Mrs Goody Two Shoes - II

Adjust maadi with canines and felines

There is only so much one can do for them. Alley cats and the stray dogs, but can one go any further than that?


In our home, we had eighteen windows and four doors on the groundfloor. And as happens in houses with a dozen people living there and dozen more walking in and out daily, those windows and doors were never shut. So along with the dozen visitors came in the alley cats and the stray pups who gradually overpowered our senses and usurped our lives. These smooth operators used only heavy doses of emotional atyachaar so that the items on the top of shopping lists changed from sausages for me to fish for the cats and meat for the dogs, the first morning chore became mixing a huge bowl of chapatis with milk (full of cream), and every outing was planned around their convenience.
I have invested my emotions and time in them, adored them, been blinded in love. So no one, no animal rights activists, no ardent dog lovers or cat followers, NO ONE, can ever say that I do not know how to adjust maadi with these animals around. Well, but one must accept that I am human, and even if they say I have a big heart and am a kind soul, there is no way I could shower my love unquestioningly on the universal set of animals.
I mean, when this (senior) colleague of mine would passionately show me images she has downloaded ("I have chosen the very best ones" and oh, that gleam in her eyes) of snakes, she was testing my patience, my courage, my being-grossed-out quotient. No offence to charmed-by-snakes people, but I was traumatised by those images hours after there had been a slide show of the reptiles in the office which I had to politely watch.
Well, as I was saying, I do tolerate dogs and cats. And one day, I got talking to generous, rotund Latika auntie in our complex, who loves feeding all around her, which would include us and the large family of strays right outside the gate (who get double treats since the food she brings us also mostly go to them). So as we were having a 'conversation', she manipulated me into her ritual of giving breakfast, lunch and dinner to the animals. My grocery list now included four liters of milk instead of two, 2 kg of meat instead of one and so on and so forth. I began living with it. Until, one morning... "Beta, bring some bananas and apples also na." "Vegetarian canines and felines?" I wondered in my drowsy, fuzzy mind. "Look who I have brought. Are they not beautiful cows?" Hold it, HOLD it! I didn't bargain for this! Fresh fruits for my morning salad, being chewed by cows as they put their heads through my balcony railings. And in return, they turned their backs, liberally sprinkled their 'holy water' right outside my home (with some sprays hitting me) and left without so much as a thank you...