A Touching Tail

I have a cat in mind. His name is Dochi, and he is the king of all cats. This is the story of how a young kitten changed the course of my life.

We first found him as a scrawny, petite kitten squealing at doors for food. My mom went down the stairs to give the thing a bowl of milk, and watched it wolf down every last drop of milk in the bowl. The kitten was a dirty ginger in colour. Its ears pointed out like little radars, but what was most peculiar were the eyes. They were big and amber and very alluring. You could stare at them all day long. His eyes were as big as dosas, (South Indian pancakes) so we decided to name him Dosakannu, in short, Dochi.

The kitten did not allow us to touch it, it did not know what friends were, not yet.

Soon enough, Dochi started coming up and playing inside the house, doing merry antics with a little brown bouncy ball. After some time, he would go straight to his ‘bed’, (a pile of newspapers under a table) and sleeps there till his tail droops down and his ears are flattened. He assumed the shape of a cinnamon roll, curled up nicely. Or, like a pig- or should I say, cat in a blanket. I always wondered how cats sleep so long, never waking up. We once watched the entire ‘Sound of Music’ movie when Dochi was sleeping throughout. I later found that cats sleep for almost 2/3rds of their lifetime!

Besides being a sleepy sloth, Dochi entertained us a lot too. He was a great football player capable of beating Pele or Maradona. With one knock of his paw and a swish of his tail, he would be off at jet speed, running behind the ball. He would climb up the stairs to our 2nd floor apartment really fast, so fast that I started calling him Usain Doch (after Usain Bolt). As soon as he spotted me, he would look at me for a second and run towards me at astounding speed and follow me home.

I took this as a sign of loyalty and was glad to have a friend who was a good companion and was always eager to be with me. Dochi would come up to our apartment every day, but not before he ate some fish at the ground floor neighbour’s place.

Dochi was an inspiration in many ways. My mom and I started an Instagram handle called ‘The Catfeteria – a Cat-a-logue by Shef & Harsha’. Every day Dochi would come home, we would catch him doing something funny or just sleeping, and we would put that picture up on the Instagram page. His pictures were a magnet and we got lots of likes and followers – Dochi was famous!

My little cat friend was also the inspiration of many of my drawing & writing. I even themed a 2022 calendar themed on cats – with illustrations that I drew based on Dochi. Observing Dochi, I got more curious about cats and did a lot of research on them. For instance, I found that when they dilate their pupils they are scared or aggressive. When they become narrow, they are relaxed or sleepy and playful.

Dochi was the star of the show, our life, and we couldn’t get enough of him. But all of this stopped one day.

We couldn’t find Dochi anywhere. We had checked all his favourite places; he loved sitting on the roof of our car; his foster home – another cat loving neighbour; the local cat magnet- a fish seller stall. Still not a sign of him. Maybe he was just gone for a day we thought. Wrong. He did not appear for a whole week. We were worried about him, but couldn’t do much.

Life was miserable and boring. I missed finding him when we opened the door in the morning. I missed watching him scratch my shoes and everything that was soft. I missed stroking his velvety head and trying to flatten his upright tail.

Dochi was the light of our life, and every day we wait for him. There is a Vietnamese folk tale that I once read, about a woman who waits for her husband to come back from a voyage. She stands on a cliff looking at the sea with unwavering loyalty. She stands for so long that she turns into stone and she still stands. This is the kind of patience and loyalty that I have to have to wait for Dochi.

Or as in Endgame, as the Avengers say… ‘Whatever it takes’.

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Click this link to check out my cat themed 2022 Calendar inspired by Dochi!