My Life among Cats

By Hasan Wadud

Cats have been a part of my life since I was three.

It all started one day when we were invited for breakfast at my father’s friends house. We had noticed that he had a lot of cats. When I say lot, I really mean a lot. Like around 20. So he asked us if we wanted one. We agreed. 

We took a cat home and we named her — Nanny. She was a cute, bold, greenish brownish black, striped cat. I remember her as my mate. She was more than a cat. I loved her a lot. She gave birth to a lot of cats — around 25.

I enjoyed growing up with cats. They were funny creatures. They knew martial arts like no human. They were cute. They were intelligent. They were curious. They were loving. They had a lot of attitude. At the same time, they were innocent. So… you can’t describe them in a sentence. If you do, it’ll be in the size of a paragraph. 

There were also very heartbreaking incidents. Many passed away, many got lost.

Then my father was transferred to Hyderabad, around 3000 km away. We only took Nanny with us. On the flight. Surprisingly, the ticket of a cat was the same as an adult human.

She gave birth to around 20 more. And also, I remember a few names — Muezza l, Muezza ll, Apu, Deepu, Maalu, Damu, Ammu, Butter, Necklace, Leo etc. 

I remember a particularly interesting incident.

Nanny was now a grandmother. Necklace, who was the daughter of Nanny, gave birth to four kittens one morning. The same day Nanny also gave birth to three kittens. And there were around five cats more in the house who were siblings of Necklace. That was our maximum number of cats together at a time — 14.

After some months, when I was around nine, Nanny passed away. It broke my heart… She was my mate. I still remember this as a pothole in my life.

After a few more years, my father was transferred back to Nagaland.

Unfortunately we couldn’t take the cats to Nagaland. After coming to Nagaland, I searched hours, days and months searching for cats. I never thought life without cats would be this bad. Finally I got one — Chumdemo Humtsoe, another of my father’s friends, brought a cat for me.  

It was small. Only two months old. It cried a lot. But it loved me a lot. I made poem for it, slept with it and enjoyed my life. I thought he was a boy and called him “Peter”. It was only when “Peter” was pregnant that we got to know she that she was a girl! Hehehehe. So now we called her “Pitu”. She too gave birth to 10 kittens. The journey is still going on and my love for cats will definitely last a lifetime.

You can watch a video of my dear kitten Damu here. This was made during Covid, when he used to attend online classes with me. The file is password protected. You will have to type Damu to open it. The video was made by my elder sister.

©Hasan Wadud