THE BLACK CAT

(A Story)

By T. J. RANGANATHAN

(Rendered from Tamil by Manjeri S. Isvaran)

It sounds incredible, does it not, that a cat should talk? But that black cat did talk to me. Not with the voice of Ramachar, my immediate neighbour, nor as Sankara Iyer who lived three doors off. It didn’t talk like you and me. What does it matter how it talked? And what, after all, is talk? An expression of ideas, an emotional outlet,–to put it broadly. Very often I understood the feelings of that cat as clear as the waters of a spring.

Miaow!

Inside of a few days after we occupied the new house I heard the voice of the cat. Dwelling-places have their own distinct personalities, it takes some time for one to get oneself acclimatized to an abode recently moved into. Surely the cat must have been aware of this fact. And that was why it had been patiently watching every little habit of mine.

Where was I to put my books? Which nook would admit my bedstead? What spot would set off my chair and work-table? For over a week spent in arrangement and re-arrangement I fixed up the final proper places for these. All these days the cat must have been

watching me. For with every change in my proceedings it had made corresponding changes in its own, quietly, silently. If in the north-facing room upstairs I settled the almirah of books the cat retreated into the room in the south; if I spread out my bed there it scuttled and ensconced itself in the dealwood box stowed away in a corner of the hall. Till I had allotted to myself places for work and rest on a permanent basis, the cat must have passed through a difficult period indeed. Finally, one day, I installed my chair and work-table in the corner where it was lying. That proved the proverbial last straw. It thoroughly fed up. It didn’t scoot. It stood, arching its back, yawning and licking its whiskers, and glaring at me with its yellow green eyes. Then, lifting its head, it cast a quick glance on the chair and the table.

Miaow!

I looked at the cat closely. It was really a beautiful creature. Its black shape seemed to emerge from a magical world. Like the light that is seen on the brows of those immersed in yogic contemplation, a white stripe of the size of a little peepul leaf spread from the tip of its nose up against its forehead. Its voice was soft, infinitely soft.

Miaow!

I grasped clearly what it expressed. “What, brother, don’t you understand my misery? Why do you drive me thus from corner to corner? You deny me the smallest place to rest awhile. Why?” it seemed to ask me.

Poor thing! Blind mouth! Quite unwittingly I had been inflicting pains upon it. But is it possible to sympathise with every little creature that draws breath in this wide earth? I had to do my work it had to do its. Moreover I paid the rent for the house. I must live in it according to my sweet will and pleasure, exercising the fullest freedom over it which was my fundamental right. It was ridiculous to sacrifice my comforts for the sake of a cat.

M-m-mm-iaow!

Whining plaintively and glancing at me once the cat ran out of the house. Its cry went straight to my heart, it was so touching in its mournfulness. “Because you pay the rent you think it fit to assert your right over the house. But I’ve been living here for long and by sheer flux of time am I not also entitled to enjoy part of the right?” it appeared to question me. Let it justify itself as it pleased it, about lease and tenancy and loopholes in the law, but I was sure that it was not going to leave the house. A cat didn’t worry about the people with whom it had become familiar; its greatest attachment to the place which it had made its home through years of stay. I have read this interesting observation somewhere.

Settled the fact: the cat was not quitting the premises. And living with us how was it going to affect us? To what profit and loss were we to be put? It is quite natural to come across some drawback, some difficulty or other in a rented building. And the difficulties are many if one happens to be a co-tenant. This is no place to expatiate on them: suffice it to say that I have suffered enough by being one. This is a place all to ourselves. No more bother with other families. The landlord is a nice man, very accommodating,–so ran my thoughts and I was glad when I took possession of the tenement. But now here was a cat come to disturb us, to destroy the unalloyed happiness of our sole tenancy! On second thoughts, however, I didn’t mind it. This cat, like the landlord of a house where I had lived once, will not cut off the electric connections every other hour; like him it will not snap: Turn the watertap three-quarters, now just half, confound you, I told you only a quarter; don’t stack the firewood there, don’t pile up the charcoal here; don’t spit there, don’t sneeze here. So I concluded: Let the poor cat curl itself up in a corner. It was not going to hinder us in any way. Why. its presence registered real profit to us. My wife and children need no longer hunt for rats, arming themselves with faggots as they did a year ago in another house. The black cat would relieve them of the job. So I decided to leave free for it a corner of a room upstairs where it was perpetually dark. And I placed the deal-wood box there (removing it from the hall)–a cradle for its comfortable repose.

The cat complimented me on my sense of understanding. It accepted the corner and the box and began its life with the hope that there would be no further threats to its security.

After this I had no more truck with the cat. Was I a country boor, living in a village in the jungle, to dally with cats and dogs and the meanest creatures that came my way? An urban man and civilised I had to attend to my work.

But within two months a new situation arose; the cat littered.

No nurse or doctor had come to the house–as they generally do to check and advise when any of the women in one’s family expects her confinement. And to my knowledge the cat had not visited a maternity hospital. Still it had brought forth. The box of deal was its delivery chamber. Early one morning, casually looking into the box, I had seen two little kittens, as small as mice, sucking at the paps of the black cat. The box was clean, without the slightest dirt. And the cat and the kittens too were spotlessly neat, their furs shone pure like newly laundered silk. This cleaning was the work of the mother cat. Ah, what marvels of ingenuity lie hidden in nature! For it is really a costly business–to think of childbirth in terms of a modern maternity ward.

The cat lay suckling the kittens and licking them with tender motherly love. The more I looked the more delighted I grew at the sight. I shouted to my wife and children: -

“Come, all of you, and see what’s happening here. A cat has littered! A cat has littered!”

They came. They saw. Their happiness was indescribable.

“How wise is this cat!” said my wife.

I wondered at her remark.

The boys drew nearer and peered at the kittens.

“Keep back, children. Don’t go too close. A newly littered cat is always an angry one. And don’t touch the kittens. Even a domesticated cat when it is with its young ones will snarl at you and scratch you if you approach it. This black oat is still a stranger to us. So beware,” I warned them.

After much laughing and rapt peering we left the cat and the kittens to themselves. In the evening, however, my wife chanced to peep into the deal-wood box. She was surprised to find it empty. But looking around she saw the cat lying snugly at the foot of my almirah of books, suckling one kitten, while the other was underneath the cot behind the big tin trunk in which the Kolu dolts had been packed away.

This was its first manoeuvre and in the days that followed the cat made successive strategic moves. Perhaps it was afraid that we would take away its young ones. Or it wanted to guard itself against some unknown enemy?

We kept a careful watch over it. And during the daylight hours, for three days continuously, at no time did we see it without giving suck to the kittens.

“How does it manage to go on nursing its young like this? When does it go out in search of prey? And if it has nothing to eat where does the milk come from endlessly?” asked my wife, genuinely surprised.

“Maybe, it goes out in the night,” I said. “Even then, for every five minutes it’s away it stays inside the house for quarter of an hour. I’ve often noticed it.”

My wife was all kindness to the cat. She put before it a bowl rice soaked in milk. From that moment it became more and more attached to us.

Suddenly one day we found one of the kittens missing. Did the cat grieve over it? Surely it must have. Even an animal has maternal instincts. But it was not an exhibitionist like a human being, this black cat. We were really sorry.

The kitten that remained behind was black as the mother cat. It had also a white stripe on its forehead but it was not so pretty as its mother’s.

During the hours the mother cat was away I began slowly to familiarise myself with the kitten. The instant it saw its mother returning, it would scamper towards her. Sometimes it didn’t: then I would shoo it away for fear the cat would leap upon me and maul me.

We were giving milk and rice to the cat; we regarded it affectionately; we petted its young one. Still it kept its distance, we weld afraid even to touch it.

One day while serving it with milk my wife very boldly stoked its back.

“Don’t touch it, don’t,” I cried, alarmed, “it’ll scratch you. What stupid venturesomeness is this?”

“It won’t do anything,” she said, laughing. “Come, you may also touch it. Do.” And she nodded her head invitingly to me.

“Is it in any way wonderful to touch a cat? Does it promise nirvana? Enough of your pranks,” I snapped, angered at her sauciness.

Afterwards when I was alone I wished to chum up with the cat. I whistled softly At first the cat stared at me. Then, slowly, it stepped nearer and nearer. It was right at my feet. I touched it!

Soon we began to feed the mother cat as well as the kittens liberally: with milk and rice, appalams and vadams, with every sweet and savoury prepared in the house.

We named the kitten Ranjitam although it was black as night. My wife bestowed on the mother cat the very fitting appellation of Karuppammal. Thereafter the cat and the kitten became acknowledged members of our family. But, alas, we couldn’t include Ranjitam and Karuppammal in our weekly ration cards. That was their one and only limitation. Let the Food Department take note of this fact.

Days passed,

And then–

And then, we couldn’t bear the havoc caused in the house by the cat and the kitten. Few were the spots where they didn’t leave their squalid impress. Seated in the chair I would be absorbed in writing interesting story; the kitten would jump on to my lap and curling itself up go to sleep. However much I pushed it out, again and again it would run up to me and nestle in my lap. The nights were worse. Her hunt over, the mother cat carried to her kitten delicacies of mice to eat.

It happened one night.

I had just retired to bed and hardly had my eyes closed in slumber when I was startled by a sudden hubbub. There came a fierce growl punctuated by sharp, grating noises. I switched on the light. It was ghastly–all along the foot of the walls. A shudder passes through me when I think of that sight. I don’t find the adequate words to describe the feelings of horror and disgust it raised in me. In a patch of blood from which drops had spurted out in poxy spots a rat was running to and fro, round and round in horrid death agony. With short, sharp leaps, hissing viciously, the kitten was biting and mauling the back of the rat to tatters. I have not seen the tiger that hunts the bison in the wilderness. But I could guess now how that hunt would be. At that moment we were all afraid to approach the kitten. It looked so ferocious. I shoved it back with a handy stick and balancing the mangled rat at the end of the same stick threw it out onto the margin of the road. My wife washed the bloodstained floor and wiped it, dry with a rag. “Tomorrow, first thing in the morning: to drive this kitten out of the house,” I cried as I sought my bed.

“That’s right,” concurred my wife.

The day dawned. My anger towards the kitten was somewhat mollified. But the anger of my wife stayed great. She was adamant in her decision.

“Give the poor thing a little rice,” I said to her, laughing.

“What! Rice for the cat indeed! In these days of iron rationing! Cut up chunks of mud and throw the stuff at its mouth,” she roared.

She had said the last word. Nothing could happen after that. The joy of my youngest son knew no bounds. He chased the kitten the live-long day. It disappeared. Where? Did it die on the road caught under the wheels of a passing car? Or had a mongrel dog torn it to bits? To what plight had it come to? We never knew.

Having driven out the kitten I was as melancholy as a gib-cat, as the saying goes. But there was my work to distract me. My dejection was short-lived.

For quite a long time the mother cat came during the night in search of the kitten to feed it with mice which it had caught. With its whimper it made the dark hours mournful in the extreme.

But time heals the harshest pain. It makes one forget sorrows however great. Very soon I forgot the kitten. Within a fortnight the cat too had forgotten.

Two, three months passed. It was the same story. The cat was heavy with young; it littered again. This time also the kittens were two: one black and the other grey.

Again sympathy was born in our hearts for the cat. We started to feed it with milk and rice. Everything happened as of old. Again, within five or six weeks we had reached the end of the tether. The situation had grown intolerable. The entire top floor stank with filth. During nights mouse after mouse tumbled from the jaws of the cat.

“We’ve got to chuck out these kittens too,” I said finally.

“What’s the use of chucking out the kittens merely? The cat that brings forth endlessly should first be thrown out. That alone would solve the problem, would save the situation, in whatever way you choose to put it. Else be on the lookout for another house,” said my wife.

“A cat by itself is no nuisance. It’ll take some months for it to litter next. We shall think of the cat all in good time. Now the point is to get rid of the kittens. At once,” I said and with firmness too.

“I shall do it, I am ready,” said my youngest son, stepping before me.

In fondling the kittens as in chasing them out of the house, in the matter of the cat bringing forth for the third time, in neglecting his lessons, in staying away in the playground–if left to himself–all the hours of the day–in everyone of these he showed the greatest gusto. Lightly lifting up the kittens and bearing them in his hands he went out of the house. In a jiffy he was back saying: “Done!”

“Where did you leave them?” I asked him, amazed at his quickness.

“In the temple kitchen. You know it, don’t you?” he said enthusiastically.

This time also I was dejected at the removal of the kittens. And as before, the mother cat went about whining and whimpering for upwards two weeks. But all of a sudden I noticed a change in its attitude. Earlier in this narrative I have referred to a point in animal psychology; now I saw quite the contrary of it. Our black cat ran across the roofs of the neighbouring houses, slipped in and out through window-bars in top-storeys, but it didn’t for once step into our house. It seemed no longer to care for its old, familiar shelter. Sometimes it looked at me in a way, I thought, as though it wanted to talk to me. I even suspected that one of my sons or my wife had scared it off. I asked them if it was so, but they denied vehemently. Whatever it was, it had somehow struck the cat that one and all of us hated it heartily.

“Wide is the world, brother, immense it is. Don’t think that it is circumscribed within the four walls of the house in which you dwell. You are not the only one to be born, to live, to die. I too was born, I am living, I will die. Love for love; hate for hate; indifference for indifference–all these you can see even in a cat.” So it seemed to talk to me. My mind was in a flutter.

The cat continued to walk across the roofs of the adjacent houses, and though it saw me it pretended otherwise. Shortly there occurred an incident, one night, tending to melt the heart.

Usually I read myself to sleep; I don’, remember at the moment whether I had been reading then or not. I was vaguely conscious of the unfolded book resting on my breast, awareness grew gradually blurred, the eyelids drooped.

“Are you awake?” It was the voice of my wife calling me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, mumbling irritably, rolling over to a side on the bed.

“Don’t you hear that sound, gurgle, gurgle, coming from the well in the courtyard?”

“Gurgle, gurgle! Clotted nonsense. What wild fancies always have! Shut your mouth and go to steep.”

She was silent.

But soon my sleep being nipped in the bud, my ears turned sharp, and I did hear that sound.

Yes, it came from the well. Again. Again. Whatever the creature that had fallen into its depths, it was trying to climb out and in climbing up to a short height was falling down, foiled in every attempt, as though the hands were too fatigued to keep their clutch What did it matter who or what it was–man or animal? It is an awful thing to be drowned to death. Terribly agonising. Here a life in the throes of death fighting bravely for the continuance of its breath. Aware of it how could I be so callous? When the day breaks would one see it alive? No, one would only see a dead carcass.

“Yes, I hear the sound now. Come, let us go and see what it is” I said to my wife, rising from the bed.

The battery in my torch was exhausted, so I lit a hurricane lantern. We reached the well. But how was it possible to light its dark depths with such a lantern? It couldn’t be held upside down.

I put the Deitz on the hip-high circular parapet and let down almost three quarters of a long rope into the well. I heard the creature below falling back repeatedly, splashing the water in its attempts to clamber up the wall. It didn’t catch hold of the rope. I thought of the fisherman to whom a twitch at the end of his line communicates his catch. The rope didn’t twitch.

So what?

At this juncture, as luck would have it, my next door neighbour came up to us lighting his way with an electric torch. Forthwith he sprayed its beams into the well, all the three of us peering down simultaneously. Good gracious! It was our black cat.

Hitching a bucket at the end of the rope we let it down into the water, shifting the rope gently this side and that, so as to make the bucket float with a light, paddling movement. Our attempts were successful at last. The cat had crept into the bucket. We drew out the rope carefully, foot by foot. As soon as the bucket touched the top of the parapet the cat cast a look at me and my wife, and in the wink of an eye–strange indeed must have been its thoughts–had taken a flying leap, its wet fur bristling, and run out of our sight without turning back even once.

It struck me as curious, this behaviour of the cat. “Why did you rescue me? What is it to you whether I live or die?” Did it mean to say so? Worse than death to owe one’s life to one’s enemies disgraceful–such it seemed to me its feelings as it ran precipitately and was swallowed by the night.

Kind reader, bear with me. Don’t take me for one who is off his nut for cogitating thus: “Keeping myself to myself I lived in an obscure corner. You drew me out, gave me milk and rice, and shared my taste for every kind of edible. Cosseting me in your lap you stroked my back with tender affection. You fondled my little ones and made merry with them. My joy was boundless at the wonderful life you made me live. Then you drove out the kittens–my young ones not yet weaned–drove them out one after another mercilessly. O, those agonising days! How I hungered to catch a glimpse of my darlings! Next you kicked me out. I became disgusted with life. I jumped into the well to kill myself. You rescued me. Why? For what purpose? Alas, alas, the ignonimy! It is too heavy to bear.” Might the cat have expressed thus?

“How we cared for it since first we saw it! Misfortune never comes singly but one upon another in quick succession–laments man when his condition is terrible. How true it is for this cat too!” sympathised my wife.

I felt miserable.

A couple of months passed. I didn’t catch sight of the cat on the surrounding house-tops. Was it hiding away shame-faced? Or as modern psychologists aver, was it my own painful mental reaction that made me miss seeing it? I don’t know.

One day, late in the afternoon, I was sitting all by myself tuning the radio. What happened presently was nothing short of a miracle. Our black cat–she who had seen the acme of happiness and the abyss of misery–that magic cat with silk-soft fur stood by my side!

The same old voice! So mournful!

“I don’t mind what you did to me, I bear you no grudge. Enmity is lie; hatred is lie; jealousy is lie; denial is lie. Kinship is joy; attachment is joy; life is joy; to make one live is the highest joy. I’ve realised this, brother. You too realise the same. Here and now as you see me, aren’t you thrilled with happiness?” In this strain the cat appeared to speak to me; why, it certainly did speak to me,–not through the medium of language but through the look of its eyes, the tone of its cry, the gestures of its mobile body.

Miaow! Miaow!

I was happy. The cat was happy. Wriggling with a mew, relaxing with a purr, it rubbed its body against my legs, now one, now the other.

Whistling hilariously I hurried downstairs followed by the cat.

“It has come back!” I said to my wife.

She was bending over the oven, blowing into the raw casurina faggots raising smoke and sparks.

“What has come back?” she said, turning round, coughing softly. The smoke had got into her lungs.

She saw the cat. She seemed to take its arrival as quite ordinary.

“Give it a little milk,” I said to her.

“You laze about, The cat too,” she answered, laughing. Then she brought some milk and poured it into a cocoanut shell. The cat began to lap up the milk in swift, short laps, She stood gazing at it with a mother’s fondness.

Presently, without looking at me, and a smile lighting up her face, she said:

“That’s right. Now I know clearly why it has come back.”

Her meaning eluded me for just a little.

“What is it?” I asked,

“Look at its belly,” she said briefly, and went abruptly inside, not caring to catch my eye or to continue the conversation.

I couldn’t control my laughter.

“It may be,” I cried, loud enough to reach her ears.

I thought that the cat that had resumed its friendship with us would come to us daily, as before, for milk and rice. But it didn’t. Nevertheless it annexed its old haunt, the room upstairs.

It was the third day after its return. I remember it vividly. Peeping into the deal wood box which had remained all along in its accustomed corner, I saw the oat reposing blissfully along with two kittens, diminutive as mice.

“Father, do you know where I am going to take these kittens this time!” cried my youngest son gleefully.

“Where?” I asked, not incurious.

“You’ve seen the Mutt near the temple. There!” he said, triumphantly.

Bless the lad. In this wide, wide world that has neither beginning nor end, what place was worthier than a Mutt which resounded to the chants of the hymns and lays in praise of the Lord, to the invocation of His myriad names? To us, the kittens were a great nuisance. Let the little creatures find their destiny there. We don’t stand in the way. Our good wishes go with them.

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