The Connemara Catwalk

So Gingi’s friend thought it would be fun to abandon a kitten at our house because we have been known to give royal treatment to cats. We did give royal treatment to our previous cat but that was only because we were all scared of getting bitten or gassed to death in our sleep by that vicious son of Satan in feline form. Anyway, the kitten got dumped in our yard. Amma refused to let it into the house and the friend fled from the area sensing that my mother was about to hack him with that sharp thing used for prying open coconuts.

In a week’s time the kitten gained our sympathies and found her way in. We named her Skaria as she had the habit of scurrying on piled up coconuts. In no time Skaria grew up and gave birth to five kittens. We named them after celebrities and historical figures like we always do. So now we had a grown-up cat and five kittens running around in the house, chewing on books and looking cute.

Two months passed by; Amma finally put her foot down and said, ‘Enikk ini vayya, ayyoo!’ (Translation: ‘No more of this shit, Yo!’). So after a lot of dishyoom dishyoom that lasted for a few days Amma’s decision to dump all of them at the fish market prevailed. Amidst wails of my over-emotional sister and my ever so expressive zombie-stares, the kittens and Skaria were ferried to Palayam Connemara Fish market in our Maruti 800 around 11 pm.

24 hours later it was 11 pm again. Whoa! And, Amma started getting guilt pangs. Two minutes of strategic emotional blackmailing by my sister and the Maruti 800 was off to the fish market again with guilt-ridden Amma, grinning Gingi and my father who must have been by then re-evaluating certain choices he made in life.

When they reached the market Achan refused to budge from the car. So Amma and Gingi went around calling out to Skaria and the kittens. It was at this time that a drunken guy rose from the fish-waste like a blooming lotus and got fascinated with two women chanting celebrity names (yes, we had named one kitten Kareena Kapoor) around midnight in the deserted fish market. He went up to them and asked what was going on. Amma being the chatty type narrated the kitten story to this lotus of a man. It touched his heart. He disappeared from the scene and staggered back five minutes later with a random petrified cat hoisted in his hands. He handed over the shocked cat to a blinking Amma, advised her to not lose her cats again and floated away into fishy oblivion.

*2 minutes of crickets chirping*

Then the cat recovered from its shock and fled. Amma and Gingi looked around for some more time. They spotted two of the five kittens- Caesar and Hitler and brought them back home. We never saw the others again.