Rimi and I lead a comfortable life. Rimi came into my life when she was barely two weeks old. She was so small a baby to be adopted by an inexperienced bachelor like me. At the very outset I like to make it clear that Rimi is a cat who has a cute face and a cutest pair of chocolate-speckled eyes.
I requested many a friend that I needed a pet to share my lone feelings with. I expected that a puppy would land on my lap. Instead a kitten arrived. Its small eyes were blinking. Taking a hard look at it, I hadn’t wasted any time to name it Rimi; its sex was taken for granted.
Rimi would curl up under a quilt I use in winter. At other times she would lie in the hollow beneath my knees. In the morning she uses a large abandoned pot (where Tajmahal rose earlier bloomed) to relieve herself. A puppy would have been less considerate. I believed.
Rimi had a strong dislike for milk. It is particularly fish that she had strong fascination for. So every day I had a ration of fleshy fresh katla available for Rimi. When the fish pieces were served, Rimi simply pounced on them.
When she was barely a month of her existence on earth, Rimi was at her ruthless best. She could snap up a large moth from the air by timing her jump perfectly and with some clinical artistry she could dissect and scatter it on the floor. Now and then mice were found massacred. Heads and tails separated. As I came back from school, Rimi would accompany me back to my room. She would roll over in front of me and paw at my legs when she found me not attentive enough to her acrobatics.
Now into five months, I have discovered to my dismay that Rimi is actually a male, not female! I have checked my impulsive search for a fitting name. I stick with Rimi because it is the name she responds to whenever I call him. My friends tell me that Rimi would go to outside in search of mate. Either he would stay away the whole day or would stay out late at night.
Nothing happens. His girlfriends from neighbouring villages, Bam and Kandhesona, keep on visiting him. Rimi takes them out to a bush nearby and frolics his time away there. Just after evening he comes back to me and squats beside me as I write on my desktop or read at my study table. When I listen to classical music, Rimi yawns and slips to a smooth sound slip.
Mala di, the cook, prepares pithe and patisapta, milk delicacies, for me to celebrate Makar Sankranti. Rimi tiptoes to my dish and wolfs over it. The coconut shreds-milk-rice concoction he seems to relish much.
Love moves things around in a strange way. The saying goes. No wonder, Rimi, a born-hater of milk and milk-made products, now cannot do without pithe and patisapta.