Patty’s footprints
View(s):When I was a child I remember what our neighbours would say when a cat would leave home for a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks. ‘They would go to observe sil’ (thapas rakinna yanawa in Sinhala). However it was uncharacteristic for our ‘Patty’ to depart for such a long time. It never misses its meals, though occasionally it took a stroll out to observe the neighborhood. It never disappointed us although it looked a little confused during the mating season.
Reminiscences are being unfolded kaleidoscopically in my mind in a never ending stream. It is a very active, elegant and energetic creature with its bright yellowish eyes adorning its little face, grey stripy coat resembling a tiger. It really looked majestic. It’s about one feet long and only eight months old. It is delightful to watch how it climbs up the mango tree with quick movement, climbing down hesitantly and unsteadily but safely. How it runs about in the garden playfully from one end to the other.
At times it goes down in the grass moving its little face both sides wagging the tip of the tail sensationally so as to attract our attention or invite us to play.
How intimate these friends would have been when you stroke them tenderly or show affection. Outpuring of warmth and gratitude exuding from its eyes visibly. Before the arrival of our ‘Patty’ our kitchen was infested with mice like the legendry “Hamelin Town”. Patty got rid of the rat menace like the pied piper it made our kitchen its bedroom. Rats have never been brave enough to come down the chimney.
There are occasions when our “Patty” bothered us too. In the dead of night it scratched the door of the kitchen with its fore arms forcing us to open it, breaking our sleep. ‘Patty “bestowed trust on all of us and has become part and parcel of our home, sweet memories of “Patty” will linger in our mind for sometime. Day in day out we eagerly look forward to its arrival back home at any moment surprising us all.
Postscript
In the evening of the 30th just one day after my writing this, we were told by a woman in our neighbourhood , there was an unbearable odour spreading from a bush nearby nearly fity metres away from our home. We searched the place and found the swollen body of “Patty” poisoned to death. We dug a pit and buried our “Patty” there.
K Jayawardane
Flash Fiction
This is a simple and vivid description of a cat. Yet with the postscript, we realise there is a story there.
Please send in your ‘Flash Fiction’ entries to Madhubhashini Disanayake Ratnayake,
C/o the Sunday Times,
No 8, Hunupitiya Cross Road, Colombo 2