On Cats

On 23 November 2016, a date that will forever be etched in my mind, my father passed away. It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday. But this post isn't about that. (I'm not ready to write about it.)

This post is about my furry little son, Wan Pablo, whom my husband and I adopted in September 2016. Pablo is a blue-grey British Shorthair cat, and is the most recent living link that I still have to my father.

That's because when my parents were staying with me in Kuala Lumpur, after my father received his cancer diagnosis, during his regular trips to the hospital, and after our beloved family cat in Brunei passed away, my father suddenly felt the irresistible urge to get another cat. And he decided that it was absolutely imperative that said cat be a British Shorthair, which is famed for its easygoing nature and plush fur coat. So he researched British Blues incessantly for weeks: YouTube, Google, looking up local breeders, checking pet store listings online. He also used to send me incessant links to this or that cat video or British Shorthair breed profile page. My father really wanted to buy a cat to bring it back to Brunei with him, but he would also intermittently ask me if I would want a cat of my own, in Kuala Lumpur. I did, in the abstract, but I wasn't sure I was ready for the very real and un-abstract commitment of cleaning up cat litter and feeding another living being for the rest of its life. I also didn't see how I could sell the cat idea to my non-cat-lover never-had-a-pet-ever husband, who just didn't understand why my family was so into four legged furry creatures with tails.

One day, my father made a date with a pet store, and asked my mother and I to drive him all the way out to Subang to visit it. The store owner had texted my father that she had two infant sibling British Blues for sale, and my father said he just wanted to see them. So we drove there, and met Pablo, who was all alone in his cage, since his sister had been sold. The pet store was smelly and cramped, and I could barely hear Pablo's mews over the barking of the dogs in the nearby cages. Pablo was smelly, unkempt and skinny, but he was also sweet. I don't know how he won me over, but when we left the pet store to have lunch nearby, I began to wheedle my husband, via WhatsApp, into agreeing that we absolutely must rescue this poor little furbaby. Husband agreed, and I bought Pablo immediately after.

So it's been an eventful several months since we let Pablo into our lives. He kept us all entertained during the months that my family stayed with me in Kuala Lumpur, to spend time with my father, and (albeit unwillingly, at times) let everyone cuddle him when they wanted to. He's mostly quiet, unless the door is shut on him, because he loves being in the same room as where all the action in the house is and will follow us around from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen to living room just to hang out.

It turned out that he had a serious intestinal disorder when we adopted him, which manifested in a lot of leaky cat poop. (You don't know the meaning of the word 'disgusting' until you have cleaned cat poop from your bedsheets.) His condition is under control now, but for many more months than either Pablo or I would have liked, he was being plied with liquid and pill medicine almost every single day. He bore it like a soldier, if soldiers are also very stubborn and try to fight the hand feeding them the medicine.

He likes playing cat games on my iPad and for a few months when he was younger, loved playing football with balled up pieces of paper. Now his current favourite toy is a toy mouse that looks like a giant hairball.

He loves treats of all kinds, which he unfortunately cannot eat due to aforementioned intestinal disorder. Fortunately, he also loves his food (prescription gastrointestinal kibbles i.e. the only thing ever that he is allowed to eat). Occasionally he tries his luck with our dinners, but he's smart enough to know that he isn't supposed to be eating human food (or at least not when the humans are still around).

He's not very affectionate, but I know he likes us. He slow-blinks his big eyes at me when he's feeling expressive, which, in cat language, means I'm cool. He climbs onto my chest and touches his nose to mine to wake me up, which is another cat way of saying he's down with me. Each night before we sleep, he comes to our bed to knead on the comforter in between my husband and I, and then falls asleep on the floor at the foot of our bed or on the bedside table. He's now the main reason we look forward to coming home each evening, and a reason we are perfectly happy chilling at home all weekend.

On the first day we brought Pablo home, he was terrified and stayed in his room all afternoon. My father spent the entire afternoon sitting on the floor with his guitar, playing songs to Pablo to calm him down and coax him out. It was the last time my father played guitar. The brain tumours caused too much damage to his hand-eye coordination soon after.

Pablo wouldn't have come into my life if not for my father. My father wouldn't have developed his obsession with British Shorthairs if he hadn't been sick and bored. Perhaps he wouldn't even have been thinking about cats at all if our family cat Annabella hadn't met an untimely end. One thing leads to another. Sadness can lead to happiness. It's what I think of, in addition to how darned cute he is sometimes, whenever I see Pablo.