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My job is Travel, eat at different places, meet with customers and provide solutions to meet their enterprise technology requirements. Not exactly in that order,…
My job is Travel, eat at different places, meet with customers and provide solutions to meet their enterprise technology requirements. Not exactly in that order, but if you traveled as much as I was doing, makes it easier to talk about it.
Every week my wife would stay free from my nagging for three or four days, as I traveled for customer meetings and their business’ requirements. Also, I did eat out variety of foods in the evenings in a variety of restaurants. When I say variety of foods, my preference was mostly Roti and Daal, the best and healthy Indian combo for my travel dinners. (I might have eaten this combination in hundreds of Indian restaurants all over the US and few other international customer locations). At least that was the truth till the pandemic hit.
All that stopped when March of 2020 came, when everyone started hearing the novel word, Covid-19. I let my customers know that, starting mid March, we might have to miss our working together in the office and few good lunch meetings and have to think of working remotely.
Arriving home after the final flight travel for the next 20 months, I felt like, we were rushing ourselves to a ‘get back home’ scenario. My younger daughter’s school in Boston closed early for the semester (and for the whole year, afterwards), and my elder daughter’s Manhattan office advised her to work remotely. So I felt like going back nineteen years, on the fateful 9–11 day, when I had to rush to my elder daughter’s elementary school to bring her back home to feel safe from the unsafe happenings outside. Second daughter was only few months old then.
Only difference now this time, was an unseen enemy versus (initially) unknown enemy at that time.
Every day during the whole year, much un-understood information passed as newly learned information which kept evolving, anyway. As a parent it was stressful, though was feeling good to be together with all the close ones under one-roof. Ironically, also unhappy with the new reality that everyone had to put their busy lives in sudden unexpected pause and not knowing when it would all resume.
Few months went by like this at home, my younger daughter felt her days would be better spent if she can get a feline companion. She wanted to foster cats during her free time, as she always wanted to have a pet growing up. I knew then getting attached to a pet is easy and very hard to give up after sometime when the fostering is done, still we started thinking about it.
As much as we liked our daughters being at home we also felt for our daughters that they were missing their life experiences. That made us to agree to our daughter’s request to bring the 2 month old black cat into our home, Kala. (Meaning Black in Hindi, Time in Sanskrit, and Art in many south Indian languages including my mother tongue, Tamil)
For my wife and I, with two daughters who have all pretty much grown up and on their own for the most part, with lowered responsibilities, a pet and it’s responsibilities was not what we were looking for. All we wanted was to do little, and travel more and see places. But these are not normal times.
The fact is Kala also, did not look like, she liked coming in to a place, as it must be lots of changes for her, for the reason that comes later. She did not want to come near any of us and kept wondering, which i understood as, what am I doing in this new place with this Indian looking family.
Also — few things made us to feel bad for Kala along with her beautiful lovely manners, eventually would change into real affection for her in the next few days. First, we learnt, she was returned to foster care by the previous owner after just few days of adoption, for reasons like the owner could not take care of a cat. That might be the reason for her not to believe this new human kind, in the first place. Second, the shelter person was concerned for Kala, if we were feeling bad to take in Kala since she is kala (in Hindi), which made us feel more sad for her. Truth is, like in many countries, in India also, people think kala cats are not a good one to see.
Days rolled by, Kala got attached to my younger daughter, roaming on her study table during her online classes, streaming live her back to the class group over zoom, inviting lots of lighter moments. With that she will look eye to eye with my daughter to grab her attention. She started roaming the home like it is her place, forgetting that she is only on foster, and learnt all the hiding spots if at all there’s a rare visitor during the Pandemic times.
Kala was great in bringing all of us from our isolated workrooms to the living hall. We started enjoying her “I am the princess” attitude, and wanting us more to get closer to the majesty. With all the saddening pandemic updates from all over the world, and with much of uncertainty that comes with every new day during those times, Kala is one big source of joy for us to lighten us much with working from home for all. We all started playing peekaboo and other games with her, which she became good like normal kids. bringing lot more smiles. She started to invite herself to family talks, and sit in the middle, and confirmed her belonging to the family group.
Within two months, we got a potential taker who is interested in adopting her from us, the fosterers. Now, all our minds were looking for reasons on how to avoid this possibility of letting her go. We started postponing the requested calls, and finally went back on our fostering agreement, and let it out that by saying “We are going to adopt Kala” instead of handing her over. Yes, finally, she was officially recorded in the vet’s office with our family last name. We started including her in family photos and bring her in during the family praying times.
During the whole year of staying few feet away from everyone advisory, literally no people visited us at home. We also stayed in most of the time as most of the things were getting delivered, Kala was not comfortable with any rare visitor to home, if at all there’s any one for a visit just at the door. For her, being a pandemic kitten, the home and the people inside here is the only world she remembered. If she smells something foreign near the front door, she would disappear for the whole day. In the mornings she would come out as if nothing had happened.
Beginning 2021, daughter’s school and work asked for them to come in person, My second daughter calls herself the Mom of Kala, but she had to leave for school. With dorms having a lengthy process to allow a cat to move in with her, Kala stayed with us, the parents at home. Kala did not miss a beat or acted like she missed the other family members but went on as if she was all fine. At least, I could not find out any clue from her eyes or her actions. As I read while dogs love their owners, cats love their homes.
The world outside our window even now is totally outer space for her. It took till the beginning of 2021 for her to get some courage to stay in the backyard with us for few minutes.
Now with the human children out of the home most of the times, Kala enjoys our attention only to her, though she probably misses her live streaming zoom sessions.
Finally after over 20 months, we planned a vacation, and arranged to leave Kala in our home with a pet sitter to replenish her food, water and clean her litter box. We also set up few indoor cameras to make sure she was doing fine. We monitored, she enjoyed the whole home for herself, we believe, as I could not find any signs of she missing us in her eyes or in her actions. Over that, we got bit jealous that she started liking the pet sitter and would see her off at the door when she left the home after taking care of her routine 30 minute visits.
The world wished for the pandemic to end sooner every day, and return to normalcy like how it was before the year 2020. Even today, it is still elusive. Why do, as humans or living beings as even pets that as we know, develop this much attachment, but as any one can attest, that is for the best even in normal times, much more in times like the past two years. May the world’s wish come true for the pandemic’s disappearance but wish the love for all beings grow more in our beautiful universe.
After our family vacation, on our way home from the airport, ten minutes before arriving at home, our daughters started watching Kala live on the phone from the camera feed. Five minutes away, we saw Kala acting up very active and roaming up and down the hall a bit. We were so happy that she was feeling something for her family or some instinct for her. Our daughters were looking forward to carry her in their hands, and give a hug.
On opening the door, to our surprise, Kala disappeared like we were some rare visitors at our home itself. But that was not completely true. This time, she was not hiding, but sitting up on a table upstairs making us work our way to reach and hold her. Of course, we were very slow in showing her how we missed her, and she seemed unhappy that we did not include her in the family trip.
We got the feeling or wanted to believe the cats do love their home, but also they love their family. They only does not know how to show that. After that for some reason, we are finding it not easy to think of any vacations. Only kala (in Sanskrit) can tell.
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