The Cat and the Tree

Mira loves spotting cats. She is great at it. I am fairly observant, too, but her eyes seem sharper, and her ability to spot felines hiding seems highly tuned. She lets out a small yelp or a dramatic “caaatt” in a low voice when she spots one.

Cats are evening routines, though.

Early mornings, on the other hand, I grab Mira as soon as she wakes up, pick two dog biscuits, and rush out of the house. Because I know the walk would be short, I do not mind Mira’s weight, and her sleepy smell goes well with early morning sounds as she looks around for Booboo and Spotty.

Booboo, our resident canine, is energetic and poised. Even at 15, he seems to be given to surprising bouts of energy and bites. He has acquired the habit of following Mira around, expecting and always receiving food crumbs from Mira, much to the exasperation of the adults.

Mira is happy, and Booboo is chastised but full.

This drama and tirade unfold regularly during feeding time.

At night, Booboo saunters off to the shed reluctantly, a downgrade from his luxurious mat in the hall, mainly because he and Mira feed off of each other’s unpredictable ebbs and flows, and that is never a good situation when the entire house is willing vehemently for them both to fall asleep. This does not mean Booboo gets a bad deal because invariably, there are fish or chicken bones scattered for him to discover and enjoy at his leisure if the bandicoots and rats don’t get to the treats first.

He gets the first biscuit in the mornings.

The second biscuit is for Spotty, the local semi-stray who leads a more itinerant life.

Spotty’s many beds in the homes of her well-wishing humans are not as sheltered – or as private- as Booboo’s, and in true vagabond tradition, she might or might not be found there at whatever time you go in search of her. However, you feel she has a more relaxed and laissez-faire approach to life. If she is present in one of her many spots, she gets up, lazily jumps over the walls, steps on strategically placed stones, and makes her way to us.

I am not even sure she fully embraces her canine nature. One night, I saw a cat unworriedly eating from Spotty’s bowl even as Spotty stared at the cat with one eye open at paw’s length.

Radical cat or a cat-positive dog.

Walking back with the mercenary Spotty for company -because she clearly offers graded treatment towards those who feed her and those who don’t, regular biscuit treats, head pats, and questionable legal counseling for her immigrant status in the layout seems to assure some sort of protection, with growls at strangers and bandobast for useless errands – we pass the night-flowering jasmine.

The night jasmine’s faint scent always catches my attention when I walk past the shrub, the flowers scattered on the floor, spent after an intense and brief nightly existence. The lingering fragrance from the delicate and wilting flowers always seemed to promise a floral life well-lived.

One night last week, I was driving slowly back home when I saw two cats playfully dash onto the road, blurring into the halo of yellow light cast by the car’s headlamps in front of me, and race under the car. I saw one cat, the one that was chased, get caught under the wheel.

The cat writhed and died, one of its eyes squished out and hanging by a bloodied tendril. The car had not even bumped when the wheel went over the cat’s head. The other cat was circling around, edging closer to its dead companion, peering between the legs of the human circle, sensing something was wrong.

As I drove back and parked the car, the strong smell of night jasmine flowers wafted through the images of the cats, the blood on the road, and the frantic animal pawing the air in vain. The sweet smell suffused the grisly scene, lending it an air of sad dignity, and the cat’s untimely end seemed to take on a quality of oneness with the plant.

Every night, the night jasmine produces a profusion of tender white flowers with bright orange centers, pulsing with scent. The flowers bare their many buds into the night, opening underneath dark skies, seducing distant stars, and spreading themselves to passing clouds.