Feline Affairs

The stoplight at EDSA-Arnaiz Street takes one hundred and twenty seconds to switch from red to green. That, I learned today. 

The bus is still rearing to its complete halt when I notice the cat. It appears to be sleeping---unmoving, tail curled---beneath the pale pool of orange light from the dusty Meralco light post. Michael Bublé's voice blares from the pair of earphones hidden behind the layers of cloth wrapped around my head and I hear none of the impatient honks and angry swoosh of speeding cars in front of me. The cat--or is it still a kitten?---opens its eyes and meets my own. I stare back. The cat opens its tiny mouth and despite the three yard distance, its soft meows drown the last fading lines of Bublé's Home. I felt the urge to go down the bus five times. And yet I didn't. 

The peanut peddler jumps out just as the red zero dissolves into a bright green 120. The bus starts moving again. I look back to where the cat, unperturbed and unabashed, sits. The poor thing was still looking at me, mouth open to muted meows as the urban jungle roars around him. I continue looking until the peanut peddler blocks my view, until the bus rounds a bend, until the opening riff of Sweet Disposition fills my ears, until the hollow hole I felt at the pits of my stomach starts closing again, until the familiar feeling of self-consolation settles once more. I turn around and sit properly again and tell myself that it's okay. I won't be able to take care of the cat anyway. I live alone, I'm rarely at home, and the last bag of cat food was emptied four months back. It's okay. 

Maybe someone---a better, kinder, more compassionate person---will probably bring it home. It's okay. 

Traffic slows down at Nichols intersection so I send a friend a message about what happened. She replies, "Typical. you really don't recognize love even when it is killing you slowly". 

Oh, well. Maybe I'll see that cat again. Maybe then I'll bring it home.

I wrote this September last year on a night when I was feeling more cat-person than usual. I believe it was a momentary emo effect of missing my then-lost cat. To be honest, I am not sure if I can even be considered a cat lover or not. All I know is that I prefer cats more than dogs but that does not mean that I like every cat there is. Even my cat Mjolnir was more affectionate than I am. The friend who gave Mjolnir to me even said that if ever Animal Planet will document our story for My Cat from Hell, they should change it to My Owner from Hell.

Looking back, I realized that the history of my love affair with cats is peppered with traumatic stories. This could probably explain why I am rather wary of everything that demands attachment. Cats included.

My first cat story was with an orange-furred tabby cat. My sister and I named her Mikage. She would frequent our yard during mealtimes waiting for leftover food. In a sense, Mikage was never our cat. My sister and I simply led ourselves to believe that she is. We would often sneak food to give it to her. We would wait behind the wall and make hooting sounds to call her. She will arrive in the usual haughty manner she has, knowing that she had two children under her mercy, eat the food and leave before we would have the chance to pet her. Our relationship with Mikage was obviously unrequited. But young as we were, we held unto the idea that she will eventually like us. It never happened. She stopped coming for lunch one day and we never saw her again. Today, I called my sister to ask if she remembers Mikage. She said yes. She then asked if I remember that moment when we found out that Mikage was actually a male cat. I didn’t. 

The second cat, and probably my biggest heartbreak, is Mabi Maru. Mabi Maru was the only surviving kitten (one of his siblings fell on a ditch and died while the other was abducted by a group of wasted high school kids) of a stray fat cat who found itself on my mothers’ sari-sari store doorstep back in 2002. Still recuperating from the void Mikage left on our young hearts, we begged our mom that we keep Mabi Maru and his mother. And so, Mabi Maru became our first family cat. We were very fond of him. He was a quiet and gentle kitten. Basically, everything Mikage isn’t. He will let us pet him, bathe him, and even cut his nails.  I remember accidentally wounding him once when I was cutting his nails and yet he was still friendly with me. Even my mom was fond of him. Until that day he pooped behind the wall curtain and my mother ordered he be kicked out of the house. To make things worse, it was my sister and I who were tasked to dispose him. With heavy hearts, we brought Mabi Maru and his mom (because he was just a kitten and at least his mom would take care of him---or so we believed) to our town’s old market and left them near a restaurant hoping that by doing so, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to find food. My sis and I would always pass by the old market on the way to school and we would always check if Mabi Maru was still where we left him. On the third day, he was gone. 

Few weeks later, my mom and I were walking home from the old market when I saw this desolate-looking kitty staring blankly into space. I stopped on my tracks and ran back to where the cat was. “Mommy! It’s Mabi Maru!” I have no idea how my little heart managed to take that sudden surge of emotions–––relieved that I found Mabi Maru again, and pained, to see him looking so frail. My heart broke when he opened his mouth and let out the softest, weakest meow I’ve heard. I brought him home and nursed him. I remember eating a few bites from my lunch and giving it all to him. I was so excited to go home that afternoon. But when I came back, I could not find my cat. “He must be playing with the neighborhood cats.” My little cousin’s yaya said when I asked her. It was the same excuse I heard when I asked about him again the day after. And the day after. On the third day, the youngest of the house-helpers confessed that my cat wasn’t really playing with the other cats. “He died. Hours after you left for school on the day you brought him home. We could not tell you directly. Sorry.” “Where is the body”, I asked. "Where did you bury him?” “We just threw him in the river.”

At thirteen, I have felt what it was like to love something dearly in a short span of time and have it taken away from you when you least expected it.

It would be another eight years before I'll have a cat again. His name is Max and he is one-third of the litter of kittens the stray cat in our neighborhood has birthed. Max is basically Mabi Maru incarnate who looks like a tiny Mikage. He is affectionate and gentle; orange-striped and looks exactly like his two siblings. I could not distinguish him from the rest of the orange-furred kittens in the compound. It was my brother who noticed it first. He said that my cat has been waiting for me to come home every night. He says that my cat played with him the entire day and that my cat is the smartest cat he has met. He says my cat is that one with a long tail, the one I pet a lot and usually take photos of. For all those time, I thought I’ve been taking photos of different cats but it seemed that I was playing with one cat only. I never got to recognize Max on my own. The only way for me to know that it was him was to shout “Max!” and wait for the cat who will come jumping to my direction. He was smart like that. He knew me more than I knew him. And then I got busier with life and the time I could spare to get to know him grew less and less. I left Max when I decided to go to Davao. I was gone for a year. He was no longer there when I returned.

Our fourth, fifth, and sixth cat were Buli, Tika, and Ben. They were my grandma’s kittens. A stray cat (our house attracts them, yes) dragged her pregnant self and gave birth to them under our kitchen sink. As a child, my grandma was the greatest cat-hater I know so it was a shock for me when she woke me up one day to gush about these “three cute kittens under the sink”. Buli was named such because he is spotted and “bulingiten” (dirty-looking). Tika, from “tagetiken” (one who always poops), because she always has strings of poop hanging from her butt. I’m not even sure if the third one was even named Ben. I just remember calling him that as a joke because he is yellow-furred. Ben is a play on “benaning/binaning”, the Maguindanaon word for yellow. It bothered me because I remember that it was the yellow one that we named first. It was also the yellow one which left a painful memory when we found him lifeless under our cabinet one morning. I called my sister to ask about Ben’s real name but she doesn’t remember and she suggested that we should ask our brother. I called my brother, asked the question, and he pondered for a while before saying “Buli, Tika, and the one that passed away”.

Anyway, I had fun with these three kittens. They were also the cats I had most photos of. I was not into cats anymore then but it still hurt when we lost Ben. My grandma was also sad. For a moment, I thought Ben’s demise would be the last painful thing. Until one day, I woke up to the sound of my grandma raising hell about something Buli and Tika did. I don’t remember what exactly happened. All that sticks to my memory is that my grandma asked the househelp to put the two kittens in a bag and dump them near the bridge few streets away from our house. Days after that, I overheard my grandmother wondering why the kittens haven’t returned yet. She was so used to cats ending up in our doorstep that she was so sure Buli and Tika would do so too. But they didn’t.

And now, I have Mjolnir. Basically, the seventh cat but is actually the first one that is rightfully mine. He is a suffocating tiny fellow who trusts everyone, eats at least five times in a day, sleeps a lot, and is very hyper at night. I had him, lost him, and found him again. I am not expecting much but I hope that this time, our story won’t be as miserable as the others.