Dog Days and a Gentleman Cat
We were always a dog family. A long line of bitches had been a part of my family since I could remember. Until a handsome grey and white cat stole our hearts and made us his tribe too.
I grew up with stories of the fabled Julie – the best, most beautiful dark brown German Shepherd that had ever lived. A departing sailor had, in last moment panic, discovered he couldn’t take his dog on board ship with him and handed her over to my grand uncle who brought her home. My father’s first dog, and the reason why we always chose to bring home a female dog ever after. More loyal, pronounced my dad. Less likely to misbehave, this with a perfect absence of irony.
When I joined the family, Maggie was already an adult. Another German Shepherd, impeccably pedigreed. These were the years before the awful decline of the breed in India, thanks to unregulated breeding. Maggie was patient with us as babies. As she had done with my older brothers, she would carefully stand still and allow baby me to be placed on her back. I would clutch the thick fur on her neck and get wildly excited as my uncle egged me on the ‘horsey ride’. She really did seem as big as a horse. Maggie died some years after we left my hometown and moved far away.
In the tiny southern seaside town we moved to, we lived in a beautiful bungalow set in a garden. We had everything we could wish for but there was no dog in the house. Tina came to us as a rescue dog. Badly mistreated and neglected by our neighbours (my mother would snarl when she spoke of them even years afterwards), this little white puppy was left chained to their gate, no matter the weather. Their children liked to chain her to the back wheel of a bicycle and ram it in to the garden wall. When they decided to move back up north, they simply abandoned her. My mother marched over, picked her up and brought her home. She had been carelessly named Tommy by her previous family and we called her the closest female name we could think of: Tina. She was a cross between a English sheep dog dam and a street dog sire. At first, she would hide under the sofa and snap at anyone, but especially me. I think I reminded her of the girl next door. It took a while and a few scares to gain her confidence. She was in reality a sweetly natured dog and she adored mum. We could hear her toenails clicking along as she pattered after mummy from one room to another, never letting her out of her sight. Tina ate what the family ate, with one exception. My mother once found curious white shiny pellets in Tina’s bowl after dinner. She puzzled over what they could possibly be. Then she remembered that we’d opened a can of baked beans that night. Tina had licked all the tomato sauce off and left all the naked beans alone. And rightly so. Baked beans are really only edible because of that thick red coating…and Tina was very clear about her opinion of canned goop.
She became a very well travelled dog. Besides our annual vacations to our hometown (a saga consisting of one harassed woman, three kids, two elderly grandmothers, many pieces of luggage and one dog in a first class train compartment), we naturally took her along on all our weekend getaways. We’d pile into the car, point it in one direction and set off to explore the greenest and most beautiful countryside we had ever seen. This was when we discovered that Tina and my brother both got car sick. They would sit, one at each rear window, heads hanging out, while my mum and I hung on to the belt of one and the collar of the other.
But even Tina couldn’t have bargained for the trip we took when I was seven years old. Five of us, a driver and Tina, luggage stacked on top and in the rear of a portly Ambassador, made our way over ten days from Ernakulam to Vadodara to celebrate my navjote (thread ceremony). We stopped at Coonoor, Bangalore, Belgaum, Poona and Bombay en route, visiting friends and shopping for my big day. In Belgaum, Tina, let out in the morning, ran headlong into an open tank of freezing cold water. By lunchtime, she had a hacking cough and her nose had turned dry. There was no vet available in that small and sleepy town. Finally, in desperation, my dad took out his emergency medicine – he opened her mouth, and tipped in a Parsi peg of Old Monk rum. She was soon snoring away and woke up a brand new dog.
Somehow I don’t think Tina ever got over that car trip. The dog who, pre-Navjote odyssey, would dive head first through an open car door and hog a window all for herself, was changed forever. After the trip back home, she kept a wary distance from the car and had to be hauled in, howling so mournfully that people looked at us accusingly.
Tina moved to Madras with us. A whirlwind romance with a lothario who hung about in the building compound led to an unplanned pregnancy. I remember her giving birth on a soft bed under the bathroom sink. As soon as her puppies opened their eyes, she picked up each one and brought them to snuggle in mum’s lap. Tina died some years later of old age and tick fever. My mom cried as we buried her under the papaya trees in the garden. I never saw my mom cry again.
We were again dog less. Then one afternoon, I returned from school to find, curled up and fast asleep on the bright blue counterpane of my brother’s bed, the sweetest little dark brown and velvety nosed daschund puppy, a huge red satin bow around her belly. This was Cherie, the daschund who believed she was a cat. She couldn’t be blamed for this misconception. She was brought up in a house invaded by cats.
Her mentor and hero was a tomcat called Vagabond. I had rescued Vagabond as a kitten from a group of hostile dogs. His mother had hidden the kitten in some thorny bushes but the dogs had sniffed him out. I crawled in and pulled him out. My dad tried the old ‘oh I don’t like cats – they aren’t like dogs’ routine but Vagabond, a perfect gentleman in spite of the name we stuck him with, just kept out of Dad’s way. Inevitably, Dad, always a sucker for good manners, succumbed to his charms. Before long, he could be found curled up at Dad’s feet, purring loudly enough to start a mini earthquake. Vagabond worshipped Mum. Every other morning, she would open the front door at five thirty to find Vagabond and a gift waiting outside – a dead lizard or a rat’s head or some such delicacy. He would gaze adoringly at her while she pretended to go into raptures over the gift. Then she would offer it back to him and with immense dignity, he would accept it and retire to enjoy his breakfast.
When Cherie arrived, Vagabond adopted this curiously elongated kitten with hardly any fur and taught her the feline ways of the world. If he arched his back, Cherie arched her back too, promptly landing in a belly flop. She ate only from his bowl, slept between his front paws, dangled by her sharp little teeth from his large ear. He never showed her or any of us a claw or a tooth. He really was a prince amongst cats. I still miss him dreadfully.
Cherie and Vagabond were the last of our pets. We abandoned them when we fled our home after unspeakable tragedy visited our family. Vagabond, literally, because we shifted home a year afterwards and he, a fully grown half wild tomcat, would not leave his territory to accompany his human acquaintances. Cherie never understood where my brother had gone. She usually refused to enter his bedroom but one morning, we found her lying on a pile of his shoes and boots which she had dragged out into the middle of the living room floor. She went into a decline once we left the only home she had known and all her feline companions in the garden. In our third floor apartment, she was unable to look out of the high windows and became disoriented. Finally, when she stopped eating, my mother gave her away to some kind people with a garden and other pets. It was a guilt laden heartbreak none of us recovered from.
We never brought another animal into our home again. I think we all felt undeserving of the complete and unconditional love and trust that animals give to their humans so willingly.
I imagine the happy day when I might forgive myself and once again bring an animal home to share our lives. If that isn’t in the cards, no matter – Tina and Cherie, Maggie and Vagabond live on in a special corner of my heart.