Healing Aura

A week back my son came back from school and called me on my cell. He was quite excited - their class was asked to write about their pets at home. Well, we do not have a pet and I was at a loss about what excited him so much about this assignment. I asked him as much. “Well even if I don’t have a permanent pet, I do have an occasional pet. How can you forget BuBu?” Heavens, yes indeed how can I forget BuBu. Had he been a man, I would have hated his guts (I still do even though he is not a man)! Well sometimes I think he has all the attributes of an Adonis full of himself. No I am not joking, I am really serious and I know it sounds foolish. Trust me, if you see him you will lock eyes with me and then roll them heavenwards. Yes, just the way you would refrain from saying something to an egoistic man’s face.

BuBu is not only my son’s occasional pet, but also my brother-in-law’s (belongs to a friend who drops him off when not in town). He is white and fluffy – fits the new-age metrosexual male’s image of “fair and handsome”. Carries himself as if he, not my brother-in-law is the owner of the house he occasionally inhabits. He stations himself at the door, scans the people who enter, dismisses them as unimportant (that’s the feeling at least I have always got) and then stretches himself on the white flooring, disappearing effectively in the décor. Reason for people to stumble and fall!!

He is toilet-trained (clockwork mostly, but also human sometimes, if I may say so). My bro-in-law is a busy person, out of the house for most part of the day (and night sometimes given his professional background). BuBu is left alone at home with the house-maid coming in for about two hours daily, during which he is fed and “watered”. However, like I keep reiterating, he is almost “human”, gets up to the bucket full of water kept for him in the kitchen sink. And the fact that he really doesn’t know what to do home alone is evident from the sofa set, which has been mercilessly clawed at. Then again the masters should know better. And his expression says it.

This vacation my son spent a good three weeks with his uncle and BuBu has considerably grown on him. He makes sounds while eating as BuBu would have made and we have to understand that he misses BuBu. A practically imperceptible BuBu clicked on the white flooring also elicits a “so cute no?” comment from my son. Why ever not? I don’t know whether BuBu otherwise tolerates it, but he was made much of a plaything by my son. Twice a day BuBu had to lie on his back and do his Yoga exercises. He had to be agreeable to being picked up for no reason at all and carried all over the house. Or being followed or checked up on whenever he moved from one room to the other. Even his bored expression could not deter my son.

BuBu was abandoned and that’s how my bro-in-law’s friend found him. They discovered that BuBu was already toilet-trained and domesticated. It follows that some rich family had just got rid of him the easy way. The friend took him in. And now he seems as much a part of our family as of the friend’s.

Oh, I forgot to mention, BuBu is a tomcat, though not of the Cheshire variety (he never smiles)!

——-Gauri Kanyalkar ——-