Random Thoughts on Random Words - Day 16 Pet

In a family, if the parents play badminton the chances are that the children will be encouraged to pick up the sport, some other sport or at least appreciate and engage in  physical activities. If the family is  interested in music or the fine arts, children get the opportunity for exposure and develop an interest in art. The same is true of other areas like gardening, bird watching or having pets at home. Families that have pets at home can vouch for the many moments of happiness/joy they have experienced in their company. Research has shown that pets can enhance your mood; people suffering from long term diseases have less chances of depression if they have pets. They reduce stress and are an antidote to loneliness. Pets help you to remain physically active (For example walking your dog) and can help you to have better social skills.

In my own case , I did not get an opportunity to understand and appreciate the advantages of having a pet. On the contrary, I was fearful of getting too close to animals as my mother used to discourage any such association. It was years later that I got introduced to pets, very reluctantly at first and  developing  a bond gradually. When my younger son brought home an abandoned kitten the first time, I was not even actively/ consciously  aware of its existence. I was transferred around that time from Bangalore to Mysore. I moved to the work place, retaining the family at Bangalore to enable the children to  continue their studies in the city. Since  I came home only at the weekend,  my association/ encounter with the cat was limited. 

Subsequently, I had changed jobs, moved first to Bellary, then to Chennai and returned to Bangalore only  after seven years, post retirement. By then, our first pet had run away. My wife had asked the maid to bring a kitten from the litter a cat had delivered in her neighbourhood. She brought two of them, a male and a female who were named 'Kuttu' and 'Vava' respectively. Of the two, unlike Kuttu, vava was not very active or affectionate by nature. Therefore interaction with her was not much. Months later, Vava ran out of the house early in the morning and could not be traced for a couple of days in spite of our searching very hard. She was later  reported to have come under the wheels of a car in our huge housing  complex. 

It was only after we lost Vava that I became aware as to how much she meant to me or how much I missed her. All this, in spite of the fact that she was not known to be a very affectionate cat. I myself became aware of the depth of my loss only when this poem "Miss you" spontaneously flowed out of my being:    https://rajeevianlinesandverses.blogspot.com/2016/02/miss-you.html 

 I also wrote a mini/ micro story "If only..."  from the  point of view of Kuttu, with him speaking in the first person. He had  mourned and missed his sister a lot. 

https://rajeevianlinesandverses.blogspot.com/2016/09/if-only-micro-fiction.html   

The maid brought another cat "Ponnu" to get us to forget the loss of Vava. In some ways, Ponnu was like Vava, very fearful and running away from human contact. It took us a long time to get her to open up. In the meanwhile, one day my wife went to the local bank where she saw a little kitten hurt in the stomach (Some cycle/ vehicle  seemed to have run over her) . She was moving about looking up at  the people  who were eating at the next door kiosk,  hoping to get some food to eat.The kitten  appeared  to have lost her mother. My wife decided to bring it home, dress her wound and then after a couple of days,  leave her in a safe place where she would survive. 

Although this was the plan, we found on her coming home, that she was the most affectionate cat we had ever known.There she was, looking up at us with so much of trust in her eyes. We decided to keep her too.The nature  of the wound on her stomach was such that she needed  a hernia operation. This was done and she had just about recovered from the aftermath of the surgery, when she decided to jump out of the window of our third floor flat. The scene  was heart wrenching; we rushed her to the vet and to our joy and relief, she survived. As a kitten who survived two major challenges, a major fall and a hernia operation, we decided to name her Bahu Billi" . It turned out that Bahu was the most active, mischievous and most affectionate of the three cats.I particularly became very close to the little one and she to me. 

Recently, we had to face the tragedy of losing Kuttu whose health had  deteriorated steadily. It was a big blow as he was an integral part of the family for years now. We were told that he had contracted rabies , the symptoms of which is not so pronounced in cats as it is in dogs. It was a shock and all of us including the  cats got our vaccine taken for rabies.  Similar to the way, kuttu had grieved over the loss of Vava, Ponnu  cried a lot.  After all, It was he who had taken care of her when she had come in as a small kitten. Ponnu who was not very affectionate earlier, has begun to get closer to us after Kuttu's death. In fact, with both our sons leaving house in pursuit of their career, it is the love of our pets that sustains us and keeps us going.   

I would like to end this post discussing another take on the word "Pet" that I had come across some time back- When expanded it reads "Personal emotional trainer". According to this theory, all the challenging people or situations in our life, bet it a harassing boss, a non cooperative subordinate, a nagging/ difficult spouse or situations such as loss of a job serve as personal emotional trainer (PET) making us stronger and more competent to handle the challenges of life. Therefore, we should not resent the pets in our life but instead welcome them as they support us to reach  the  ultimate goals of our life. I had written a poem on these lines titled "All of us have pets" in January 2017.    

(  https://rajeevianlinesandverses.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-of-us-have-pets.html ) 

So dear readers, explore the benefits of having pets,  go ahead and embrace your pets! Be it cats, dogs or the personal emotional trainers! 

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