Bombay recommendations (which you probably know) & Delhi ones (which you may not)

 Do you hear that? It's the distant sound of me sniffling and wheezing. To be fair to Delhi though, I think I picked it up in Bombay where I was for a few days this week [EDIT: THIS IS OLD NEWS, BUT EVERYTHING ELSE IS STILL RELEVANT], having meetings and running around in Ubers like a high flying executive. Should have worn heels for maximum effect. On the flight there from Delhi, several people coughed and sneezed right on me without covering their faces, which, like, gross and then on my way BACK to Delhi, I noticed that one of my lymph nodes right under my jaw was quite swollen, and so I've been sniffling and coughing to myself, and laying off the cigarettes, and generally being quite grumpy, but the swelling has mostly gone down now and I'm self-medicating with rosehip tea. Which brings me to the first of this week's recaps!

This week in grocery shopping: An oldie but a goodie, and besides I didn't have this newsletter the first time I visited Roots: The Organic Store, which is literally down the road from my house. Imagine a small general store that carries everything, and everything they carry is GMO free, or organic or something. Even the socks. We went to pick up some environmentally friendly washing powder for the machine (otherwise all that Surf and stuff goes into the drain and eventually mixes up with your ground water, which you eventually drink, so not good all in) (that being said, I do love my fabric conditioner, but I only use very little of that, she says defensively). We also bought similar floor cleaner, and then, errands done, I think we bought half the shop. The rosehip tea I'm drinking now, for instance. Cereal-y things for K. Cheese. Cooking oil. Spirulina spaghetti they threw in as a sample. If you live nearby, it's a great store to use as your local kirana.

This week in motivation: No coincidence that the word "motivation" has "moti" in it. I have gotten on the fitness band bandwagon, and purchased a Mi Band 2 (Xiaomi) in the hopes that this little silicone handcuff will get me up off my ass more. This explains why I walked down to the grocery shops yesterday, when I usually just sit on a couch and get everything sent home to me. My step goal is 8000 and even with pacing about the house, going to the shop and back, walking around the newly refurbished Ansal Plaza (more on THAT shortly), I only managed to do 2.5 kilometres or 5000 steps. At this rate, I'm never going to make it. The Mi Band is a cheaper version of the FitBit, and has all the features of the fanciest FitBit, you've gotta love Chinese ingenuity. I'm also kind of obsessed with it, much like David Sedaris was. Unlike David though, I actually once got a little statue of a man sleeping with the words "World's Laziest Person" on it for a birthday present, and I was PROUD of it, I displayed it for YEARS, so I'm fighting against all that conditioning.

This week in Bombay food, drink and retail:  Between meetings, I was stuck in that Bombay thing: having to sit at a coffee shop in the 'burbs for several hours because you have to meet your friends in Bandra and going back to town where your hotel is just doesn't make any sense. The "cafe" for me was Birdsong, which is great to sit and chill, but the food is not that good, so I'd suggest just sucking it up and going to Starbucks. I like the vibe at Birdsong a lot though--very hipster, very pretty, lots of people, but you do feel compelled to order something every thirty minutes so they don't judge you, whereas at Starbucks, I feel like I could hide from everyone in that one couch with one coffee and no one would care. Something to be said about corporate owned chains.

After Birdsong, I had some time to kill (MORE time) and so I decided to check out this export surplus shop I used to go to a lot when I still lived in Bombay called Cotton On. It's still there, but the prices have gone waaaay up and customer service has gone waaaay down, or else they were just as rude seven or eight years ago and I just didn't notice because I was in my twenties and coated with a layer of self-assurance no one could touch. I did buy a pretty black Banana Republic dress though since I was there and all, but I will not be going back I don't think.

Post, met a friend at a new Bandra bar called It Happened In New York with PCO-style food and drink, ie expensive! But good. Even if I did have to tell them that I preferred my Bloody Mary salt rimmed. Also went the next day to a lovely place I was taken to the LAST time I was in Bombay for a bit called Eddies Bistro, no apostrophe, which makes me wonder if there are several Eddies, since Eddy-singular traditionally ends with a "y". Eddies Bistro, so everyone who goes there is called Eddy? They only serve Eddy? I spent a long time gazing at the sign and wondering. 


This week in airport sightings: Way in: Kangana Ranaut, wearing a lovely camel coloured coat. She's much taller than I expected, but I didn't gawp properly, because I was doing that thing where you ignore celebrities and expect them to notice how cool and ignore-y you are. (She didn't notice.)

Way out: Two gorgeous golden retrievers called Peppa and Sunshine as part of a new programme bringing therapy dogs to airport for nervous flyers. "Do they help?" I asked the handlers, and they said the maximum amount of people who stopped were people whose flights were delayed and they needed something to do, so bored flyers more than nervous ones, but they DID put me in a very good mood, so there's some therapy to it after all. (At Bombay's international airport on the weekends, three hours in domestic, three hours in international.)

This week in cats: Speaking of animals, our three are great, happy to have us home and everything but SO FAT. I had posted a link to an article on our Whatsapp cat group (Kool Katz, four members) about  how to make your indoor cats more happy and engaged by making them food puzzles--essentially making them work for their food instead of just laying it all out for them. So while I was in Bombay, K set about training them to get their food differently. Quite easy: we had already bought a thing called a Kong Feeder which is essentially this hollow rubber dummy you fill with treats and then your pet has to push it over to get the food out. It's supposed to slow down eating, a problem we were having earlier with Bruno. K replicated the Kong Feeder times three with empty tonic water bottles. Bruno's gotten to be quite a champ at it, pushing the bottle whenever he needs it. Squishy just lies down with his mouth to the mouth of the bottle and sucks on it until the food comes out, and Olga is really not very smart at all and needs one of the boys to upset the food before she can get it. I thought I raised her more feminist than that.

This week in birds: Birdwatching continues! Not as exciting as Goa, but I did get a chance to make three new entries in the Notes section of my Salim Ali. The first two: the common myna and the Alexandrine parakeet. Bo-oring. But the third was the spotted owlet, a whole fam of them, hanging out a tree branch right below our house and chilling in broad daylight. Ol' Salim describes them as chilling by ruins or in trees in groups, but if they think they've been spotted, they very peevishly fly out, making clownish sounds. Quite a zoo.

This week in Delhi food, drink and retail: Went out with the Kool Katz to Delhi's newest Bombay import, Kofuku, which is this AMAZE Japanese restaurant I used to LOVE in Bandra. Like, every time I visited, had to have at least three meals there. The Delhi version is also damn nice, and it's in Ansal Plaza, which is a total blast from the past. I remember sitting at Geoffery's and The Buck Stops Here for ages, watching some kind of World Cup with friends from college and drinking all afternoon. Plus, there was a Reebok store where I bought my first and only pair of floaters that lasted me a good ten years I think, until I lost them. Also Ansal Plaza has a shop called Decathlon, which is a very large shop catering to every different kind of sport, which means they have some really cool products like these "rambling" pants I bought, with pockets, super comfy and easy dry so they're perfect to wear when you're traveling. Or like pollution masks in packs of three. Or excellent fleece jackets. We were there for badminton rackets, having left our set in Goa, but we also got sidetracked with all the other things.

Having pets makes you think about mortality a lot more

This came out on Asiaville a while ago

There are three of them inside the house—and one outside, softly sleeping in a long planter where we laid his ashes. For several years, he was my only cat, a large ginger tom, and then he was gone, and then I took his ashes with me when we moved into our new house, and left them in a corner of my study. Finally, many years later, I was ready for closure, to lay him at rest at last, at last, and I think of him now as it's raining into that same planter, the baby vegetables are tentatively putting out new leaves, and his grave is a great green growing thing.

But the three that are alive—still with us—they have always outnumbered us. None of them has ever been an Only Cat, poor things, and none of them has known very much of a life without four walls and a ceiling above them. Two are siblings—the grey tabby Bruno and the calico Olga, they spent a few months in a park in a part of Delhi I had never been to before, they were handled so carelessly and so often by the neighbourhood children, they do not like us to pick them up at all. Bruno will kick like a rabbit, Olga will make sounds of distress. Even though we've had them all their lives, except for those three months, two in Bruno's case, when they belonged to everyone. But those two months were everything.

In the case of our large black tom cat, the alpha of our household, even though he came into our lives after our ginger died, after Bruno and Olga already banged out their dynamic, he upended everything. He is the Cat Of The House, he picks on Bruno and adores Olga, he likes nothing more than to walk from lap to lap at parties, sitting for a while on each person, as they hold their breath, a cat sitting on their lap! What an honour! He likes to roll on his back in the balcony, and when you thump him as you pet him, which he adores, a fine cloud of dust emerges from his fur, he's like Pig Pen in the old Peanuts comics, he's such a very dirty cat, not like Bruno and Olga with their immaculate white paws, but he doesn't have any white on him, except a tiny bit near his tummy, so it doesn't matter. He's magnificent, all muscle and built like a miniature panther, but we called him Squishy when he was a kitten and it stuck. Squishy suits him once you get to know him a little.

I think a lot about when they will die. I'm not doing it to be morbid, it's more of a way of preparing myself—one day, these three creatures who I love almost out of reason, will be dead. Ashes in planters. This cat, this cat extending her chin to me so I can tickle it, that cat, blinking appreciation at me, this other cat, sitting on my hip while I read on my side on the sofa, all these cats, one day they will be dead. Having pets reminds you of the way life ticks on and on. If you love a thing that is an organic life form, you love a thing with an expiry date.

I don't allow myself to love strays too much, when we foster kittens as we sometimes do, I don't love them either. We look after them competently, we send them on their way. If you wonder how you keep from falling in love with a kitten, try having five cats in the house. You can't love everybody, even though you have the best intentions. I've only ever actively disliked one of our foster kittens though, for no other reason than his meow was annoying, and his face was strange, too white, his eyes looked like a rabbit's. We called him Julian, after Assange, and I was glad when he moved on to a new home, and not just glad for him either, glad for me.

You can't love everything, especially when you know they're going to die one day. It's a lonely feeling. I see why people might be tempted to have children, unless things go very wrong, your children will outlive you, and you can die happy, knowing that the creatures you love are safe. How many cats will I bury before I die? There's probably an exact figure written down somewhere where the universe keeps all of our secrets.

On the internet, cats rule. If I'm bored, I'll Instagram a picture of one of them, add a clever caption, watch the likes come pouring in. It's almost like you've worked that day, and being a freelance writer means you're either always working or you never are. Olga likes to drape herself across my desk, which sounds very poetic, but because of my mess and her bulk, things are frequently falling off it. Still, they're good company. Like a proud mother, I compare them to other cats I see on the internet, surely none are as good looking as mine, so shiny-furred, so original in their escapades, so large and healthy looking? I even started a cat group on Facebook, primarily so I could talk about my cats, and it turned out everyone wants to talk about their cats, I get about twenty new joining requests every day. People post about their cat troubles, and cats up for adoption and all that, yes, but a lot of it is also people posting one, two, three, four photos of their cats. Sometimes we all join in in the comments section, and it's the biggest love fest I've seen on the internet in a long time, all of us just going, “Cat!” at each other.

In Vietnam, where we were last year, circumstances led to me sitting with a grandmother and her two grandsons. We none of us spoke each other's language, the boys looked at me shyly, twining around their grandmother. I took out my phone, and opened a picture of Squishy, lying in his classic pose, back on the floor, four paws in the air. I showed it to the older of the two boys. “Meo!” he said, which is the delightful Vietnamese word for cat, and one that I knew as well. “Meo,” I agreed, and we spent a happy half hour, looking at the three cats, far away in Delhi, Park Cats once, Road Cats, and now Helping Me Navigate A Different Language Cats. Like the Little Prince and his rose, I only know my three cats, and to me that makes them the best cats in the whole world.

Newsletter: My endless wordcount days

Grooving to that Saturday beat

This week in domesticated companion animals: Bruno has taken to yowling outside the bedroom door (which all three cats are on the other side of because they like to party all night and we do not). He times these yowls just when I'm in the middle of a dream, so I haven't even finished my full REM circle, and when I wake up mid-dream I wind up just dozing for the rest of the night, until I am properly awake. Plus I have to pee. And when I get up to go to the loo, I may as well stay up because there's no way I'm getting back to sleep.

All that to explain why at 7.30 this morning, I lay in bed watching the early morning light at the edges of our blinds. Stupid cat.

When I wake up in the morning, I pad along into the living room and pull up the blinds there--I don't know how many more days THAT'S going to last, friends, we had the fan on all night for the first time yesterday, and I'm craving gin and tonics instead of red wine, my usual summer switch. Anyway, next door has a pet rooster called Lodhi, I feel like I've told you about him already, but recently they have added a puppy to their household. (I suspect this puppy is part of a litter we've been seeing on the road recently, very cute things in that fluffy confident way all puppies are, except with a certain insouciance of expression that only Indian street dogs have. One puppy had his paw run over, poor little thing, but seems to have either made a full recovery or vanished and this is another black puppy I've been admiring all the while.) Anyway, in a totally non-creepy way, I see next door's young daughter with her pets on the terrace when I open the blinds. Some days she just cradles the rooster and walks him around while the puppy follows at her feet, but usually it's just her sitting on the stairs with her mobile and the puppy curled up and asleep just under her legs. Today I saw someone else on the terrace, but the puppy was in his usual spot anyway. I'm still not even circling the idea of having children, but I do want a dog one day again. But only when we stop travelling and can stay still for a moment.

This week in the movies: It's the Oscars today, and while I've long given up the pretense that movies even have a fighting chance in my entertainment schedule  (books, TV, meeting people with the last two often sacrificed for travel) we did go to watch Black Panther on Holi, after all the festivities had died down and the roads were as empty as a hill station after a long weekend. The movie was great, not least because of the 3D glasses and the big bucket of popcorn, and all the other people instead of just being in our house. I could have lived without the girl next to me who was one of those people who insist on reading aloud stuff that isn't said by the characters. You know the type, the two characters are in front of a store and she's saying the name of the store out loud, the dialogue hasn't caught up with the subtitles so she repeats the last word and laughs. SO ANNOYING.

Anyway, a lot of people will be recommending Black Panther at you, so you shouldn't just take my word for it. It is a superhero movie, but also an utopian one, which I realise I haven't actually seen before, my world being peopled mostly by DYStopia.

This week in the writing life: I am working very hard and should be done with the first draft of The One Who Had Two Lives (the story of Amba and Shikhandini) by April if all goes well, and even taking into account the two days I will be travelling (going to Cochin tomorrow for the Krithi Lit Fest, but because I'm so ensconced in the book right now, for the first time ever I am not extending my trip longer than the one day I have a session so I should be able to get work done both before and after.)

Speaking of lit fests, here are my thoughts on the Gateway lit fest in Mumbai where I was last week.

And my book recommendation column is up for this month which also includes a meditation on bookstores in general.


This week in favours: This newsletter is only 15 (!!!) subscribers away from 400. It would be wonderful if you forwarded people this email or sent them a link to this sign up page. I like round numbers.  THANK YOU.

The mostly-bookish Monday link list!
 

(A reader wrote to me last week asking if I could change the formatting of the link list so that the excerpts came AFTER the link. It made sense, so I'm trying it. Let me know how you feel about it, if you have strong feelings at all, that is.)

* While we're talking about Black Panther, let's also gaze in wonderment at everyone's new boyfriend Michael with-a-B Jordan*

Excerpt: It goes without saying that Michael B. Jordan is hot. And he’s jacked. And he has a super-cute smile, I suppose, as well as maybe the cutest nose in the world. But there’s something more than all of that going on. What’s the science behind his rebranding as the shiny internet-at-large’s newest boyfriend? What has made this conventionally hot, anime-loving, lives-with-his-parents-in-New-Jersey movie star truly ascend into the pantheon of thirst?

Dammit Jojo Moyes, is there anything you write that won't make people cry? This story of her rescue mountain dog is not the exception.
 

Excerpt: It’s not without its challenges. The carpet shampooer is in frequent use — her weak bladder means she needs walking every three hours. She disapproves fiercely of cyclists, scooters, and, once (to our utter mortification), a motorized wheelchair. She fosters irrational dislikes and has to be shut away to stop her “herding” of the odd guest. She has nearly dislocated my shoulder and requires regular specialist grooming and glucosamine for her joints, and if she sits on your lap, you have twenty minutes before your legs go numb and start falling off.
 

This was a great reading week for me. I finished two books I'm recommending to everyone: Dreamers by Snigdha Poonam and Lullaby by Leila Slimani, a French writer who got so popular, they're asking her to go into government.

Excerpt: There is not a lot of great contemporary literature about motherhood. It is as bad as sex. We have myths, we have Bible stories, we have fairy tales, we have Peppa Pig, but it is not often that you open a novel and encounter people buying socks, picking glitter out of floorboards, putting away toys in plastic bins. Like Jenny Offill, Slimani can write ravishingly of female bodies, even postpartum ones (“her belly of folds and waves, where they built their house, where so many worries and joys flowered”), but “Chanson Douce” is not so much about motherhood as it is about what the cultural theorist Angela McRobbie has called the “neoliberal intensification of mothering.” An activity, not a state, mothering—along with its gender-neutral version, parenting—is competitive and outsourceable. Slimani tries to put a price on the anxieties, hypocrisies, and inequalities that arise from the commodification of our most intimate relationships.

 

I am Diane from Anne of Green Gables and I am fucking drunk (because there will never be an Anne thing I do not link to.)

Excerpt: Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You gotta do it, go real low then stand up. Try it! Seriously! Oh my god, it’s like… WHOA, you know? Ugh, where is all the DICK! I’m so horny I’d fuck Fred — what’s his name? The pink-faced one? He’s like, ugly hot, you know? Like, you hate yourself but that’s part of it. Omigod, shut up Anne you’re gonna marry Gilbert Fuckin’ Blythe but the rest of us gotta eat, too. Is Ruby Gillis’s brother around? Still? Because I would. You know I would.

In which Supriya goes for a book swap blind date and hilarity and insights ensue.

Excerpt: I was bewitched, although I could not have felt flirty or romantic about the whole exchange any less had they been my own children. In any case, the atmosphere was not one of flirtation. The “dating” in this speed dating event was a gentle irony. Singles in the greater Bandra area are so self-conscious and narcissistic that, like the Zumba instructor I once had, we’re all at our best blowing kisses to ourselves in the mirror.

Movie rights are not always amazing, just ask these twenty authors who hated the film adaptations of their books. At least this is what I tell myself to feel better.

 

Excerpt: I went to the theater bought my ticket and popcorn, and found a seat. Then onto the screen came an insane fisherman carrying an ice hook. He wasn’t in my book. I thought, You know, this is a big complex; maybe I’ve walked into the wrong theater. So I was preparing to leave and then, no, up from below rolled the words “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and I thought, That is my book, but who is that man and what is he going to do with that ice hook? Well, I soon found out. He was going to decapitate my characters. Their heads were flying off, and their blood was spurting, and everybody was screaming, and I was screaming. I was so horrified I couldn’t even open my popcorn.
 

I closed open DMs on my Twitter because all I got was young men saying "Hi." It's a global epidemic. 

Excerpt: t’s unclear who coined the term, or for that matter, how it’s actually spelled. Some go with numerous As (e.g., “fraaaandship”), while others disregard the D entirely (e.g., “fraanship”). Either way, fraandships refer to the kind of guys who randomly add people living in the West on Facebook with an accompanying message begging you to accept their request. They slide into your DMs on Twitter or add you to a giant group chat (usually featuring celebrities, brands and/or other verified people). They send adoring emails to your work account and tag you in all of their posts, regardless of their content.

This family was so tired of paying rent AND EMIs they moved into their Noida housing society and now they're the only ones there.

Excerpt: The towers are serviced by three lifts. At tower D, where Charu stays, all the three lifts are functional. She has organised a cab for her kids for their commute to school and back. The only activity one hears at the Sports Wood is the noise from other flats where construction is still on — finishing work on floors, windows and doors is still in progress in many apartments.

Feed the dogs, tuppence a bag

When my best friend in the whole world and I were about 12 or 13 or 14, we were on a save-the-dogs mission. I dreamed about starting up my own animal shelter — it was going to be called Have A Heart, and the logo was a smiling dog with a heart for a nose. With the help of an equal animal crazy school friend, we decided the best place for this would be my backyard — no one was actually using it after all, and the animals could live in cages so they wouldn’t get out and we’d keep all the cages impeccably and only allow twenty dogs at a time.

Not surprisingly, this never panned out. But we had something almost as good next door at the Friendicoes animal shelter in Jangpura, New Delhi. Friendicoes was about as different from my beloved Have A Heart as it was possible to be. For one thing it reeked of animal—my Have A Heart, I fondly assumed, would be poop and piss free — for another, if an animal was very weak or sick, they believed in putting it down. But still, they were the only option we had to take the little sick puppy we found on the road and cared for for three days. Candy, which was the puppy’s name, was met by the Friendicoes vet with a shake of his head. And sure enough she was dead three days later.

I even volunteered there one summer, taking the dogs for a walk, enjoying the feeling of “doing something good” even though I wondered if it still counted as a noble gesture when I was having so much fun doing it.

When our dog Doogie fell suddenly sick and died at home, I called the Friendicoes night vet. Again the head shaking.

Years later, I experienced the same head shaking when my partner and I took a kitten to them. The kitten was very sick with some kind of bacterial infection — we had acquired her at the shelter, so we thought the shelter might be more effective in her care than our normal vet. At all hours we bundled up poor Agni into a box and carried her there, at all hours, a kind and patient vet talked us through it, stuck a drip in her, told us what to do.

We had to go back for three days for her antibiotics, and the shelter is set up so you take a number and wait in a never ending queue. There is everyone who wants cheap vet care (it’s a 100 rupees per visit or a donation if you prefer), there are people who have their first dogs, people dragging in a goat, people who have been coming to the Friendicoes vets for years, their own pets acquired from the same shelter.

As we sat there, I also saw the troop of animals who call the shelter home. These are the ones who have been there for so long that they will never escape, so they mingle with the patients, sitting down under benches, abandoned pedigree dogs grown too old or too expensive for their owners, a puppy with three legs and big soulful eyes and always the token St Bernard — Delhi folks like the way they look, but inevitably the cost of keeping them, running the AC all the time, feeding them, grooming them, proves too much bother and they abandon them to the mercy of 40 degree temperature and lying on scalding asphalt.

If it wasn’t for Friendicoes, the city would have no real animal shelter. Every city needs an animal shelter. It gives the city a heart, a place for animal lovers to go, a place where you know four legged creatures will be treated with kindness and be given medical attention, regardless of what they look like or what breed they are. This very same shelter recently posted that they were in danger of shutting down because they are forty lakhs in debt (the MCD pays them money for sterilizing stray dogs, and as of now, the shelter is owed 38 lakhs from the corporation).

If it shuts down, Delhi will have no real animal shelter — it has a few others, but not with all the same facilities — with a late night vet and a place to take injured or young animals. It will have no place for people who want to keep a pet but but can’t because of the cost of medical bills.

It will also have no place for people who want to dump their dogs like they’re last season’s bag. (Which you might argue is a good thing, but then what will happen to the dogs? They won’t stop being dumped and they might not be abandoned in a safe space.) It’s the first time I gave to a charity. I urge you to do it as well. (www.bitgiving.com/Friendicoes)

A version of this appeared as my column.

When even veggie sellers know your name

So many nice things happened to me yesterday and I can't tell you about ANY of them. *sigh* One because even though it's a done deal, I'm waiting for it to be so irrevocable that it's basically a life change (NO, NO MARRIAGE OR BABIES) and the other because at this point it exists only in two emails, so when those two turn into an actual contract or something, I'll let you know.

My veggie seller just rang the doorbell and handed us a packet of very strange looking zucchini, if this is zucchini after all and not just some misshapen squash with stripes. "How does he know where we live?" asked the Good Thing, who is very We-Will-Not-Even-Put-Our-Names-On-The-Door. "I've lived here for four years," I told him, (I'm a pro names-on-door myself. Like claiming your territory.) "Everyone knows where I live." True, but not very comforting, I suspect.

I joined my friends' book club a few months ago, and this thing happens each time it draws closer, I've read every single book in the whole world except for the one we're supposed to be reading. This month's selection was actually my idea, and it's this massive book (Hangwoman by K R Meera ), and I now have to spend the whole day reading it in entirity. Poor ol' me.

Of course, thanks to this whole death penalty thing, the book is very topical and we should have some good debates, which is always the goal of book club. We also drink a lot of wine and eat a lot, so there's that. Which is basically the ideal book club.

I've had a lot of emails asking if I'll do sponsored posts/native ads on this blog, and the answer is always YES. Well, no. Not always. But if it's a nice brand, and I can make some money, why not, I ask you. WHY NOT. I don't know where this sudden splurge of popularity came from, but I put it all down to the post I did yesterday because after I published it, all the emails started coming in. The perks of blogging regularly!

TODAY IN CATS: So, we lock Olga and Squishy out at night and let Bruno sleep in the bedroom with us, but when he wants feeding he climbs on the bed and starts licking any part of my leg or arm that's out of the sheet. And that SOUNDS sweet, but he has this little raspy sandpaper tongue, and if he does it hard enough, I'm sure he'll give me a friction burn or something.

Also I bought a book on the history of the cat, which is actually really fascinating, and you should get a copy yourself. (BUT FIRST I NEED TO FINISH HANGWOMAN BY TOMORROW!!)

My name is Lord Squishington and I endorse this book

A new bar, a cat in heat and other life updates from this weekend

I wonder if I should start doing "what I did today" posts again on this blog. Hmm. It would be interesting for ME at any rate, because you know, diaries always are to the person who's writing them, but would you all be terribly bored? Shall we try for like a week?

{Not that my usual day involves anything more exciting than discovering a new TV show or decided I should exercise more and pulling out my old skipping rope, attaching my phone with an audiobook to the speakers and skipping for precisely six minutes before I'm all out of breath and OMG SO MUCH EXERCISE HOW THIN AM I ALREADY!!}

But this weekend was a little more remarkable than most because it was very social. Now, you guys know I LOOOOVE to meet people, but also, in new interesting things I found out about myself thanks to the world of clickbait, I realised I was an introvert. No, seriously. STOP LAUGHING. Here's the thing: I can meet people for three days in a row, but on the fourth day I need to stop seeing anyone for the next few days until I feel completely balanced and full of energy again. I get my energy from being alone and being quiet, and even though I'm outgoing, I'm like that rare zebra-unicorn: an outgoing introvert. Actually, no, I'm sure there's more than just one of us, and maybe it's just an only child thing as opposed to an introvert/extrovert thing, but once I figured this out about myself, I was like, oh that explains EVERYTHING and I no longer feel like I need to apologise for not making plans on days when I have no plans except staying in and feeling myself again.

Eh, maybe not THAT social, just me and 50 getting drinks at one of Delhi's new loves--Delhi has a few new love every month, and this month, it is The Backyard offering competition to old loves Depot 29 and Hungry Monkey, because it is right in their neighbourhood sorta--but it has a nice terrace, and nice margaritas, and all sorts of happy hours, which is also nice. It incentivises me to drink more even though I'm not actually saving THAT much money, so Happy Hours is a nice little scam that we wink at because who doesn't love free booze?

{The Good Thing elected to stay home for the weekend, because of work and other things, and so I was flying solo, if two women in their thirties who drink from eight pm to ten thirty pm and then go home can count as flying solo.} {But listen, this going to bed early and waking up early has some pretty cool advantages despite the fact that I sound like your 80 year old grandmother. I finished a book almost entirely on this new schedule.}

The next day was more 50, as she hosted a brunch in her house, and you guys, I totally rose to the challenge and made caramel bread pudding French toast thing, which is a recipe I adapted from here, except mine was waaaay less posh, using normal Harvest Gold bread and custard powder from the box.  It was still good though. And this one friend of hers brought all this homemade booze, which is totally > any amount of bread pudding with or without the caramel top, and I drank an entire bottle of rhododendron wine, which tastes like boozy Roohafza? Which is luckily, a flavour I happen to like.

And here we are, Monday, Moanday. A friend of mine runs Balcony TV Delhi and is coming over this morning to shoot four videos on our terrace. He's already done a few before, so we're used to the drill, but I should probably shower before he gets here.

Oh, I also drew this comic strip this weekend

Today's also one year since we got Olga into our lives, and she's had this awful last few months (oh, nothing major, just that the vet we took her to to get her spayed botched it up [we chose a cheaper vet, because JAYSUS IT IS TEN THOUSAND rups to get a cat spayed] [then we paid the price for being kanjoos] ANYWAY, so she's still going into heat and yowling and trying to escape and cat susu everywhere, so finally, we're having another surgery done after exploring allllll the other options and this month she should finally be ovary free. ARGH.) But she's still a great cat. Squishy, who has become some sort of cricket ball-headed muscleman follows her around from room to room, his nose like INSIDE her bum, and a great way to get him out of a room is to kick Olga out first and he follows like a shot. (Bruno, the only one with bladder control, is the only one allowed in the bedroom with us at night.)

Anyway. Hello, I guess? Happy Monday! This was raaaather fun, I think I might try it again tomorrow.   

Fans of Cats & the Facebook group as a bonding exercise

A few months ago, a friend of mine who also has a cat was looking for a good vet in her neighbourhood to get him spayed. I would have—and did—offer my excellent vet, but she wanted to stay closer to home so transporting him around wouldn’t be such an issue. (Have you ever driven in a car with a cat? It defines Einstein’s theory of relativity. Even a short two kilometer drive feels like it’s been going on for three hours.)

Asking on Facebook seemed to be the best idea, but all the animal activist groups I belonged to were all dogs all the time. Now, I have nothing against dogs. Perfectly fine animals in their own way—and very nice pets if you’re looking for children who will never grow up and never be able to fetch you a nice cold vodka tonic should you need one. What a difference from the rest of the world where cats are not only the most popular household pet there is, but also have forums devoted to each particular disease they can get. I decided then to start my own Facebook group for people like my friend and I and call it Fans Of Cats, Delhi. The first question? Who is the best cat vet in the city?

Since that time, Fans of Cats has grown. Not very significantly, I still know more dog owners than cat ones, and still, in my own particular group of friends, know more people without furry friends than ones who have made the commitment, but the 65 member strong group has a lively discussion almost every morning on everything from how to cook chicken and fish the best possible way for cats (they can’t digest carbohydrates very well, so you have to make sure they’re getting the right amount of vitamins from chicken, that makers of dry cat food already add to it) to kitten adoptions, to people looking for pet sitters while they are away on holiday. I myself use it as an invaluable resource, collating information from cat owners across the city to help with behavioral problems, messed up medical exams and more. With three cats, I find myself both offering and asking for advice more regularly on this forum than I do anywhere else on Facebook.

The Facebook group is not a beautiful thing, like say, the Facebook page. In terms of design, it stays strictly old school: a picture on top, a description on the side bar, and rotating posts by group members. However, it is the easiest way to see and search for information in this age of almost too much information. The Facebook group Eat Treat, for example, a community of foodies that writes reviews and talks about food, recently received funding to the tune of $350,000 to turn the community-based group into a fully fledged website. The website called Eattreatonline (a bit of a mouthful, no pun intended) will offer vaguely food, fashion, home chefs and other such trendy things.

But perhaps because the Facebook group is so unbeautiful, advertisers are not jumping on it as much as they should be. And they really should. Your average popular group usually has tens of thousands of very engaged, very active members, more than you can say about the most well-liked Facebook page, where users can “like” the content but may not contribute to the active discussion. Occasionally, a savvy group creator will turn this around to their advantage, at another food group called Gourmet Planet, for instance, the founding member organizes meals at fancy restaurants where members can pay a fixed sum for a prix fixe menu. Or, in another group meant for real estate in Goa, the moderator earns a commission on each house rented out through the group. It’s a clever way to be, because it doesn’t require you to actually do any extra work, seeing as your community will do that for you. If you get lucky, and popular enough, you can use it for good.

Meanwhile, on Fans of Cats I’m feeling happy because a first time kitten owner has just posted an update. He had been feeding his kitten milk and she was listless and weak. The group told him cats are lactose intolerant, and to shift her to another diet with more protein. His kitty is now bright eyed and bushy tailed, leaping in the garden, and “it’s all thanks to some of the members of Fans of Cats,” he said.

That’s almost worth $350,000, I think. 

Gratuitous Lord Squishington photo. ("We're still getting the paper???")

(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

Television freak show cops and robbers everywhere

We need to talk about zoos. That’s right, the big compound in your city that you probably don’t pay attention to unless it’s wedding season and a huge hoard of relatives have descended upon you and you need to figure out how to entertain their squalling brats. Zoos. Short for zoological parks, places that should be full of awe and wonder and summon up images of the Sahara or the Australian outback or the deepest Antartica, and instead only remind you of depressed animals.

Most of India’s zoos are pretty pathetic. The Delhi zoo actually is housed in an absolutely gorgeous piece of land right inside the Old Fort, and is really good for a long winter walk, if you just stick to the trail by the migratory bird area, which isn’t caged in, and which most people find very boring. The further on you walk, the more your nose will tell you that you’re hitting the big animals—that and the sound of a hundred schoolchildren ruffling chips packets, and that one adult who is about to make a bad decision. Sometimes, these adults will poke at an apathetic bear or monkey with a stick. Other times, they’ll try to shout as loudly as they can, so the depressed big cat who is taking a break from pacing back and forth and back and forth will look up and roar back. The chimpanzee will stop poking the ground with its stick and look up briefly. There is a stench of animal and that animal’s toilet and that animal’s food all mixed up. You hold your breath, you gaze for a bit and you move on. But the lion is still there, his patchy mane speaking of malnutrition, his nose forever filled with the stink of his own scat, his whole life—a life meant to be lived wandered thorn forests, with a harem of his own—narrowed down to this enclosure, which has a few trees. With my three cats—panthers made miniature—I can guess that the lion, the tiger, the jaguar all have their own favourite tree worn low by scratching, but my cats have been bred to domesticity for their entire species and so don’t worry about favourites. They have no desire to go on, beating on through the forest, establishing new favourites, sniffing the wind for their next safe destination, they have no essential tiger-ness, which you’ll note the minute you see one in the wild, which makes them hold their heads high and tell you with one uplifted whisker: Lo, look it is I, it is Tiger.

L'oreal. Because I'm worth it

I mean, it is sort of our fault as well. The only reason we’re all talking about the zoo now is because some poorunfortunate leaped over a low boundary wall and was subsequently cornered and killed by the white tiger. The papers and TV showed the man cowering in the corner while the tiger examined him, “What is this? A diversion?” the tiger asked himself, before he was distracted by security guards throwing stones at him, and then it was “Predator! Kill!” and before anyone could do anything—like, as an article in Quartz India suggests, remove the tranquilizingequipment placed only 350 feet away for just times such as there--a tragedy unfolded and the man was dead. The papers didn’t say that the tiger ate him, only that the man’s neck was snapped in two, to disable him from the stones, from the roaring outside, from the cries.

The same article mentions that in the year 2013 to 2014, 80 animals that were placed in the care of Delhi zoo have died. These include—so you can feel even worse, five Bengal tigers. The zoo is killing the tigers, whether by negligence or by design, the tigers are killing themselves, perhaps, just to be free of it.

Not all zoos are bad zoos. Conservationist Gerald Durrell spoke of his plans for his own private zoo on the Jersey island in England at great length in several of his books. Zoos for him were a place to help animals—to breed species that were dying out, to help people observe these species, and at the very last, to allow people to watch the animals in their natural habitat. He begged for land and funds to be able to ensure his animals were in places they considered safe and home—and fed them special treats. Gerald Durrell was involved in his zoo, and like a chef-run restaurant, a naturalist-run zoo is the best kind.

 

So don’t kill the Delhi zoo. What is going to happen to the animals if it is gone? What is going to happen to all the humans who don’t feed the animals chips packets or tease them or jump over ledges? Those humans exist. I was one of those humans. I watched the deer, I watched the tiger and I watched the bears, almost every week. It gave me great joy, mixed with great depression at how unhappy some of them were. Instead, hand over the zoo to new management, a naturalist or a private board interested in conservation and let them run the zoo like the place it is supposed to be: a private haven for lovers of animals. A safe home for animals in danger in the wild.

(Wrote this when the Delhi zoo incident happened for my column in mydigitalfc.com)

Balcony cats

Sniffing the flowers back when we first got her

Back in Delhi for a bit now after a few months of being in and out and there is so much spring cleaning to be done! I sneeze every morning, which sucks, but we haven't been opening any windows or the balcony door because our three cats, unlike TC The Great And Glorious, are not super trustworthy when it comes to the outdoors. Or so we thought.

This morning, Olga da Polga got out in the five seconds the Good Thing had stepped into the balcony for, and as is her practice, clambered into the huge neem tree adjoining it. We called and cajoled (bribed her with bangles, see below) but she'd keep making eye contact and dashing off. Finally, after she did a good explore of the tree, she coolly jumped off the branch and back on the balcony ledge, walking past us as if to say, "Guys, chill, I can totally handle this." In this time, Bruno got out too and was sunning himself by the wall  and Pablo Squishy stepped out, his eyes full of wonder, and it was so nice to have sun, and they were so happy, Olga was rolling around in the dust, her eyes closed, her tail spelling out paroxyms of pleasure. We also thought of our friends' Goa cats, in and out of the house, happy healthy cats, and while living in the city means we can't let them out (dogs, cars, unfriendly people), we could at least let them get some fresh air.

So, cautiously, we left a balcony door open, and Olga The Explora only went out to sniff about, before retreating to her cool spot on the living room floor. Pablo Squishy is hiding out under a chair outside, having ousted Bruno from that spot, and Bruno has found himself a place to nap and to dream.

Indoor cats are often bored and look for trouble (scratch marks on my legs from Pablo Squishy trying to amuse himself by jumping on me) or eat a lot. If I give them enough credit for being smart animals who still have their hunting instinct, I have three happy occupied cats. And apart from Olga, the other two are too cautious to take any flying leaps.

Meanwhile, our windows are wide open and my sniffles are subsiding.

UPDATE: Maybe I spoke too soon. Leaving the windows open led to Olga leaping down onto a ledge, and performing acrobatics from there, giving me heart attacks. We tempted her back, and she scornfully walked in, only to leap out again, taking Copycat Bruno with her. Urgh. They're now ignoring me completely and gazing at the trees. Douchebags.

As far as indoor/outdoor cat spaces go, it could be worse. We're on the second floor, completely surrounded by tall strong trees, and the neighbouring plot is a temple, so the cats aren't going to get stuck in someone's house or something. 

I still wish they'd come in though. So hard to let go!

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned Olga da Polga’s overwhelming love for bangles before, but it’s an obsession with her.
— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) March 22, 2015

I give her metal bangles from weddings & things & she trots around the house holding one in her mouth like a proud retriever.
— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) March 22, 2015

Once she’s done just holding it & loving it, she drops it into a water bowl to keep it safe from the other cats.
— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) March 22, 2015

Problem is, then she can’t retrieve it again, so there are a lot of wet paw prints in the house.
— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) March 22, 2015

Now we have a little velvet jewellery bag full of bangles hanging with our keys. We hand them to her as treats or as distraction.
— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) March 22, 2015

Life In Instagram Part Three

Previously in this series: Life In Instagram, and Life In Instagram Part Two

Death, doom and disaster everywhere I look today, so I'm taking deep breaths and reliving the past with some pretty pictures. Here's what I've been up to! (TRAVEL. BOOKS. CATS.)


I've been travelling like someone who travels for work, and it has been amazing. We don't have that much spare cash, but what we do, we spend on travelling, with not so much back in Delhi. Who needs a new dress when you can have NEW VIEWS, right, RIGHT? (In fact, I'm off to Goa tomorrow, and I haven't visited in over a year, so I'm such an enthu cutlet, my bag is already packed and zipped and ready to go.)

 

First, we went to Gulmarg again, which was a complete winter wonderland this time. The last time I skiied, there was barely any snow, so I had to work with one little teeny tiny patch. This time there was so much snow that my feet sunk into the ground. Amazing.  I took along wellies that my last ex's mum gave me, which barely get any use here in Delhi and they were perfect winter shoes. 

We stayed at the Nedou's like last time, which was cozy and warm, even if the food was a bit same-ish. I recommend it highly though, the service is fantastic, the hotel is warm with hot running water, and it's super pretty.

 

I made my first snowman! The Good Thing and I burbled "Do you want to build a snowmaaaan?" at each other and wound up with this weird snow troll (?) creature. I was quite proud of it, and so I licked his ear, just so a bit of my DNA would stay on him even if he melted or whatever. 

The only thing I didn't like about Gulmarg and Kashmir was how much everyone tried to scam you of your money. I get that it's a rich people's destination, but we were on a fixed budget, and I grew super tired of arguing with people who charged you double, quadruple normal rates just because they could. I finally blew a fuse at the airport on the way home when the taxi driver demanded more money because he took a detour (on his suggestion, because of a jam, with no mention of this extra money then.) I told him people had been trying to cheat me since I landed, and all anyone cared about was money, money, MONEY, and I might have got a bit emotional, but he grumbled and drove off anyway. Oh well. It felt good to rant.

 

Meet Pablo Squishton Escofur/Purruda/Picatto. This is yes, yes, a foster kitten, who I grew so attached to, I begged the Good Thing to let him be a Valentine's Day present, a decision I regret every morning, which is when Squishy (Pablo when he's older) is at his WORST, scratching everything, dancing around like a monkey and generally being the opposite of me, a slow starting morning person at the best of times. I love him when he's curled up asleep or just about getting to drowsiness, his throat throbbing with purrs, but OMG HE WOKE ME UP AT 8 BLOODY AM AND I KNOW HE'LL OUTGROW THIS BUT I AM FULL OF BLOOD AND SCARS. Little rascal. 

 

I have been reading SO MUCH, thanks to a book fair haul, and Aleph/Rupa sending me review books (more on those later, still reading!) This is one of my favourites and I wish I had read it when I was reviewing food for a living a few years ago. This is REAL food writing, not just "we went there and we ate this" and I wish all the Indian food review places would take a few tips. If you're at all interested in food or writing about it, read this immediately. 

Achievement unlocked! I was asked to speak at a panel discussion at LSR! I felt very old especially because of the fresh faced young things gazing up at me, but I did manage to keep it together enough to take this photo in front of the cafe, now always a "cafe" because there's a sign up to let people know "it's NOT a CANTEEN."

I also went off to Pushkar, but looking through my photos I have SO MUCH to say that I'm going to save it for another post. That's my life. How's yours?

Five nice things on a Monday morning

a) It's raining in Delhi, has been for the last two days, and apparently it's a terror to commute, but for those of us cozily tucked up at home with coffee and cats, I recommend this Sufi fusion playlist which I've been listening to and humming along with all morning.

b) For particular interest to those of you who are actually interested in my cat stories, we decided to keep Squishy after all. His name is now Pablo (Squishcasso, Picatto, Escofur, Purruda) and I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo in order to "converse with him in his native tongue." The Duolingo app is kind of amazing, because all you need is 10 or 15 minutes every day (in traffic, on the pot, lying in bed etc) and it teaches you a whole new language. No easy Hindi course yet, alas for The Good Thing, but it does have a Hindi to English course if you know someone with a smartphone looking to improve their English skills.

c) I got sent via email to Soulcial Travel, a random spammy newsletter that I'd normally ignore but in this case, I was bored so I clicked through. It offers volunteer tourism but also shopping-that-gives-back, from where I came across Peter's Pasta. We ordered two boxes of the tagliatelle, one fresh, one dry and Peter came to deliver it himself (which is a nice touch!). Dudes, it was delicious. Order now! We're going to try the ravioli next.

d) Breaking our travel record for the most travel in the least amount of time, we're going to be heading off to Jaipur, Pushkar and YAY GOA in the next few weeks, thanks to a visiting friend of the Good Thing. We're on the verge of penury, but hey, fat bank balance versus travel is not much of a choice, eh? 

e) My book giveaway has started on Facebook! Go check it out and partipate! Free books, what's not to love?

I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy

We got Olga da Polga spayed yesterday, which is quite the operation. On top of this, we're fostering an eight-week-old kitten, who began by being called clever things like Benedict Pawmerbatch and Sub-Klaws, and is now just Squishy. Squishy is the world's cutest kitten, but he's also the world's maddest kitten. Between him scratching all the bare skin he can find, Olga sulking in recuperation and Bruno being very condescending about the pair of them, we have a full (CRAZY) house.

Squishy is all black and now I have to go look for him again, because I keep losing him.

Lord Squishton of Squishfell, Sigil: Claws

You should consider fostering, especially if you'd like a pet but travel a lot or whatever. It's easier and less permanent, plus all the fun of a kitten or puppy without them being boring old dogs and cats.

That being said, he is SUCH a Squishy, let's just say my heart wouldn't break if they didn't find a home for him.

Here's a link to the cat group in Delhi I help out with: Everything Meow.

This is a sort of disjointed post, but there are suddenly kittens that need my attention EVERYWHERE. 

My cat defies cat stereotypes

Olga da Polga is the most affectionate cat I've ever met. We've been away for a while and I came back a little earlier than the Good Thing. She draped herself across my keyboard, vibrating with purrs and this is her sitting on my lap, her head on my chest, purring in time to my heart.
Also I know this is not the most flattering photo of half my face but I had barely any sleep, too many late nights and bad diet so that's why the break out and also it's a weird angle. It's a really good angle of Olga though.
She's not TC but she's doing a pretty good job anyway.

TC Tribute Week: Skuin Who Won Our Hearts And Disappeared

Today's post by a writer I admire very much (and who wrote to tell me about her cat after TC went). Janice Pariat may be a name you're familiar with already (and if you're not, get reading!). This is a story about her cat, Skuin, who was there one day and then not. Some cats just show up and stay as long as we need them. That is the essence of cat. 

(Previous TC Tribute Week posts here and here. My obituary for TC here.)

She came to me a granted wish.

My X-boyfriend and I had visited Friendicoes in the hope of finding a kitten waiting to be homed. “Come back in two-three weeks,” they told us. And we left, empty-handed, disappointed. I hadn’t imagined it would be difficult. (Worse, I hated to wait.)   

The next day, at work, a colleague called. “Didn't you say you were looking for a kitten?”

She’d found one abandoned in a suitcase, in a building somewhere in Lajpat Nagar. Mewing crazily.

She was tiny, about a month old, with stripe-spotted grey fur, and the sweetest, saddest black eyes. We fed her on a diet of watery Cerelac, pooled in our palms, from where she’d lap it all up, her tongue pink and rough. 

“Skuin,” said X when I asked if he had any names in mind. “No, no,” I protested. I didn't want our cat to be called the Khasi word for ‘cute’. But, as these things do, it stuck. We gave her a cardboard box, X’s softest sweater, a hot water bottle, and she promptly abandoned them all to sleep in the crook of my arm, or under my chin, snuggling into my neck like a small luxury fur scarf. She grew and fattened rapidly, slipping into our lives—as cats tend to do—so easily. While I was at work, X told me, she spent most of her time (as I suspect he did) basking belly up on the bed in the Delhi heat, snoozing. But she always met me at the door. 

Skuin grew increasingly prettier too—her chest necklaced by three curving stripes, while the spots on her sides darkened, like a little leopard. Oddly enough, she was most intimidated by the world beyond our doorstep; timidly sniffing the outside air and then dashing back inside at the barest hint of ‘danger’. The only time she did venture into the backyard, she was chased and bitten by a terrifyingly huge tom cat. I remember spending hours trying to coax her out of the electricity metre box in which she hid, on all fours, making cajoling noises, calling her name. Only a few days later did we realise that what we thought was a swollen bruise on her hind leg was a pocket of pus. For the next three weeks, we were at Friendicos every morning at eight. The vet would slip a needle through the gash in her skin, and drain the liquid, while she howled. My heart broke every time. But tough as ever, she got better.  

At the end of that year, X and I moved back to Shillong, Skuin in tow. It wasn't easy. For those of you who’ve travelled to this part of the world, you know it’s a two and a half hour flight to Guwahati, and then a four-five hour drive up the hills into Shillong. By the time we reached Nongpoh, we let her out of her basket, free to clamber the seats and us (not a good idea, but you try sitting in a car that long with a constantly wailing cat).

She was ecstatic, to put it mildly, in my parents house. From a relatively tiny flat in Kailash Colony, she now had not one but two floors in which to wreck general chaos. And a long flight of stairs to tear down chased by invisible pursuers. My favourite memory is crumpling paper and throwing it for her to ‘fetch’ (she had the soul of a dog). In the evenings, she’d curl up on my bed, and slowly inch her way under my blanket. X, who lived with his parents about twenty minutes away, would visit, but she felt like my cat now. It was the time I discovered Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and I liked to think of Skuin as my very own daemon. She’d chatter back at me when scolded, snooze on the book print-outs I was editing, follow me to the loo (!), and drape herself over my bookshelf as I worked.

One night, Skuin slipped through an accidentally left open door and never returned. I don’t quite know what prompted her to venture out. A sense of adventure, or sudden curiosity. True, she’d grown far more interested in the outside world in Shillong—sometimes trying to creep out through the window grills. We searched far and wide, and for many, many days. We left out food bowls that I was excited to find empty in the morning, only to discover they’d been finished by a black-and-white stray. It didn't help that we had a pine forest behind our house stretching over several hills. We placed an advert in the local newspaper, stuck “missing” posters all around the colony, received several prank calls (mean), headed out to people’s homes only to find they’d caught the wrong cat.

I guess what I’ll never have is closure. And for months and months after she vanished the not knowing would become too much. “This is worse than her dying,” I’d weep. But now, four years later, I realise that this incompleteness only allows for more imaginings—that she’s free and happy in the forest, running wild, leading a pack of kindred kitties. I will always imagine her alive.   

(Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, and Seahorse: A Novel. Currently she lives between too many cities to keep pets, but is happy to cat-sit for you. Send her a tweet on @janicepariat)