A Home for Eecha

by Anushka Ravishankar

I always felt I was a dog person. There really was no reason for this conviction. I never had a pet, growing up—canine or feline or even piscine. So I had no reason or opportunity to prefer one over the other.

My first close encounter with a cat was when my daughter, A, was around two years old. I heard her yowling in the backyard. I rushed out in a panic and found her standing with a cat almost as big as she was, in her arms. She had evidently picked it up and didn’t know how to put it down. I released the cat (and A) and laughed till I cried. The cat seemed unfazed.

A was animal-mad and wanted a pet dog. My husband, R, was all in favour of the idea, having grown up in a zoo. (Honestly. I’m not making that up.) But I stood firm in my refusal. I had no time, energy or inclination to manage a pet. Besides, I’d noticed that dogs barked. And they needed to be walked. I could do without the exercise.

I did give in to A’s entreaties for a pet and get some fish, at one point, but that ended in tragedy, as fish stories often do (for the fish, at least).

In between, we had another cat encounter. A kitten used to come to the door of our apartment in Chennai and A and R used to feed him regularly. A few days later, he turned out to be a she, and gave birth to many more kittens. The mother cat was then named Juno. She went away with her kittens after a couple of weeks.

Many years later, when we lived in Gurgaon, a cat brought three kittens to our terrace. A immediately set out a little tub, about one foot in diameter. So while the mother came and went, the three kittens cuddled with each other in the tub. Whenever we stepped onto the terrace, they would scuttle away and hide behind the washing machine.

Then one evening, when A had gone away to spend the night with friends, I heard a mournful mewling on the terrace. Two of the kittens had disappeared—the mother cat had taken them away. But the third, a scrawny unappealing-looking black thing, had been left behind.

I had no idea what to do. I called A at once, as the cat expert of the family. A said that since there was a chance that the mother cat might come back for the kitten, we should leave it on the balcony. But there were some big tomcats around; I was afraid one of them might find the kitten and attack it. So, since I couldn’t bring it in, I sat vigil just inside the door, all night. The kitten didn’t stop mewling for a minute. After days of cuddling and cavorting with its siblings, it was suddenly alone and motherless. It was heartbreaking.

Amazingly, though, every time we stepped onto the terrace, instead of running away as it used to, the kitten would come towards us. As if it knew we were now its only hope. We knew nothing of the kind, though. I still hoped the mother might come back.

In the morning, I knew she wouldn’t. The kitten’s eyes were shut with something oozy. The mother had taken away the other two to save them from the infection. I panicked. I had no idea what to do with a healthy pet, let alone one that was ill. R had to leave early for work. I called A again, and she dropped all her plans for the day and came charging back. We took the kitten to the nearby vet. The kitten may have been ill and practically blind, but it was full of beans and tried to bite his way out of the tub, which we’d covered with a flimsy lid made of newspaper.

Long story short, he (we found out at the vet’s that he was a he) was injected, fed, and we came home with a kitten. We discussed it and decided that we would have to find him a home, but until then, we would take care of him. Meanwhile, he needed a name. He was black and tiny and we felt he looked more like a fly (eecha) than a cat (poocha). So Eecha he was.

Eecha sat around and mewled sadly for two days straight. At night, he slept if we kept him on our laps, but the moment we set him down, he woke up and started mewling again. Most of the time he slept in my cupped palms. A and R looked at one another and raised their eyebrows, remembering my rants against pets.

This is different, I said defensively. The poor thing has been abandoned. Of course we have to look after him. Until we find a home for him.

Finding a home for Eecha was the next project, then. A put word and pictures out on Facebook and some enquiries came in. What followed was like something out of The Great Indian Wedding. Finding a match for a pet is much the same as finding a match for an offspring, we found.

The first candidates called. They were a young couple, not long married. We asked them to come over to see Eecha.

By this time, it must be said, Eecha had fully recovered, decided he was the boss of the house, and was completely unafraid of human beings, since the specimens he’d encountered were wont to give in to his every whim and endure his every misconduct. He had grown sharp teeth and he bit us all the time. We found it cute.

There was one evening, that I remember clearly. I had gone out to dinner with friends and R was alone with the kitten. In the middle of dinner, I got a call from R asking me to buy cigarettes. Why don’t you go down to the shop and buy them, I asked? He replied that the kitten was sleeping on his lap and he didn’t want to disturb him. One of the friends I was with told me, you will never give away this cat. I laughed at him. People are coming to see the cat this week. By next week he’ll be gone, I said.

The young couple turned up the next day. They looked nice. The young man (YM) and young woman (YW) sat down on the sofa and we called Eecha, who came trotting in to see who had come.

Anyone who knows anything about cats knows that you don’t pick up a cat until the cat says you may. YM clearly doesn’t know this. He grabs Eecha. Eecha is not happy. Young man drops Eecha like a hot brick, nursing his hand, which has some rather cute (from my besotted POV) teeth marks.

We asked YM if he wanted some antiseptic ointment. No, no I’m used to all this, YM said, and laughed in a macho sort of way. While our attention was thus diverted, Eecha had climbed onto YW’s shoulder, presumably to get a good look at her face. YW was clearly terrified of cats. YM, slightly jealous, I felt, of the attention his wife was getting, told her ominously that she should watch out in case he scratched her eyes. YW froze, eyes closed, breath held.

A took pity on her and took Eecha away.

YM was still pooh-poohing the idea of ointments. I am an animal lover, he declared. As an example he told us of the time he was bitten by a monkey. We were fascinated and asked him how it happened. We carefully refrained from asking the question which immediately occurred to both of us: how does being bitten by an animal prove you are an animal lover?

Turns out, a monkey was playing on his neighbour’s car and YM, as an unafraid animal lover, went right up to the monkey, to try and stop it. And the silly monkey, not recognizing an animal lover when it saw one, bit him.

A and I avoided each other’s eye and almost choked from trying not to laugh.

YW was still looking at Eecha in a horrified manner. YM, oblivious to his wife’s horror, was holding forth on how he loved animals and how he wanted his wife to get used to animals, which is why he wanted a cat.

Not this one, A and I told each other with a look. Not after the way he handled Eecha. And the monkey.

That evening, Eecha was fussed over and was told he’d had a narrow escape. Unimpressed, he bit my ankle.

We should have stopped him, I know. But he was too tiny for his biting to be anything but amusing.

He was so small, he had to crawl up the sofa hanging on precariously with his claws. The sofa was also his scratchpad, and it was beginning to look ragged, so on the advice of experienced cat owners and the vet, we decided to get his nails trimmed. He came back from the vet’s and tried to climb up onto the sofa where we were sitting. But without his sharp nails, he slipped and slid and fell off. His look of wounded bewilderment was so sad to see, we decided never to trim his nails again.

In any case, it’s just till we find him a home.

We got another call in a week or so. It was another youngish couple. They had lost their kitten and wanted another one to replace it. When we asked them how they’d lost it, the man told us that one day they’d left the door open and the kitten had run out as they were leaving for work. They didn’t have the time to look for it and by the time they got back, it had been killed by a passing car.

We told them not to bother to come.

We weren’t handing Eecha over to a couple as careless as that. Eecha showed his gratitude by chewing A’s hands. She still has the scars.

When he was not biting us, or sometimes even when he was, Eecha was a source of endless delight. Since he had no mother to train him to be a cat, he created his own training schedule. One day was running. He ran like a loon, round and round the room. One day was stalking. He’d find something to stalk (usually someone’s feet) and crouch unmoving for a while. Then his bum would begin to wiggle and he’d pounce. One day would be given over to jumping. He’d leap as high as he could. I could watch for hours, fascinated by the catness of him. He was such a lively kitten, we were sure anyone would be happy to have him.

The third candidate was a young man. He came over and we all really liked him. Eecha seemed to not be too inclined to bite him, which was a very good sign. He was an adventurous young man, who had a couple of cats already and, if I remember right, even a dog. They all lived in his parents’ home. His job involved travelling, so he travelled a lot to the hills, he said, in an SUV, with his friends and his pets.

We imagined Eecha going on swashbuckling adventures with many other cats. I pictured him sitting at the window, the wind in his fur, the mountains reflected in his yellow eyes. We felt this might be a life he would enjoy.

But how were we to know if the young man was reliable? That all these animals that lived together were taken good care of?

A told him that we would like to see his house before we let him take Eecha away. He agreed amiably enough, but as he left he said, you know, I really think you should just keep him. You clearly don’t want to part with him.

We never heard from him again.

And that’s when we stopped looking for a home for our cat.

Eecha went on to have many adventures: he was attacked by big tomcats, he was mauled by dogs and escaped narrowly with his life, he got stuck in a tree like a stereotypical cat, he travelled across the country in a train and met snakes and cows and goats in Chennai. He never stopped biting our ankles, though. Maybe that was his way of showing us his gratitude and affection for giving him a home.