Yet Garby made it a point to never lose anymore a beat of his life.

Nobody knows when he started to exist. What everyone knows was that he had always been around that landfill. Climbing left, scraping right, sleep at the corner, playing on the heap, missing one inch off the wheel of garbage truck that often put his peers to end.

It just so happened that he chose to lay and enjoy the sun in relatively cleaner place (well, there was no heap of rubbish) when he was spotted, taken, and found himself in a setting he never knew in his whole 15 weeks of life on earth.

Surely what was life for him then – dirty fur, filthy face, horrible smell, fleas of the whole universe, worms of entire planet- become unacceptable.

While he usually ate off the garbage bag, he now has to use a plate. While he usually ate what he wanted, he can now only have rations.

But what he used to know as “food” then, was completely different, and he likes his new place’s rations a lot better. Fresh fish, minced beef, ground chicken, scrambled egg. Kibbles ina large bowl he can swim in, and milk is just one heck of a terrorizing meow away. So “excessive” cleaning (as in bath) and “disinfecting” (as in deworming and flea medication) is acceptable, though never understandable.

He fits in just fine…

Not.

He climbs the kitchen counter, he charged on a full running grinder, he licks on the blades of the chopper. He spilt the whole bowl of (kitty) milk when he push one off the table because he cannot resist the wonderful smell. He tried to swim into a pot of hot home-made food, he walked through a hot stove (with effort). He swatted the little ones and took their food, he scratches the back of old ladies (and gentlemen) also to steal their food, and even though he was deep in the other side of universe during his sleep, as soon as he heard the spoon, or the knife, or the plate, or the cutting board, or whatever he knows associated with food, we can bet at the count of three he’d be right on the back of our hand.

Have anyone seen a cat fly? I mean, fly, like Superman off the edge of a tall building and up up and away? Garby climbed the kitchen cabinet and jump right down head first into the pot of food as it boiled!

I was too far away but there was a ladle in my had so I batted him off. He crash landed on a pile of plates, but at least he’s not dead. Me? Close!

This cat house on the hills become the cat horror house on the hills with screams from cats and human alike whenever Garby was on site with his eyes set on food.

That was the last straw that broke my back (we have no camel here, just me and Sheilla), so Garby stays locked in the bathroom until everything is safe to be trotted on or swum in.

I asked him how hungry he had been anyway, that he become so fearsome in his pursuit of happiness? He just looked at me with lips filled with cream cheese and I knew I’d never know.

It will just be a tug of war in patience; a level up challenge in anger management, or a life exercise in handling temper. Garby is a cat. A three and a half months old cat with no experience of good life, at least until he found us.

Just like what I thought would happen, one day he woke up with very bad indigestion that lasts for two days and cost him whatever food he gobbled down to the T.

Then, he changed. A little.

When I sat down on the floor, he sat with me. Quietly, neatly, with manners. No meowing, no hissing, no swatting, nothing. When I hold him he doesn’t squirm. He stays put and enjoy the view. When it’s time for him to go into quarantine, he walks into the bathroom and stays on the mat, right through the end.

If anyone was asking whether we tried leaving him around when we cook after his changes, we did. His demon came back to possess him and we’d scream our way in horror throughout the night, trying to keep him from killing himself and blow the entire house to ashes along the way.

Hence, until we find proper exorcism for his possession, he stays in the bathroom whenever we hold cooking utensils.

Hopefully someday he will realize that he is not going anywhere; and that he will find security in knowing (and remembering long enough) that he can eat whenever he likes, whatever he likes, and never to worry of hunger haunting him ever again. Hopefully someday he will realize that he has friends, not competitors. Hopefully someday he will realize that he has life, not struggle; he has family, not frenemy.

Hopefully, as fast as he learns his name (within 24 hours), he will learn that life is not always the hunger game, or catching fire.

Life can be Hakuna Matata.

What a wonderful day.

~ Josie

https://www.paypal.me/whiskerssyndicate

How long has it been, since the good old days? Covid 19 did not only bring change. It uprooted the lives we all know, and replanted it upside down somewhere else we barely recognize.

Through the entrance of the shutdown, early in March, toward the end of this June, I have barely known my home. At opening my eyes the first, after a glass of water, is bagging up as much cat food as I can possibly carry, the front door, and alley after alley, rows after rows of closed down restaurants – big or small, markets, hypermarts. From the outskirts of town, to the hall of the governor, the house of the mayor, to the end of castle like elites throughout the hillside.

Even if I still recognize the little faces who lined up behind my door as I go back home, either for just a sip of tea and reload my supplies, or to dole rations for my own, it was still seeing the world in a completely different lens.

Now that Bandung finally started to embrace the new normal: people peeking out, and lives gradually restarted, I am looking through the window of my bedroom to the whole hillside that still looks the way it was before everything, yet so different.

There was a sense of longing seeping in; of the days long gone before we know death were so close, but alongside it, a burst of gratitude.

Appreciation of the things that we all – I for one – used to take for granted. Fresh air in a bright Sunday morning. Peeking like little thieves out of my bed so I won’t interrupt the calming sound of cats purring in choir, the bubbles in boiling water, the stain of tea as it brews, just like the cloud moving across the sky.

How many have we lost through the pandemic? The lives that don’t matter to anyone. The lives that everyone so easily forgot; the lives who came to life as they heard the sound of my steps, our motorcycle, the clapping of Sheilla’s hands, or the chiming of her keys. The little feet who came running, so that they don’t run out of life, the rubs on our legs and arms before we stand back up, as tired and bedraggled as we might be, to wage the next war nobody would see.

But, how many walk through with us and live to see the new moonlight, and enjoy that same sunlight that now kisess my cheek? Mothers, kittens, teens, cast away. Those who started three months old and now reach adulthood. Those who just delivered a litter of babies now manage a ‘kittengarten’, those who timidly hide behind the furthest trash bin have now become a hunter. Those at the end of the queue to safety, now a survivor. Those who used to be clean, fragrant, friendly, now dirty, smelly, and alert; but strong and tough as their ancestors have always been.

Some days it is bitter, even in our own home. A small place by the hillside made for only 80 cats, forced to host 160 (real data, we do have 160 now). Some days a little bit sweet, but we hope the rest will be victorious.

Just a short while before the whole mess with SARS-COV2 began, Wei Ling was a 3 months old kitten, locked in a wooden box without an air hole, wailing for her life. This morning, when the last piece of strawberry landed on my pancake, she jumps like a heroine in the Marvel universe, with the permanent wink she attained in her early days after joining us.

I pick up the same cellphone that has been taking moments throughout my journey as a rescuer, and snap a picture.

I upload it now, pancake still on the kitchen counter – waiting for my crime partner to wake up – to share my gratitude with you; my gratitude for you.

Thank you for waging their unsung war with us; in every struggle, in every loss, in every gain, in all the wins. Thank you for your unwavering courage that gave us bravery, thank you for your never ending prayers, thank you for all your support, which have been the rock and mountains that kept us standing.

Some of these survivors will slowly regain the lives they almost lost. Some will stay with us until their turn comes, or grow old with us through the new normal until the next wage of war.

As we walk, hopefully still together, to the new world the Covid 19 carved for us, I am placing my hand on my beating chest, and bow to you all my respect.

And then, invite you to still walk with us, as we answer the pleas and prayers of many others still waiting in the dark.

Josie
paypal.me/whiskerssyndicate

Since the start of the lockdown, restrictions, social distancing, whatever the name, us having dinner at 2 am the next day is the new normal. End our day on the 27th hour at 4 am and restart at 7 am is the new normal.

If there was a sound piercing the sky louder than the thunder, it was her call.

If there was tears pouring down to earth more than the storm that just passed by, it was her cry.

If there were questions that even God Himself wouldn’t be able to answer, it was her inquiry.

Her cries, fearful and incessant, pierced through the night on that row of shops, with doors as colourful as their vibrant lives; but just like the two months partial lockdown had covered their doors with dust, her hope sunk and dimmed that no one answered her calls.

She just stood there, unsure whether to run toward or away from me, when I finally found her. It was so empty, it’s difficult to separate her real cry and its echoes.

A newly homeless young man peeked from behind the utility station, irritated by all the noises. At least, he did not pick her up and throw her somewhere else to get his peace.

I took her, nodded at the man out of sympathy, and went away. If I cannot help him as much, at least I did not prolong his pain.

She was all bald patches from bad fungus and yeast; not to mention the whole town worth of fleas. She was all growls and spats as she gobbled down the first plate of soft, warm steamed fish, who knows after how long.

She keeps everything to herself, for herself and shun away from the rest of the world. She slept alone, she walked alone, she played alone, she’d run away if she was not alone around the litter boxes.

Why would someone go such a long way to abandon her in an empty business district, knowing full well no one would be there, we cannot answer; but I can show her man are many different things.

Why would someone take her away from her only source of life: her mother, and leave her to die alone and slowly in the middle of nowhere, I cannot answer, but I can show her that in my household, everyone share lives with the other.

Why in this horrible time, when others lend their hands and share their shoulders, someone would have such sick thoughts, we cannot answer, but I can show her that from the time she stepped into my household, there is food in the bowl, water fresh and clean, roof over our head, and the whole living room, and kitchen, and laundry room to chase in with abandon.

How long would we be able to provide, we cannot answer, but we can show her we truly care, we truly try.

How long will she take to move on and embrace her new life, we cannot answer.

But I can show her pats, rubs and cradling, that the love will live for as long as she needs, and many more as she lives.

~ Josie
paypal.me/whiskerssyndicate

Had I not made that sudden change of mind in a spur of a moment, I wouldn’t have gone to that organic market event.

Had I not go to that organic market event I wouldn’t have met her.