Mother Love

It's interesting to think that of all the relationships that exist in the human world, the only one that is parallelled in the animal kingdom is the mother-child one. There are the rare exceptions like swans or lobsters mating for life, but the one that cuts across is the maternal bond. I guess it's designed that way to ensure basic survival of the different species, but whatever the reason, it's heartwarming.

We got evidence of it several years ago through a pet. A cat, one monsoon, decided to have her kittens on the windowsill of our drawing room. The window sill was a good 2 feet deep and provided ample protection from the raging storm, and we woke up to find 2 little kittens curled up there. We put a cardboard box and some old clothes out for the ginger cat and she made a cozy nest for her two kiddies out there. Sadly one of the kittens died soon thereafter and the mother cat left our place a couple of months later. The other kitten adopted us but only in part - he had the soul of a wild cat. He never ate anything we put out, preferring to hunt his own food, never allowed any petting or caressing by us and made it clear that the relationship could only be on his terms, not ours. He came whenever he wanted to, lay in a patch of sunlight in our sun room or lolled about elsewhere at will. We named him Sphinx, after his habit of curling up in that pose on top of the sofa.

After a while we started to notice that Sphinx seemed to have a date saturday morning and were curious to observe. Come 10 am saturday morning, he would be eager, all aquiver with excitement. He would wait in our garden, all his nerves on alert. About five minutes later, who should come along but his mother! He and his mother romped through the garden playing catch-me-if-you-can, roll me over and other such games, leaping up to snap at the flowers, throwing themselves onto each other in that visceral connection that now reminds me of the way my kids throw themselves on me. It was a joy to watch the two, completely oblivious to us gawkers and to anything else, their orange bodies gleaming in the morning sun. At the end of the romp, they would cuddle up quietly for a snooze, mother cat and kiddie cat all tangled up in a bundle of orange fur, so entwined you couldn't tell one from the other.

They kept us this rendezvous every Saturday, and as long as we lived in that house, we made it a point to watch them. Sphinx declined to come along when we moved house so we left him to his happy hunting grounds. But I hope and believe that he and his mom kept up their playdate as long as they lived.