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When Calvin and Hobbes were born, my family and I didn’t know whether they’d live. Their mother, Rochester — named thus because she was partially blind in one eye and also because, for the greater part of her life, we, her human family, believed she was a tom — died a day after their birth. The little ones battled, as only cats can, to live. Today, they are four months old and are budding mountaineers, their favourite mountains being our human backs. Vanilla arrived soon after, scooped out from underneath a car by my father and sister. That little miss has now taken to swatting Calvin and Hobbes haughtily. Long, long ago, there was Gina, the black beauty named after a character in a soap opera simply because both had a beauty spot in the same place on their faces. I remember Miracle, my aunt’s cat who, in spite of having lost the use of her hind legs after an accident, spent her days in total disregard of her disability. Then there was the beautiful mystery-cat, Macavity — and soon after, her little brother who was named Macavity’s Little Brother — whose green eyes were ringed with blue. And the Sheikh, the huge, handsome, long-haired (you couldn’t call the Sheikh “fluffy”, he’d take umbrage) patriarch who defied all hulo laws and was putty in the paws of kittens, irrespective of whether they were his own. The Sheikh, contrary to his intimidating appearance — he reminded some of Eliot’s Rumpus Cat — spent his life lovingly grooming, and being slapped by, kittens. There were — and are — so many more. The house has always teemed with them
But, as far as West Bengal’s animal resources development department is concerned, these people don’t, well, exist. Cats are not going to be counted in the month-long pet census in the state that started in September. A department official said that cats are not going to be included on the list — which, curiously, has emus and camels on it — because “very few are kept as pets” and most are “stray”. Clearly, you’re more likely to walk into someone’s home and find a camel instead of a cat. The department also said that the census is aimed at finding out how animals are reared. For example, if goat meat is growing scarce, the census will help figure out whether fewer goats are being reared. As far as a ‘pet’ census is concerned, are animals raised for slaughter the same as domesticated animals? Going by that logic, if cats aren’t ‘pets’, then why doesn’t the census count them? Perhaps cats aren’t strictly reared for slaughter, but the way many humans treat them isn’t much better.
It is true that most cats — even the domesticated ones, unless they have never been outside — would choose to wander and spend a large chunk of their time outdoors, coming inside mainly to eat, sleep, escape bad weather and play with their humans. It stands to reason that not all cats that are seen outdoors are strays. And even if they were, one would be hard pressed to explain what makes it alright for a state’s ARD department to wish away their existence. But then, cats aren’t like dogs: even though they are capable of as much affection and loyalty, they are fiercely independent creatures, able to fend for themselves and do without people if need be. I wouldn’t be surprised if trying to pretend that cats don’t exist is just another sign of human insecurity at not having completely owned, or held absolute power over, a creature. Interestingly, stray dogs are going to be counted in the census. So, even if one were to buy the most-cats-are-strays argument, it would be difficult not to question why stray cats cannot be counted. Is it too much work? Is the absence of the “infrastructure” to count cats simply the unwillingness to put in the extra effort it would take to scour the corners of the state for felines who are naturally more prone to staying hidden from plain view than dogs? And here you were thinking that the creatures of the state — the human sort — were the only ones who suffered as a result of Bengal’s famous antipathy to hard work.
Including cats in the census would have helped identify ways to address their complex needs and control their burgeoning numbers. But that isn’t going to happen. And so, when the census officials stop by my house to acknowledge my dogs as legitimate inhabitants of the state, they will be treating my cats — who easily outnumber my dogs and, as Jean Cocteau put it, are my home’s “visible soul” — as non-existent.
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