Cats. Spring.
I find myself in a similar predicament as that of our cats’, Meownnaise and Pujar Bhayek, who are no longer the tiny babies you see a few posts below but, having entered puberty, are now become angsty, brooding fellows who spend a lot of time perched on windowsills melancholily, pining away for a pussycat, perhaps plotting to run away and look for fortune in the streets just like Kronos, forever ago. If we can have our way, the cats’ burgeoning testicles shall be cut off shortly, before window-side melancholy turns into something of a more violent and phallic nature, but at this point, I will remind you that the nearest ball crushing establishment is, again, a hundred kilometres away, just like those coffee beans you may recall, and shall require an annoying amount of planning and postponing to be executed to some degree of satisfaction. The similarity I bring your attention to consists chiefly of the fact that I, too, have felt many waves of melancholia since the onset of Spring which inevitably finds expression through similar brooding and angst by the window at my table and though it might sound a little mad, I must say that I have been relating hard with these cats. Years ago as an idiot pubescent boy, I had experienced my earliest romantic feelings in Spring, in the festive and sensual air of Bohag Bihu where man, woman, children, and burgeoning testicles all came together, called upon by that infectious spring spirit to do nature’s bidding, and since then, I have remained susceptible to such annoying spring attacks. For those who love it, though, what better time than to let that tender and vulnerable side take charge for a change, what better time than April to feel life course through your flesh-and-blood body and let slumbering nature awaken. At my table, I brood and conclude that finer longings are useful only as long as they can be apprehended in a reasonably accurate manner and put to words, pinned on characters in a fictitious setting, that is to say, welcome only insofar as they are useful. Otherwise, (despite their being the very stuff life is all about) they are hindrances on a path to glory paved by many, many hindrances of various sorts. When you have become a dry coconut like Mr Casaubon from Middlemarch, ambitious to the point of turning into a little bitch-man, disdainful towards the pleasures of the heart and certain disreputable organs, the April wind splashing all over your body, rousing those buried habits of your ancestors from deep in your suddenly unruly balls is more than a blessing and little less than torture.
Then there are other observations to be made on Mewonnaise and P’s brother's adventures in our backyard for they are not always just brooding. Their adventures in the violent corners of our neighbourhood are becoming longer and longer these days. (Meownnaise was missing an entire night one time and reportedly came back with a minor wound.) Let loose in our backyard garden, which was until recently a mini tomato forest, (some things haven’t changed, the wild herb invasion followed by cherry tomato blossom from many IG posts ago is one of those things.) the cats display an astonishing capacity for joy and minor exploits. They will wrestle with a twig, slap a beached wasp, and ambush every poor creature that dare move within their sight. The other day, P’s brother brought a little snake inside the house. Meownnaise brought a mouse. When they cannot find an animal to victimise, they run around clawing and scratching on tree barks, restlessly looking for something to do, sometimes even attacking my mother’s sari, scratching her ankle and running away without saying sorry. A great display of violence, but we do not judge it. We do not judge, perhaps, because it is in their nature to be such creatures. How fortunate to be able to give free rein to one’s “nature”, which is a complicated thing for us, humans, as Prof. David Lurie learns at last after a very long and convoluted attempt to justify his predatory “nature” in Coetzee’s Disgrace.
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