The last time I was in Amanvana, a Resort in Coorg, I forged a strange connection with a black cat. He brought me no bad luck. But he taught me something about friendship.
The resort was built around a river. I had rented out a private cottage. Around a hundred yards away, the sound of river water rising to the call of the monsoon filled my ears all day. I was tuning into this sound with a half read book in my lap and a cup of tea in my hand when I caught sight of Malcolm – as I choose to retrospectively call him – looking at me like a tanned bushman regards an urbane tea cosy.
Crouched a few feet from me, he hid partially behind the shoots of the plants in the cottage's garden. His thin body was stiff as a lamppost. This is standard operating procedure for cats when they stumble upon human habitation and are thinking whether it's smarter to hide or to run. Perhaps past experience showed that a tourist may offer him food. On the other hand, millions of years of evolution also suggested that the said tourist might reach out and break his neck.
Cat in CoorgHaving domesticated cats I knew a few tricks. And so I called out to him in a soft voice. Cats recoil from loud noises. They can detect coarseness, even falseness, in a human voice faster than a woman can see through a gift calculated to control damage. But despite my soft call, Malcolm did not budge. He continued to stare. I felt like something inside a museum exhibit. He probably felt that way too. Finally I left the unfinished tea cup down on the patio and walked back into my cottage, careful not to surprise him with any sudden movements.
A few minutes later, Malcolm approached the tea cup and after a few tentative sniffs, proceeded to lick the leftover brown liquid at the base of the cup. I watched him discreetly from the window. There is something surreal about a cat that drinks tea. I'd never seen that happen before. Perhaps he liked the taste of milk swilling around somewhere inside it. Or maybe he was famished.
blackcat in CoorgLet me describe Malcolm for you. He was black but he wasn't all black. A strange coppery tone marked his fur in places. He looked like he had fallen inside a mine as a kitten and gotten permanently tattooed by the colours of the ore. It gave him a regal but raggedy look like a prince in exile. His eyes were hard and bright and mistrustful. I have this habit of projecting a city's cultural zeitgeist on to its animals. I like to think all stray cats in Bangalore are cosmopolitan in their outlook. And all Kerala cats might be socialists and will share their fish bones with you if you ask. What would Malcolm, a stray cat in Coorg, be then? A pioneer? An injured field marshal? Maybe that's what he was. A battled-scarred field marshal on a furlough from an interminable civil war against the cats from the neighbourhood resort. Someone who needed his tea before he got back in the field. I thought of an advertisement for cat tea. A black cat sits snugly on a sofa set, dressed in breeches and a safari hat. Before him is a cup of tea. Steam rises from it. The headline reads, I like the smell of tea early in the morning.
That is exactly what seemed to be going through Malcolm's mind after he finished the tea. Tired but poised, he licked his face diligently. Then he looked up and saw me staring from the window. And the caution re-entered his body like a quiet bolt of lightning. Malcolm may have survived a fall down a bronze mine and the worst part of an ongoing civil war with his bastardly peers. But human beings were a different matter altogether.
All through the day I left food outside for Malcolm to eat. He never came when I called. But each time I placed some food near the garden, it disappeared a half hour later. And if I craned my ears, I would hear his sharp teeth biting into the food from his hideout deep inside the garden somewhere. Like street dogs that prefer to insure their food before they eat it, Malcolm seemed to want to retrieve his food to a safe spot before he could dig in. Maybe he was a private man like me. Or maybe he was used to biting a rogue cat's ear off in order to preserve his lunch.
Night came. I went outside looking for Malcolm. All I wanted was some basic interaction, a little friendship. I did not want loyalty. I am not a fool. Cats are about as loyal to your affections as a house spider is to a hit television program. I just wanted the wall between us to crack a little. I wanted him to allow my hand to graze his face. But no such luck.
Malcolm ate food only after I had dropped it to the ground. After getting him hooked to the food that night, I held out a piece of chicken in my hand and sat that way for a full minute. He hovered around my hand like a suitor hangs around outside the house of a woman he is awfully smitten by but simply does not know how to court. Then Malcolm got restless. Why can't you drop it, he seemed to say. You and your anthropomorphic dreams about animals. I don't want friendship. I want food. I understand that. I am also trying to be friends. When my basic needs are consistently unmet how am I to move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and aspire for affiliation and belonging? Those are your privileges. Not mine.
Alright, Malcolm. I don't even want friendship now. I just want you to take this piece of chicken from my hand. If you can't even do that, you have serious issues. You will fail at building the tiniest rudiment of trust between man and beast. Furthermore, whoever occupies this cottage after me will not give you a second look, forget keeping aside food for you from his plate and looking for you at 10 pm so you can eat it off his hands. I am fine with all that, mate. Why this interminable fuss about eating it off your hands? I don't know you. You can snap my neck in three seconds. Do I look like a thug? Do I look like I need a friend? Everyone needs a friend. You sound like a Hallmark greeting card. This is the jungle. We eat anything that moves. And we don't recognize our mothers when we become men. We don't want friendship. From whatever little we know of your lot, friendship – and other pleasures – causes pain. I don't expect anything from you. So said the man who tortured the cat with a piece of chicken held in his hand so that they could become friends!
After the blood went stiff in my arm, I dropped the chicken on the patio and went back inside. From the window I saw the light glinting off Malcolm's eyes which looked like reflector lights on a cycle's tyres. Another jungle accoutrement, Malcolm? Reflector eyes to ward off your mother who has come to steal your food, not knowing it's her son's pad.
Half an hour later, I looked in on him. The food was gone. I hung around for a while but Malcolm did not come back that night. He was either full or nonplussed with my narcissistic need to make an emotional difference to a savage. Or both. I never saw him before I left. But something tells me when I go back to Amanvana in the winter, he will come around to visit again. When that happens, I will unconditionally offer him tea and some fish before he rests and gets back in the field to defend his patch of ground or annex the territory of the cats in the neighbourhood resort. I will ask nothing of Malcolm anymore. If you fall in love with something in a rabbit hole, you probably set it free. Is that also from a Hallmark greeting card? I hear Malcolm say laughing as he climbs back into the night.
- Philip John
http://blog.amanvanaspa.com/domesticating-field-marshal-malcolm-in-a-coorg-resort/
http://www.amanvanaspa.com/
Share This Article
