Who Cares, She's a Cat
, 5 min read
Six cats in thirteen years, from two abandoned kittens in Cochin to the one who is left.
Someone had thrown out two kittens together, and they cared about each other too much to be separated, so we took both. Preethi and I spent most of the first night tearing up paper to make them a litter box, and at half past two one of them jumped on the bed to tell us it was needed. We called the quiet one Rio and the other one Taz, after the Tasmanian Devil. We never thought about what they could give us.
Rio was a few weeks older and carried herself as if it were years. Taz was slightly smaller and full of spunk, and Rio groomed her and looked after her. Rio was the most motherly of all the cats we had. She hugged the others when they slept, and she would try to lick Preethi and me clean too.
Apps came next. A friend found her as a kitten at the Apple Heights apartments, named her, and gave her to us. Taz was a menace about it. Rio took her in. Apps never grew up and stayed kitten-sized all her life, and she thought she was human, so she wanted everything we ate. She created a ruckus whenever we ate, and if we gave her what was on our plates she would not believe it was the same thing and went on screaming for more.
We moved to Bangalore with the three of them.
Groot came from a tree near the office in Bangalore where Preethi and I both worked. She was a tiny grey kitten with huge fox-like ears, screaming at the top of her tiny head, and Rio took her under her wing. She would eat and eat and end up looking like a tube. Once she went missing, and we found her a day later. I thought she had overeaten again. I was an ass. Preethi saw the problem and took her to the hospital, and it was not good news. She had been hurt somewhere and was bleeding inside, and she died.
Rio died of complications after surgery. We think it was negligence. I am still not over it.
Booster arrived by way of an ad and an insanely cute photograph in the style of Puss in Boots. A riders' cafe in Bangalore had adopted her as its mascot and named her, but it was a pet-friendly cafe and she was scared of all the other animals, and they decided that was not fair on her. The eyes were an absolute bait and switch. She once locked us in our bedroom by hanging on the keys on the outside of the door, and a locksmith had to break open the front door before he could open ours.
Taz jumped off the fourth floor the day we brought Booster home. We went searching the neighbourhood and found her, the diva, at a random house nearby, where they were feeding her. She was eating nonchalantly. She saw us, stood up and walked over. She was completely okay. Nine lives, lands on her feet, I guess.
Apps had kidney disease. The doctors told us she could be kept alive if she lived isolated, away from the other cats. Apps hated doors. She would sit in front of a closed one and scream bloody murder, and when we opened it she would walk away from the room she had been demanding. Keeping her shut in a room just to live did not feel like the right choice. Friends who were with us made the call and told the vet, so we did not have to. We are grateful for that.
We left Bangalore with two cats, Taz and Booster.
Beanie appeared at the front door of our eighth-floor flat, and I thought it was fate. She was a bit feral, and by then we were used to adult cats. She would run under the couch and come back with every possible cobweb, then dig into the potted plants, and she too ate until she looked like a tube. One day the door was open and she ran out. I tried to catch her and got a few bruises for it, and she escaped into a plumbing vent. We looked for days. She did a Houdini.
We never had all of them at the same time, so for our anniversary in 2018 I had the caricaturist Rethish Ravi draw them together, as a surprise for Preethi. I sent him a note describing each cat, and he drew from that. Rio is grooming Groot, Apps is on a stool with an ice cream cone, and Taz is in the collar she always wore, sitting like she paid for the portrait. Booster is walking out of the frame. Beanie is not in it, because she had not turned up yet. Groot and Beanie were with us for such a short time that we usually say we have had four cats. The actual number is six, and the picture has five.
When we moved to a villa, Taz and Booster discovered life outside walls. Booster let us know she would not be contained, and once ran out and came back twenty-three days later. She now wears a collar that says Booster and has Preethi's phone number on it. We had thought that cats who go out would do their business out there and cut our litter bill. What happens is that Booster runs in as if the devil is after her, uses the litter, and rushes back out. She considers our house her Airbnb.
Booster is still scared of everything. Sounds, weather, other cats, people, children, moving leaves. But she wants to do everything, so she goes out there anyway, sneaks about and covers the whole villa complex. There is a moral somewhere in there, about conquering your fears or never letting fear rule your actions or something. Who cares. She is a cat. Her only targets are bats, moles, rats, birds and lizards, and she has caught more than one of each and brought them home. She brought one bat into the house, and the home cameras have me going after it with, well, a mosquito bat.
She has also done massive harm to the electronics in the house. A PlayStation and a pair of earbuds are dead, and the NAS lives in a closed cabinet because of her. Maybe she was telling us to live in the present and remove the digital. Again, who cares. She is a cat.
Taz spent thirteen years with us, from Cochin to Bangalore and back to Kerala, being royalty. She sat on the dining table when everyone was around it, hands tucked in, ready for a photoshoot, and it was very hard to take a bad picture of her. For most of her life she was friendly to everyone, though in her old age she started hating kids. In November 2025 the door was opened and she ran out with her tail straight up, which was not like her at all, and never came back. It is on our doorbell camera.
So now there is one. Booster is the last surviving Kannadiga cat, and very likely our last pet for a long, long time. She is on the bookshelf as I write this, judging. She is alone and still a menace. We should have named her Dennis.