Eating grass

The house is a bit of a zoo first thing in the morning, almost before dawn cracks and wakes us all up. The doorbell rings just before six am and the milkman has now learned to leave the packet of milk just outside the door, on the painted marble bench – the first day, he rang the bell five times before I came staggering out to open it, my bare legs wrapped in a towel and my hair flying every which way around my head; that was enough trauma to stop him doing that ever again. Soon after the sound of the front door bell comes the tinkle of another bell – the one that hangs on the collar around Small Cat’s neck. She hops off Father’s bed, where she has slept through most of the night and comes scampering out of his room. Then she stops on the carpet near the dining table, yawns hugely, stretches into some early morning suryanamaskar-akin positions and takes a flying leap over some imaginary hurdle to reach the kitchen door. And there she waits, her at-first-plaintive chirps gradually swelling into astonishingly piercing caterwauls.

Just when I am ready to leap out of bed and grab Small Cat, tucking her under my sheets and going back to sleep for a few precious minutes, Father arrives, muttering protests albeit lovingly. He rolls open the kitchen door and lets Small Cat in, following her to the window, which is also opened, and lifts the little furball up to set her on the wide ‘window seat’ created with a granite slab outside. There she stretches again, yawns, grooms herself briefly and checks that all is well on her little lookout; and then she turns to stare big-eyed at Father (I have seen this happen often, so presume it is a regular sequence of events). That is his cue – and god forbid that he should do anything else! He has to pluck out stalks of wheatgrass that is grown just for Small Cat in four small pots at different stages of development, and feed the green strands to her, preferably one by one, sometimes in a bunch. She will chew so enthusiastically that he is often in danger of losing a little skin from his fingers, and has to push her away so he can get to the grass.

And whenever she feels the need for some comfort or some rest after a particularly rambunctious playtime or is just plain bored of whatever amusement may be available to her at that moment, she trots over to the kitchen window and demands to be lifted up so she can graze. This is such a routine that we often call her ‘our little cow’.

But then, I always say, she has some of my nature. I like things green, vegetable and fibre-rich, as does Small Cat. I believe in whole grains and raw food and, to some extent, so does Small Cat. And, while I do not graze as enthusiastically as she does, we both like the idea of fine dining, each food eaten in its place and at its time. Which makes us not just epicures, but folks with the right snob values.