Life and Love with Furry Friend
Let me begin this write-up by proclaiming that I had been a dog lover for 25 years of my life. And I had abhorred cats. I had never had either for pets. Never-mind that my idea of having pets was shaped by popular notions over the internet.
I had always admired the joy dogs looked like over the web. Too scared to ever engage with an actual dog in real life, it seems I had only liked the idea of having pets (read dogs).
But then life persuaded me towards co-existing with a cat for a few months and all that I have amassed from that experience is something I will carry with myself for life.

I think it began because in many ways N* is, what I’d like to believe, a cat magnet. She has this uncanny ability to befriend street cats with ease. It’s almost like her feline superpowers are straight out of a Murakami book.
Anyway.
So I do not think that the cat had the slightest idea how late we were for work when we first had her meowing right below our balcony. Anyhow, we (mostly N) stopped to engage with it. I still remember looking at it and greeting it with a “hello, asshole”. But it kept mewing and I honestly did not know what to do so I extended the fried snack I was chewing on. I guess it liked it because it proceeded to devour the rest of it, excluding me out of my own meal.
There were a number of dynamics involved but I’ll skip right to the part where it finally started coming from the balcony to inside the house. At first, I did not understand the hesitation and the immense time it took, spanning over months, to come in. Credit to N here whose charms led the cat inside, not without tremendous efforts though.
And thus, began this journey. (Someone once told me that drama resides in my soul, they weren’t entirely wrong).
In retrospect, I understand why the cat took so much time to come inside the house. As a specie, they are wary of most things. The ones on the street usually have seen the worst of human species and therefore, use their wisdom to carefully choose and place their trust in humans. Apparently, it’s a natural feline behaviour and an essential part of their self-care.
By now, the cat, now christened as Meenaxi and fondly referred to as Meenu, had become an important part of our evening routine. As much as I’d like to call myself an animal lover, I had never been near one and thus, this wasn’t easy for me. I had no idea what to do when I was the centre of an animal’s attention. So I chose to shriek. I yelled for people around me to save my life when the cat approached me. N obliged the first few times but since this evolved as my natural reaction to the cat, I think she got annoyed and asked me to deal with it.
Thus, I was stuck in a room with a cat sitting near my feet and meowing and N refusing to rescue me. That’s when I touched it, unsupervised by N for the first time, in an attempt to calm it. And I realized that that’s all she wanted. To be petted. Phew!
And that’s how we became friends. Almost.
Soon after, she got knocked up and started coming over more frequently. N, for her understanding of animal behaviour, set up a small carton, food bowls and litter box for her. After days of roaming in the house, claiming territory and eating our food, she proceeded to give birth to a littler of three. Thereafter, she never moved out. (The kittens were adopted by superb people after the kitties pooped in our entire house, scratched N’s hands and used her feet as obstacle course while she was asleep).
In the months that followed, Meenu and I became friendlier. By now, she allowed me to touch her whiskers, count her teeth, inspect her tail, study her mammary glands, use her as footrest, pull her cheeks and carry her around. In the process of all these activities, she taught me such beautiful things about self-care and love that I wouldn’t have stressed on otherwise.

To begin with, she taught me that absolutely no one in the world deserves my affection merely in return for theirs. It is a choice to return all the love I receive or downright ignore it, depending on how it makes me feel. She also taught me that an affection that is returned sometimes needs to be preceded by a myriad of attributes that help sustain that affection further. For her, it was trust. And food. Fish, to be precise.
As a corollary to the above, affection can be rejected if it is unwanted, even from the people we love dearly. Meenu, for instance, wouldn’t accept love when she wanted to concentrate on other important endeavors, like licking her butt-hole. An unwanted cuddle made her squirm, growl and on most occasions, get up an walk away. Similarly, affection can be looked upon as something that adds to the entirety of life experiences and doesn’t necessarily have to be the only life experience we center our life around. While this is something I’d like to have known when I was 20 and didn’t have enough clarity, as a 26 year old, however, I understood it fully well in theory. In practice, though, establishing boundaries with people has always been a little difficult for me. Especially with people I care about, in relationships I strive to maintain. Looking at Meenu practice this everyday, somehow, allowed me to explore this deeply in my own life. While it’s still on-going, I feel I have made tremendous progress. Tonnes of credit here to N again for further stressing on how important a trait this is, for all relationships, with all people.
In telling me how and when I can accept and reject love, she taught me consent a lot better than most people/literature did. It is striking how her idea of consent was never one-way. If she gauged that I was unwilling to engage, which would be my lack of response to 25 meows, she would usually leave me alone.
Empathy is a trait all animals seem to carry, even cats. Damn you internet for telling me that cats are incapable of returning love. In times that I have been dejected by circumstances and have wept in the privacy of my room, Meenu had been by my side, licking my hand and meowing constantly. While it did not change my circumstances, it was a significant improvement on weeping alone. It’s a gesture I truly appreciate and will remember for long. Next morning, there was no judgement on me and she was back to licking her butt-hole and cat-yoga.
She always asserted herself. From wanting affection to food to even denying both, she always made her predicament known. She never placed her needs below mine and in doing so, ensured that her requirements are heard and met. There was no guilt or self deprecation in establishing self-care. In keeping herself healthy and happy, modesty wasn’t her virtue. Assertion isn’t my strong point and it emanates from the idea of avoiding conflict to have the people in my life pleased with me. In many ways, I draw my validation from it. I have lived this way for some 20 odd years and it’s hard for me to unlearn it now. Sure, I try but it is exhausting to constantly keep having to remind oneself in the back of the head while having active conversations with people. Having someone at home who constantly re-asserted the behaviour I wanted to emulate helped me imbibe it. It made me believe that letting go of other people’s opinion about myself shouldn’t have to induce guilt. That people’s disappointment in me are their own and shouldn’t be the focal point of my attention. It helped me accept uncomfortable truths about my own behaviour and therefore, embark on a path towards healthily healing myself.
Meenu taught me so much about acceptance. I learnt that it’s so fulfilling to be accepted for who we are. In so many ways, this is a feeling that human relationships can not provide since the burden of expectations is too much. However, receiving it a relationship with an animal is no less. Since Meenu was so much a part of my daily life, her acceptance and affection strengthened my own self love. To know that one is capable of being accepted by another being without questions, for me, did wonders.
In ways that I can not put to words, this brief stay with Meenaxi has brought me so much further in my journey of self care, self love and acceptance. I see visible changes in myself that I had been struggling to achieve. I have become a slightly better person in dealing with myself, in accepting my own rather uncomfortable feelings and in loving better.
Meenu, thank you for all this and so much more. I’ll keep visiting you often.
Love and Meow!
*Note: N was my flat-mate and friend who has tremendously helped my understanding on gender, feminism and life. Meenu is now living with her while N evolves to be someone else’s friend, flatmate and guide in life.
