The cat and the milkman

Syed Nooruzzaman

AS I would enter the premises of an NGO for a walk every morning this winter, I would witness an unusual scene. Even when it was very cold, with visibility being poor amid a thick blanket of fog, she was there. Sometimes, when I forgot to glance at her, she would gently remind me with a ‘meow’. She would repeat ‘meow, meow’ as I stood there to observe how she reacted when the person she had been waiting for arrived.

Seated on a wall with her milk pot in front of her, she would simply utter ‘meow, meow’ when the milkman was there in front of her. Smilingly, he would fill her pot with milk every morning and disappear quietly. This had become part of his routine and he followed it religiously. What was even more amazing was that the brown-coloured creature would be there on the wall well before the arrival of the milkman. Obviously, she had a great sense of time without taking the help of a watch.

There were occasions when the plastic pot was missing. The milkman told me that this was the work of naughty youngsters. They would take away the pot to make it tough for him to feed the cat.

The first time this happened, it disturbed the man, who has grown old supplying milk to customers in our area. After doing his primary job, he rushed on his scooter to a nearby shop, which opens early in the morning, to purchase a new plastic container to feed the waiting cat. He could not live in peace without accomplishing this noble task.

The milkman became wiser after he first found that the cat’s pot was missing. He now always keeps an additional pot in the boot of his scooter so that the cat did not have to suffer if it was not there. This demonstrates his commitment to feeding the hungry feline.

One morning, as I passed through the area, I found the milkman terribly upset. Asked the reason, he told me that the cat had been missing for a few days. As he was frantically looking for her here and there, an old man told him that she was in his house, recovering after confinement.

The bearded old man knew me too. He informed me that the cat had given birth to stillborn kittens. This had caused a great deal of distress in his house. The children were upset when they saw the cat weeping copiously. They prayed for her early recovery and arranged a decent burial for the dead kittens.

After a few days, the milkman noticed that the cat was there on the wall again, waiting for her feed. His happiness knew no bounds, and he quickly gave milk to the animal in a new pot he had kept in his scooter. And so the fascinating affair continued.