Dog-Cat

by Payal Nagpal

My dog was a cat. She was a growling, hissing, startlingly flexible, incredibly cranky cat.

Spot, who was nicknamed Spotty almost immediately after we got her, didn’t wag her tail when I came home from school. She didn’t jump on me or lick or chase her tail. Sometimes, when I was lucky, she would trot up to me, press her nose against my palm and ask for attention. I often joked that she was Queen of the Household, that I was nothing more than her servant.

But I loved her. More deeply and wholly and unconditionally than anything else.

I found Spot when I was ten-years-old. My family had just moved into a new house in a gated community that was still mostly under construction. There were stray dogs and cats everywhere, most of whom were tame and affectionate, and befriended me as soon as I offered them biscuits. But Spot was different. She was a white-black-and-brown, bushy-tailed little thing who lived alone on a mound of sand. I’d see her every day when I walked home from school, call out to her to come down and play, but she’d just look away with her snout in the air.

After about a month of pathetic begging from the base of the sand-mountain, I decided I would climb up and pet her. I trekked up, stretched my hand out and patted her head gently. She paid no attention at first, but as time passed, she inched towards me and sighed in contentment. I spent almost half an hour petting her that day, braving a rather precarious surface with gravel finding its way under my skirt. It hadn’t taken me long to fall in love. When my mother came looking for me, only mildly concerned about my absence (considering the penchant I had for getting distracted by dogs on the street and losing track of time), Spot followed me down the hill and to our front porch.

For the next few months, she lurked outside our gate, much to my parents’ disapproval. My mother warmed up to her slowly, coming home from work and stroking her, offering her biscuits and milk. She’d let Spotty inside our gate—never our front door, though—buy her treats and harass her with hugs and kisses. Spotty would bark at the dhobi, at guests, and at any bird who had the audacity to enter our garden. And although she’d also enjoy running on the streets and chasing speeding motorcycles like all the other strays, she was—for all intents and purposes—ours. My mother wanted her inside, but father remained wary, still raw from losing the dog my parents had before I was born.

But then, after she went missing, we had to take her in. We had no choice.

I went to check up on Spot on the night of my eleventh birthday party and she wasn’t there. I didn’t think much of it, until she was still missing the next morning. I scoured the neighbourhood all day, and by the evening, my mother and I had organised a search party. We called our neighbours, worked on Missing Dog posters and went on continuous walks around the neighbourhood, my mind rifling through terrifying scenarios. I was convinced she had been run over or mauled by a group of big dogs. The thought of her dying played on repeat.

The next three days were a blur of tears and desperation. I struck multiple deals with the universe: I’d eat my vegetables every single day if she came back, I’d never not do my homework again.

We found Spot, unrecognisable, outside our door on Day Four, beaten and bloody and bruised. She had either been attacked by a pack of dogs or stoned by humans—or both. We rushed her to the vet and were told to keep her inside the house for the next few days. She slept at the foot of my bed that night and seemed content to be indoors until five days later, when she scratched on the front door to go out. We let her out, thinking she’d go back to being a carefree stray with no strings attached, using our front yard as her home base. But she scratched to be let in just hours later.

From then on, Spot would slink in and out of the house, coming and going as she pleased. She’d squeeze through the front door that we’d leave ajar, just in case she wanted to nap in our dining room in the afternoons. She learnt how to slide under our gate—my mother would lock it at night, only to find Spot on our stoop in the morning.

When a family friend, Diwakar—a man deathly afraid of dogs—came to town and spent the night with us a few weeks into Spot’s new routine, he refused to enter the house with Spot in it. Grudgingly, my mother let her out and we settled into our evening routine. That night (having consumed a considerable amount of alcohol), Diwakar slept in our guest bedroom on the ground floor. He woke up around 4 am to the sound of footsteps padding at the other end of the room. When he turned on his phone flashlight, he saw a white figure and screamed. And after a few moments of contemplating his impending paranormal doom, he stood up and investigated, learning that it was in fact Spot who had broken and entered.

He informed my parents about this reprehensible situation in the morning, threatening to never stay with us again. My mother insisted it was just a nightmare but investigated anyway. She found paw-prints on the guest room window and realised the mesh hadn’t been pulled all the way down. Spot had somehow jumped onto the windowsill, opened the mesh and entered the house.

‘She’s a ninja!’ I declared when my mother told me what had happened.

‘She’s a cat,’ my mother responded. And that’s when she became our beloved dog-cat.

I began to make note of all her cat-like tendencies, documenting them so I could boast about my rather unique pet. She’d paw at things to investigate them, instead of sniffing foreign objects. She’d find her way into the smallest of nooks and settle down in what were seemingly the most uncomfortable positions. On Diwali, when the fireworks outside sounded like rocket launches, she’d enter my cupboard, curling up between my clothes, with my shirts cushioning her from the rest of the world.

In true cat fashion, Spot displayed affection in warped ways. I would read about dogs who jumped on their humans when they came home, sitting on their lap and continuously wagging their tail. I would have to chase after Spotty for love, and when I did, she’d glance at me witheringly, almost as if she was rolling her eyes. She slept on my bed, but if I dared snuggle close to her, she would get up and leave. One way I knew she loved me, though, was through her jealousy. If I came back home smelling of another dog, she’d sniff my hand contemptuously and sulk, turning her back towards me and plonking on the carpet purposefully. She didn’t mind my mother hugging me, but any time the hug lasted more than a few seconds, she would find a way to sandwich herself between us.

Despite her cool detachment, there were moments Spot showed overwhelming protectiveness. She knew when I was upset and would sit by me and paw at my arm gently. She never licked or displayed overt affection, but she would lend her presence to me, and often. That was enough. When I was sixteen and started having panic attacks, she would refuse to leave my side during them. Soon, I found that she was the only one who could calm my attacks. I would place my hand on her chest and breathe to the rhythm of her heartbeat. My breath would steady eventually, and only then would she walk away. She was my grounding technique, far before I learnt anything about mindfulness or therapy.

Spot was my protector. When my mother yelled at me too loudly, she would growl at her and hiss. She almost attacked another dog once, when my mother and I took her on a walk. I stopped to play with my neighbour’s dog—one of those bad-tempered, fluffy, tiny, white gentrified rats. I pet the other dog, only to have him growl at me. Spot, who had been calm, tugged at her leash and broke free. She lunged at the rat, barked at him and knocked him over with her paw.

Spot’s bark (and growl and hiss) was bigger than her bite. She only bit somebody once, and that was for taking me away. When I left for college, she moved into my room full-time. She would sleep on my bed, right by my pillow. A month into my absence, my mother wanted my bed clothes dry-cleaned. When she stripped my bed, Spot thought it was an indication that I was leaving forever. She followed my mother to the door, barked at the man who came to pick up the dry cleaning, thinking he was trying to steal my scent. Before my mother could hand over the clothes, Spot lunged and bit the man’s thigh. And although I know I shouldn’t be as delighted about the incident as I am, it’s something I look back on as evidence of the indestructible bond Spotty and I had, and the last time she showed how much she loved me.

Six months after that, she passed away. Suddenly, but painlessly—peacefully—on the 24th of April, 2017. One day after my best friend’s birthday; a month after I found out my grandfather died, which was a month after my childhood friend lost her battle with cancer. My mother called my roommate and asked her to be with me when she gave me the news. I refused to believe it at first, but when it finally sunk in, the loss was crushing. In a series of terrible losses, hers was the most devastating. A vacuum grew in my stomach when Spot went away, a sort of blackhole that still hasn’t been filled yet.

There are days I still expect to hear her barking when I ring the doorbell, when I almost instinctively scream, ‘Spotty, I’m home!’ as I enter the house. There are days I’m scared I’ll forget her, that she’ll morph into a two-dimensional memory—live on as nothing more than the dog I once had. But if I crawl deep enough into my blanket, I can still smell her: a combination of tea tree oil shampoo and fallen fur. There are still strands of white hair littering the sofa—my mother never had the heart to vacuum them. I carry her with me wherever I go, thanking the universe that of all the homes she could go to, and of all the families she could adopt, she chose mine. And that I had, and still have, the honour of knowing and loving the greatest dog-cat to have ever lived.