BOOKED

There was a cartoon strip that I saw in a newspaper a long time ago that depicted a middle aged man standing on top of three stacked wooden boxes looking forlorn and about to jump down and the caption below says “I’m not that depressed”

And I’m feeling exactly that at this very moment. There were several reasons I can think off why I’m feeling this way but then again since my default setting - as some people these days would say- is permanently at mild depression level I’m not too sure which in particular is the leading black dog of the moment…

But it could be chiefly because I missed Poot which died recently. This is rather unexpected … Poot suddenly dead and me missing Poot I mean… When one day about a year or may be two years ago ( I did not keep track of this kind of things) my wife brought home a sorry looking black and white kitten that she rescued from a drain I became positively cross with her. She – the kitten- was all wet shaking with cold and looked like a female version of Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistol and certainly of uncertain pedigree …and there’s no smell on earth worse than cat shit ( except dog’s of course) and if you want to keep a cat why not go and buy a proper pussy?…

Don’t know for what reason but my wife christened (or should I say ‘muslimed’) her as ‘Poot’ and she painstakingly nursed her to good health ( and spending precious bundle of money at the vet) but I swear I’ve never come across a stupider cat than Poot…. Over the years my wife added a few others to our collection of cast off cats but none was sorrier looking than Poot…or more depressed looking and stupid… one was a hyper active crazy nymphomaniac who eventually died of AID (that’s what the vet said) thanks to any number of vagrant tomcats (chief suspect being a scruffy grey black tom with long & dirty shaggy hair full of fleas which I referred to as “Mat Rock” ….

But Poot had one very affecting trait… when she is with you what she would do is to massage you with her two front paws…and it was a real skillful and good massage too! She kind of pressed with one paw than with another and doing this alternate pressing on and on and softly purring away….if I were a Hindu or an adherent of one of those Indian religions I swear that Poot must be an incarnation of some unfortunate massage girl who came to a bad end and reborn as a sad stupid Poot….and the strangest thing about Poot was that she really behaved like a serious sad and depressed human adult. I’ve never seen her play like normal cats or sleep on her back obscenely with all four legs spread akimbo this way and that…and she always looked very sad and walked very slowly and ponderously as though she was always thinking of something….and unlike other cats which are totally self centered she always seemed to be grateful to us all for rescuing her…never fight for anything and always wait patiently to be fed …

..and how she died was really tragic….on Feb 26 2006 the day of terrible flash flood …a mini Katrina … around some parts of Shah Alam.

… when we woke up at dawn and discovered the water quickly rise up and coming into our house our foremost concern was where is the pregnant Aminah? ...and we were too busy rescuing my books from my library to think about saving anything else … Aminah is another of our tramp cat and this one I kidnapped from a roadside restaurant some where in Perlis about 6 months ago. Of all days she chose to give birth at dawn on this chaotic day in the garden of our neighbour and my eighty five year old chimp had to scramble over the locked fence and waded through the flood in complete darkness (electricity was cut off) searching for Aminah and her kittens like a thief…and we never gave a thought about our other cats because we know that they will take care of themselves… but not Poot… she apparently slept under my car and as the water got higher she chose to climb into the engine compartment and as the water completely submerged the car right up to near the roof top she was simply trapped and drowned.

…if there is any consolation Poot did get her 15 minutes of fame as she was once featured on a Pet Program on TV1 and in fact the Question for the quiz at the end of the program was “ What is the name of Ms ….. cat featured in the program? (Answer: Poot)


…and perhaps one other consolation was that we managed to rescue most of our books although some old books that I used to read during my younger days were lost forever…even gandaf did not manage to save himself as all the 3 books in my lord of the rings trilogy -unwin paperbacks - drowned among other old favorite (abridged) classics such as robinson crusoe, black arrow, and more recent ones like sue townsend Adrian mole diary series….the library was a disaster zone… a swimming pool library… and I’m not referring to Alan Hollinghurst first book either…

I know I can replace some of these books very easily but it’ll never be the same…much like you can not replace poot with another black and white tramp even if you can find another stupid one exactly like her…