Queen and Her paw Prints

QUEEN - The Cat Who Left a Paw Print on My Heart

QUEEN was the name I had given her. She was a cat, err a highly demanding and attention-seeking non-human being.  No, no, I‘m not at all a cat lover. In fact, not even a pet lover. I’m more precisely a Zoo-phobic if not just Ailurophobic or Cynophobic.  I fear animals, yah, for one particular reason. Neither I can touch them nor can I handle their touch. I get an extra sensation, a kind of Goosebumps even with the thought of the “TOUCH – precisely a non-human touch”.

It was way back in mid-nineties: almost two decades ago. I was in 8^th Standard then. My schooling had been from a residential (boarding) school. So I used to stay in hostel.

One lazy afternoon, I heard something which felt like someone was crying in pain. I came out of my room and walked through the narrow corridor and proceeded to the open veranda from where the sound was coming. As I was nearing the veranda it was more ear piercing. On my reaching, I found a little kitten was trapped at one corner of the walls that enclosed the veranda from three sides. It was entrapped between a branch of a tree (from the outer side) and a sack – stuffed with something – kept on the wall by the hostel caretaker. It was crying with excruciating pain.

OMG!!

 I felt bad, in fact very bad and looked for someone around who can help it get it out of it. However, I could find no one around. Sigh!! I couldn’t think of rescuing it even though I felt very pity for the poor creature. I prayed, “God, avail some help to the poor one.”

Merciless!! You can say me. heartless and pitiless, you can tag me but I turned back and stepped ahead to return to my room trying heard to unheard and ignore a painful groan. . However, after few steps, I couldn’t make another move and got back to the veranda again. I looked for some long sticks or something like that by which I can help it out but in vain. It was incessantly crying and it was quite intense. I felt if it wasn’t rescued that time then it might die.

Helpless, finally I rushed to the water pump room in one of the corners of veranda and got the ladder that was kept in it and positioned it against the wall where the kitten was trapped. I climbed it and tried to move the sack. But the kitten was trapped with the branch of the tree with one of its leg getting entangled with it. It was easy to get out of it but alas!! The poor creature didn’t know the trick. Finally, I had to overlook all my sensations and caught hold of it and got it out of the branch smoothly. Climbed down and kept it on the veranda. A few moments, it didn’t move but it was trembling and just cried “meow, meow...” I looked at its jelly-like eyes which were filled with tears - of pain, fear. It was visibly terrified, pained and hungry. I brought a bowl full of Amul powder wala milk which it slurped immediately, slowly though.

Looking at my “Mission Rescue Cat “few of my roommates got up and pampered it well. I didn’t know how I did it. Well, it had won my heart – which was an impossible mission for any other animal until then. So I called it Queen. It seemed it was parted from its mother. How it got up to the wall and trapped itself, is still a mystery to me.  

After that, it roamed in and around the hostel being pampered and fed by the girls in the hostel.  It became a familiar member of the hostel as it grew up.

However, whenever I used to be in the hostel it would come to the door of our room and say “meow, meow....” such an attention-seeking creature it was. I must say, I did never hold it again in my hand and never embrace it. But it seemed we had established a bond. And the best thing was after every vacation, whenever I used to return, within moments I would find her at my doorstep. In the hostel, it was NICK Named Tinu’s Ladli. Moreover, we had to change rooms, every year as a rule by the hostel administration but Queen was smart enough to find out my room. It was almost a routine, a part of life then. Queen had become a member in my life.

After a few years when I was in mid of 11^th standard, one fine day I noticed Queen was nowhere around. I searched for it so did other girls. But it was nowhere. We looked for it outside the hostel too but couldn’t find it. The entire hostel and the immediate vicinity of it were searched. Our incessant bore no fruit. I missed it like anything and had tears in my eyes. It almost took a few months for me to settle with the pain of separation from Queen.

I didn’t know if I would ever find myself falling in love with a cat or an animal for that matter.  But Queen wasn’t just a cat I guess. It had already left a paw print in my heart.

Unfortunately, that time unlike these days we had no resources to keep pictures. But Queen – with its jelly-like eyes, her face is as fresh as ever in my mental screen...

I could never love any other cat after that the way I loved Queen though I found a shadow of it in other cats....

Animals love unconditionally unlike humans…..I wished there should have been something - some gadget or technology - through I could trace and find what had exactly happened with dear Queen.