This particular post is during the time I was heavily pregnant with my first born, GBee. So, it was in 2017.
It all started with me returning to Hyderabad. Living in an apartment in India is not new to me, but finding myself in the company of many animals is!
One fine Sunday afternoon, when our home was filled with guests of all ages, we were immersed in talking about various topics, when all hell broke loose! I heard cries which scared the hell out of me. The cries came from our veradah. Inspite of my present state, I rushed to see what the matter was.
There, standing near the utility area were two monkeys, eating the snacks mom had given our house-help. The monkeys scared off our 60 year old house help like a couple of predators and began munching her hot bajjis. (Mom had prepared bajji for all our guests and gave some to our house help.) Our house help was so scared, she cried in blood curdling scream, ran towards our watchman and that was the scene before our eyes. Both the monkeys were munching away the snacks, like there was no tomorrow!
It is all together another story of how the monkeys were shoo-ed away.
And then, there is the cat!
The stubborn little creature can’t be scared and shoo-ed off easily. Even when we shout or shoo it away, the cat doesn’t bat an eye! It looks on with little respect at our “cat shooing away skills”!
The first time I saw the little monster was when I left the door to the verandah open and the cat found it too tempting not to barge in. I had to hurl a slipper near the cat (taking pains not to hit it. Yes, PETA,I am not cruel to animals, but I don’t like being taken for granted either!) The stupid one, didn’t budge! It took three of us to force it away.
One or two such incidents left me with bad taste for cats! (I had a cat as a pet for one day in my childhood! Did I happen to tell you that story? If not, will do that in the future)
What do you do if the said cat empties the dust bin, yes, every single day!
And I once caught the same cat staring at the coconut tree, what a weirdo! ( on second thought, there is a belief that cats can scare away ghosts, so this stray kitty was probably scaring off a coconut tree ghost! Lol)
Cat staring the coconut tree!
I also took a picture of a tiny little mud structure made by mud wasps, which now reminds me of the cartoon GBee and KBee watch regularly, Ben and Holly, where Ben is an elf and Holly is a winged fairy. (There is a belief in our state that if wasps built a mud structure in your house, it implies good things are on their way to you, in my case, birth of my GBee)
Mud structure made by hardworking wasps
That was when I decided that living in the heart of the city, one can still feel like they are living in a modern ranch with lots of animals for company and there it is, my own Animal Farm!
P.S:
- You can hardly control a child these days, let alone shooing away animals, who are less intelligent than a child.
- The concept of cats scaring off ghosts was also seen in the movie The Mummy, if anyone cares to recall it!
- On totally unrelated note, I love two songs from two sitcoms, “smelly cat” from F.R.I.E.N.D.S and “soft kitty, warm kitty” from The Big Bang Theory.
- With industrialization, more and more monkeys come into cities and are creating nuisance on a regular basis. I recently saw a video of monkeys taking a respite in the over head tank of a house. They were having an unorganised pool party! I deleted the video by mistake and it’s not AI generated one, it’s an original.
- I always imagined there were fairies in our garden etc and Ben And Holly has similar concept of humans interaction with elves and fairies.
Disclaimer: Come on, Mr.George Orwell (Desi born British novelist), I am just using your highly popular book title, but that’s it. My post is not plagiarized in anyway. Thanks for letting me use the title! 😛
