It is not easy to go away on a holiday if you keep 29 cats (and four dogs). Even a weekend break sounds like an eternity and weighs on the conscience. The rationale of depositing cats in a boarding, which from experience is a prison-like setup, gives me a migraine.
Over the 15 years that I have been rescuing cats in distress, I have rarely gone on a holiday. The joy of an impending pleasure trip is wrecked with me
It is not easy to go away on a holiday if you keep 29 cats (and four dogs). Even a weekend break sounds like an eternity and weighs on the conscience. The rationale of depositing cats in a boarding, which from experience is a prison-like setup, gives me a migraine.
Over the 15 years that I have been rescuing cats in distress, I have rarely gone on a holiday. The joy of an impending pleasure trip is wrecked with me worrying over the littlest details. My leisure time in faraway lands is spent obsessively monitoring my battalion of cats on closed-circuit cameras, and finding fault with every arrangement – “Why aren’t the water bowls in a straight line?”
The mournful look on the faces of my cats, accompanied by heart-wrenching stories, especially of my first and favourite cat Chutku going off food and sitting by the door waiting for me to return strengthens my resolve to never leave them alone.
In which case I can only sit back, read, and marvel at the many fantastical stories of people who take their cat(s) on long adventure vacations. Any random book which has the word “cat” in the title or a feline on the cover has to sit on my bookshelf. Except when I think that the writer is trying too hard to be anthropomorphic. I would rather read an unintellectual Francesco Marciuliano cat poetry book - “I could pee on this” or “I knead my mommy” or “Claw the system” – than bother with exaggerated attributions of human qualities to felines.
My best pick, so far, and the book I truly never tire of reading is The Tao of Meow by Waldo Japussy (as told to his cat-parent Carl Japikse). Every single line, every single page cracks me up. Waldo’s treatise is as remarkable as Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching – the similarity in the titles and the formats of the two books is a happy coincidence, of course. To establish Waldo’s philosophical credentials, Japikse declares at the outset: Lao Tzu may just be a variety of dimsum for his cat.
The philosopher-cat Waldo reveals profound insights into the meaning of life, teaching Japikse The Waldo Principle – that there is little point chewing on your fur or self-image and visiting expensive psychiatrists or vets for treatment. Only time and love can heal and lead to complete self-fulfilment.
In the past, books have also come in handy in naming new rescues. Of late, though, I have been avoiding naming cats inspired by characters or writers. I decided to name a black cat Edgar Allan Poe influenced by his short story The Black Cat. Unfortunately, Poe died almost as mysteriously and suddenly as the legendary writer. As for why I don’t have a Waldo in my home yet, that is for the sake of my old matronly domestic help who has already rechristened Ballerina as Ballo Rani, Superman as Supervisor, and Olive as Alif.
Some months ago, as I was flipping through a hurriedly written I & Claudius: Travels With My Cat by Clare De Vries – the story of an English journalist who quit her job and travelled across the highways of the United States with her 19-year-old chocolate-brown Burmese cat Claudius, a tiny but significant detail stayed with me. While on the trip Claudius’ high blood pressure triggers blindness, yet Clare continues the journey, administering saline and steroids to keep him going. At one point, on the veterinarian’s advice, she tearily agrees to put him down. As the veterinarian prepares Claudius for his final journey, he sits up straight and meows – making it clear, he isn’t ready to go.
I instantly connected with this story as my oldest cat, General, 15, has a similar medical condition – loss of vision due to high blood pressure, apart from a heart ailment. Due to massive muscle loss, he isn’t quite the big-spirited boy he was, and I have to often help him navigate around the house to spare him the inadvertent bumps and hisses of the younger cats who have ably taken up his territorial duties.
General, a thin, shy boy, was about four months old when we brought him home. We were at a restaurant eating kebabs. General was hiding under a table - not hiding to save himself like Ernest Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain, but to gorge on the crumbs that fell on the floor. The young couple occupying the table tried to shoo him away, when he didn’t budge they started kicking him. We encouraged General to join us and fed him kebabs. Till today, when General smells kebabs he starts meowing excitedly. Funnily, he has never eaten kebabs after that day at the restaurant.
I wondered if a long road trip with two blind and a paralysed cat, and yet another recovering from complicated laser surgery and loathing his Elizabethan collar – was possible? Derek Tangye’s wise words about leaving his cat Monty rang in my ears: “There seems to be no answer except never to take a holiday.”
Tangye was a devout cat-hater. He converted after Monty came into his life. During Tangye and his wife, Jeannie’s, final shift from the city to the countryside, Jeannie decided to lock Monty in a cat carrier to thwart his plans of escape due to fear. “Instead of appreciating my action as a gesture towards his own safety, he took it as an insult. He was enraged. He clawed and spat and cried and growled,” Tangye wrote in A Cat in the Window.
I was faced with a similar predicament. Shoving all the cats in carriers for a long journey – was this doable? Will anyone rent us a vehicle, rather vehicles, to ferry the cats (and dogs)? What about the veterinarian’s fit-to-travel certificates? Will he agree to issue 33 certificates?
I decided to give this journey a shot. I undertook several trips to the vet with the cats to get the paperwork in order. I rang up travel agents to book vehicles. There were too many questions asked. Am I a breeder? Do I sell cats? How will I ensure that the cat (or dog) will not bring harm to them and their vehicle? How will I deal with officials if I am stopped at the state borders?
The questions unnerved me, especially the one about border checking. The vet’s kind words that he was only a call away put me at ease. I carefully filed his covering letter, with my list of cats and dogs as an annexure. To my horror, the annexure mentioned 56 animals. When I pointed out the error to the vet, he said all animals brought to his clinic by me for treatment have been listed and this is a software error that cannot be rectified.
As I went cat-carrier shopping, the cats were on alert, the flattering purrs that greeted me on my return were missing. The battalion went around sniffing the carriers, ears straight up, tails flicking, the territorial ones quickly leaving their imprints.
Marciuliano should have visited our home for ideas before he wrote:
“Her new sweater doesn’t smell of me
I could pee on that
She’s gone and left her laptop open
I could pee on that.”
The sight of the carriers sent the scared ones into the cat room. They went and hid in their out-of-bound tunnels that are ceiling-high. It would be a task getting them down from the tunnels and locking them up in their carriers, I thought to myself.
On the day of travel, I fed the cats early, lined their carriers with pee pads and blankets, sprayed a bit of catnip, and packed cat kibble and water – even though they would be too stressed to eat or drink.
Annie was the first to go into the carrier. For unknown reasons, she likes spending “me-time” in carriers that are strategically positioned all over the house for emergency vet trips. Mirchi, Eidi, Missy, Patchy, Spiderman, Mr Bush were difficult to corner. Snowy, Crystal, Genie, Batasha, Leo, Ebony, Ash gracefully gave in to the inevitable imaginary trip to the vet. Kitu aka Miracle, our most conversational cat, decided to have an argument about the trip. She finally budged but continued to let out loud meows of protest from her carrier. The last to go in were the geriatric cats. Beta, the blind cat, was sick and was administered fluids.
As the carriers were being loaded into three SUVs, people collected to watch the circus, making me feel like a ringleader. Several layers of blankets were spread on the seats to save them from the wrath of the battalion – whose love-hate relationship with sofas is legendary. Some cats growled, and some just went quiet. Superman, who weighs 14 kg, didn’t fit into a carrier and went into a large metallic cage. Though a super-friendly cat, he looked around disgustedly at the onlookers.
As I settled in with the geriatric and sick cats for our long journey, Chutku started kneading his blanket giving me that I-can’t-believe-you-are-doing-this-to-me look. For the rest of the journey, I didn’t exist for my philosopher-friend. The ghost of Waldo Japussy had possessed him:
“We look and we do not see
So we assume it isn’t there
We listen and we do not hear
So we assume it never existed”.
General refused to be locked up inside the carrier, I worried about his shooting BP and decided to let him sit on my lap. He acknowledged my kind gesture by peeing on me, right at the start of the journey.
Through the long journey and the stopovers, fellow-travellers stared, and Snowy, Rocket, Olive, and Dragon launched into a barking fest. With the dogs having their back, the cats too stared back at strangers unflinchingly. At the border posts, officials were too bored to check the vehicles. Or perhaps, the incessant barking of the dogs helped the cause.
When we reached our destination, the cats were relieved to be let out of their carriers. As the Tao of Meow would have observed:
“Meowing will not open the door
The door is the Meow
And when it opens
Life kicks you out to do your business”.
The battalion got busy sniffing around, rubbing against the furniture, and quickly clawing the sofas. They settled into their holiday home amazingly quickly and rather well - providing me my Eureka moment that felines, like canines, can make perfect holiday companions.
Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
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