Shankar Lamichhane
An American friend of mine was departing from Kathmandu. We shared a very cordial relation. My friend had a hybrid Siamese cat for a pet. Now that he was leaving, his predicament was to locate a suitable home for the cat. He requested my help on this matter.
In a way, I am a lover of dogs and cats. Maybe some components of both these animals exist in me. Anyways, I took the responsibility of looking after the cat. It wasn’t that I was totally unacquainted with the appearances of cats, or that I hadn’t written compositions on cats during my schooldays, but till then I had not realized that cats possess some other good and bad characteristics too.
That cat was an example in point. Cats dispose their excreta in a specific place. A wooden box containing sand has to be made ready for this purpose. I did the same.
Early in the morning, my cat used this toilet. There is a folk lore saying that being the paternal aunt of the tiger, the cat taught everything to the tiger except the art of climbing trees. So in anger the tiger said, “You useless rascal, I will not spare even your feces.” So it is said that from that time onwards cats started hiding their excreta.
Thus, this American-Siamese hybrid cat lived with us for about six months. It was after the coming of the cat to live in my household that I had the opportunity to study the behavior of this species for the first time. I realized that in reality cats have clean habits. After waking up in the morning she cleaned her face, and licked her body clean. The furs on her body were sleek and shiny.
At the time when this cat came to us, she was pregnant. After a few months she gave birth. I also realized the implication of the proverb ‘Cats shift their babies to several places’. Holding her babies in her mouth, she took them all around; it seemed her untamed spirit of the wild was not yet extinct. Maybe she still feared that other animals might locate her kitten and attack them.
Then it was time to train the kittens. She taught her jumping, pouncing and striking with paws, displaying anger, and being happy. She instructed the kittens on all tactics of defense and attack; however the saddest moment of the training process was the part where she taught them the act of hunting down other animals.
One day, the mother cat killed a big mouse. There was no visible scratch or wounds on the body of the mouse. She took the mouse under the bed and brought her babies to the fore. At the sight of a strange object, the kittens got scared. The mother started playing with the dead mouse as though it were a toy; it seemed, she was telling them, ‘Why do you fear an inanimate object?” Then the kittens started to play. One of the kittens pulled the mouse in one direction whereas another one pulled it to the opposite side. Even after playing this game for hours the kittens were unaware that the mouse was a food item. Then the mother cat made a lesion on the body of the mouse. After licking the blood of the dead mouse, their killer instinct was aroused and the kittens seemed to realize that this object was a toy as well as an item to eat. Finally there was a spirit of competitiveness among the siblings and they started purring against each other.
This is how a cat works. After this first lesson, the mother starts the next level of training by bringing a live mouse to the kittens. She releases the mouse in the room, while she keeps guard at the door so that the mouse does not escape. At first, the kittens are surprised at the sight of the frightened mouse, but gradually they start to stalk the mouse. At intervals, the mother cat strikes the mouse and makes it very weak. Though the mouse tries hard to escape, it faces disappointment from all four quarters. At the end, the mouse reaches its height of frustration and lies prostrate on the ground.
Seeing the mouse being transported to such a senseless state, my little daughter once remarked, “Father, let’s conceal that mouse in the garden.”
I replied, “Child, this is the law of nature. We have no authority to prevent the natural right of a cat feeding on a mouse. How will cats survive if they don’t feed on mice? More, we can’t keep guard on the activities of the cat all day long.”
I don’t know whether my daughter had the capacity to grasp the symbolic meaning of such philosophical thought at the time; but then, she remained quiet. We continued to watch the process of destruction happening in front of us.
With the growth of the kittens, there is a constant increase in the size of the mice the cat brings in. At the end, the feline catches fully-fledged live mice and releases it in the room. She pounces on the prey, teasingly plays with it, attacks the mouse, and teaches the kittens all types of warfare tactics.
Through this whole process she shows affection on the kittens. Once the kittens gain competence in hunting, her love transforms into a competitive race for survival. Earlier, the mother who silently lets her kittens consume the mouse without feeding on it herself, now even starts to purr angrily at her kittens while she feeds on it.
Assuming this condition is an obstacle to accomplishment. Now their existence was not a collective hunt; in totality it had turned into an individual quest for survival. That time I realized that even in animals, there is an instinct that aspires for individual development. To interpret this in other words, the selfish trait to prevent other individuals from reaching the equal status as oneself is not a product of modern civilization only.
Another thing I observed is that the need for coexistence can to an extent make the feeling of natural enmity subside. For example, a common simile refers to enemies quarrelling like dogs and cats. However, when a condition arises where these two species have to live together, their enmity towards others starts turning into indifference. Later when basking in the sunshine they are even found lying side by side to each other.
After musing over such things, many incidents in life that happen right before our eyes seem more significant than ever; all we need to do is observe them with care. While teaching school children to write compositions on cats and cows, we start with sentences like this: “A cat is a four footed animal” or “A cow is a four-footed animal.” Today I have come to realize the flaws in this method of education. A cat imparts its knowledge by demonstrative technique to its kitten, but the humans have only recently started applying this method in our education policy. That method too has been applied after a history of ten thousand years of human civilization.
Today I realize that if a chance is given to relive the years gone by, many things that we ought to know, things that we missed out on learning, or things we learnt only much later in life would be learnt at the very start of the human civilization.
If we could learn those lessons early, could we change the flow of life to a different direction? Would the number of mistakes we have made be lesser? If not, at least we could have had a greater impact of philosophical thinking in our daily lives. Our knowledge would definitely move to a level higher than that of this stereotypical repetition: “C A T, cat means Biralo.”
Translated by Eda Upadhyaya
[Shankar Laimchhane is perhaps the most revered essayist of Nepal. Though he also wrote stories, he is more counted as a model essayist. His seminal works include Abstract Chintan Pyaj, Godhuli Sanskar, Guanthaliko Gund and others. ]