The incident with a cat, a bench and a street lamp in the night.

Now this is a recent incident that I have to talk about, which involved me, a cat, a bench and a street lamp. Not so much the streetlamp except for the fact that it was just there.

 

Here I was waiting for a bus out of town at the designated spot. The bag on my back included my laptop, and change of clothes.. anyways where I am leading is that it was quite heavy. So I look around and there right under a street lamp, a see a bench which was empty and in spite of the rains all evening was surprisingly dry. It looked like a Godsend and so I crossed the road, and just as a swung my bag around and put it on the bench, out of the surrounding darkness, out leaps a cat and lands on the other side of the bench.

 

Now I am no expert on cats and their behaviour, but looking at the cat I could see that it was not a mangy one as you would expect a street cat to be, it was robust and graceful in its moves. A rather ragged brown in colour, it looked like a small puma. Like I said I am no expert on cat behaviour but her extremely hostile behaviour suggested that she harboured some ill feeling towards me.

 

So there she goes and starts pawing at the bench and mewing at me with her teeth bared, which led me to believe that this aforementioned bench was part of her domain and she didn’t like an intruder in her domain, especially as she looked like she needed one of those famous Cat-Naps.

 

But I was determined, “I am not scared of dogs now,” I thought to myself, “ so why should I back down from the cat , I know that it is hostile and I don’t know any visible signs as to when it will attack, but then I am ten times its size so by its feline logic it will think before attacking. True that ever since I have left college I don’t have the regular scratch marks, but not that I miss them anyways.”

 

The cat in the meanwhile sensed my hesitation and jumped on to the bench and there right next to my bag was the cat all ready to attack (according to me) and mewing and baring its teeth at me. Now I am quite brave otherwise but I know when I have been had and so I looked around. It was about 10 pm and no one was around to witness my retreat so I grabbed the bag and swung it around, and voila she was gone, she saw it as a pre-emptive strike from my end and had stepped back from the bench.

 

So we were at a stalemate, the cat and I, thinking about our next moves and at the same time trying to think like our adversaries. Now one thing here to tell my fellow being, its not easy to get into the brain of a cat and try and think what it was thinking.. ( all I could figure out was the world in a black and white, and a constant desire for tuna but nothing in terms of attacking strategies).

 

Not at this stage the story took an anti-climatic turn with the arrival of the bus and me having to rush it to ensure that it doesn’t leave me behind. As I turned around the cat had lazily taken its place at the center of the bench and I don’t think I was imagining this, was pawing me a goodbye.

 

But I have the cat figured out or maybe I will after a few more sessions of thinking like the cat when I will move past tuna, black and white, mouse , a hatred for water and getting wet. As for the cat, if you are reading this, “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE !!!!”.