meal as if it’s the last meal of his life, it is not in reality so.

There are two possibilities with Baby Loaf when it comes to wet food. That he finishes 80 per cent of what I have given him. I see it and say ‘good boy’ and little Nimki goes to the plate and finishes the remainder. That happens on 5 per cent of the days. In the remaining 95, we realise that while Baby Loaf made it look as if he was eating with the concentration of a yogi, in reality he had actually pushed the food to the side of the plate before heading off. Smug in the belief that Daddy Loaf will see an empty plate and think that he has finished it all! Anyone who has poured milk down the sink as a kid while their mother was looking away will understand this.

‘Main hu na,’ says little Nimki as he finishes what’s left and we all go back to sleep.

The the alarm rings for the 9th time a bit later and the mother of dragons (none of this will make sense to you unless you are GOT fan) finally wakes up.

She will look at me sleepily and on 128 per cent of the days say (don’t worry, we are in the 21st year of our marriage and I have no secrets to reveal and embarrass  you with) ‘Loaf woke me again at 4 am. He meowed. Got on the bed. Sat by my face and meowed. Then tapped me with his front paw, meowed very loudly this time and I woke up with a start. I had to walk with him to the hall and stand by the plate in which his dry food was kept. He wanted some company and started eating once I stood beside him! This happened 4 times! You slept through it. He never wakes you!’

All this to explain why she let the alarm ring 9 times, making me jump up with a start 9 times, before she got up and shut the damned thing.

I am smarter. I follow my mom in law’s tactics from when she babysits the boys in our absence. 

I keep two cat bowls beside me. If I hear Baby Loaf eapproach the room, I reach out for the jar in which the kibble is kept and pour some into each bowl without opening my eyes or breaking my sleep. I can hear Baby Loaf’s measured and ponderous crunching and, a couple of minutes later, little Nimki’s more electro trance-style nibbling. I smile in my sleep. 

Yes, they should not eat so much etc, etc, but hey come on, have you never given an extra chocolate to your kid when mummy is not watching?

Baby Loaf likes his kibble. When he wakes up at any point of the day, he heads straight to the hall and sits by the cat bowl and waits for either of us to fill it. He eats. Visits the litter. Eats a bit more. 

‘He likes kibble because it is crunchy. Just like his dad likes dalmut,’ says K. 

I can’t protest. It is quite possible that I might have headed to the kitchen mid-sleep the previous night and reached out for the Haldiram bhujia or Mukhorochak chanachar jar. The boys are often awake and follow me to the kitchen and observe me. Bad example I know. Is sleep-eating a thing?

K and I had decided early on in our marriage not to have kids. A fallout of this was that one (I am speaking of myself) always thought of oneself as being in ones 20s. I would look aghast if strangers called me ‘uncle.’ My niece was born six years back and I became a ‘jethu.’ ‘Uncle who is dad’s elder brother’. I am not that fazed now if the tiny tots in our building called me uncle. But teens? people in their 20s? Seriously?!

Then our neighbours Erika and Gia came into our lives thanks to the cats whom they love like family. Gia is a year or two younger than our marriage and refers to K and me as her ‘spirit parents’ and we are very fond of her too. Which makes me realise that if I had adhered to the model our parents had, ‘one year of marriage and out with a baby’, then we would have had a kid who would be a collegian by now!

Jeez, I am an uncle!

The thing is that once Baby Loaf and little Nimki came into our lives, they became our children. In our heads there’s no difference versus if we were to have had hooman kids. 

I know this makes no sense to you if you do not have pets. As it did not to me when our friends Bonny and Jit adopted their cat Meowjit 15 years back. They would post pictures of him on Facebook every hour and refer to him as their child. ‘They have lost it,’ I would think. As I am sure many of you might think about me.

Thankfully they did not make me eat the humble kibble when I visited them for dinner recently. The food was lovely as usual and Meowjit sat quietly beside me in the party. Jit saw this and whispered to Bonny, ‘eta onno karur shonge kore na.’ He does not do this with anyone else.

That was Meowjit’s of saying, ‘Rise Sir Jethu. I now proclaim you a cat dad.’

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