A grieving mama cat found solace in my friendship

Different types of animals stay close to the human habitat or you can say they are part of the human habitat and some of them are also domesticated, while others stay in the wild, they may or may not be friends to humans, but that does not necessarily mean they are foes.

Dogs, cats, cows, etc, and many others commune closely with humans.

Since today's topic is pet care, today I will share my experience with my pet cat. As such I am strongly against keeping any animals in captive. Cats and Dogs are not kept captive as such. Cats and dogs themselves want an owner for them, that is their peculiarities as compared to other animals.

I have already spent 4 years so far with my pet cat. As such I did not raise her from the time it was a kitten. But it was an event when we met each other and developed a bond; since then she has been with me, it's not like she stays at my home 24x7, but she used to remain with me for most of the time you can say, but at night she used to go out, to hunt rats and rodents. In the Day-time, she mostly stays with me.

It was the year 2020, she brought her kitten to our house and kept her in our old room, which used to be a store for us. And I think her kitten was hardly 20-25 days old. I used to offer food. She never showed aggression but she was quite possessive and protective of her kitten, and never allowed me to go close to her or her kitten.

Another male cat used to come to our house and she used to have fierce fights with the male cat to protect her kitten, my father told me that if we dont help her, then the male cat would kill her kitten, so I started creating a wooden frame to repulse any such attempt of that male cat.

However, I could not. On the fifth day, at night, I suddenly woke up to the mourning sound of that cat(mother of that kitten), and I could suddenly sense something had gone wrong; what I found was that the male cat had finally managed to kill that kitten, while her mother was out for hunting at that night.

When I went to that store with a light, what I saw rendered me into a deafening silence, the mother cat hunted a rat for her kitten but her kitten was lying dead with blood spilling from her ear.

I asked my father why male cats kill the kittens, my father said they fear losing the area domination. I am not sure how true is that. But what I witnessed was that the male cat finally managed to kill her baby.

The mother cat kept on crying the whole night. On the next day morning, me and my father took the dead body of the kitten and cremated her in the backyard, the mother cat was observing the whole cremating process and was crying like anything, she did not move, did not eat anything, and was not leaving that place for three consecutive days.

How hard I tried, I could not comfort that grieving mother cat. I was also sad, The truth is that Animals also grieve like Humans. And that was a living episode of how Cat grieves for her kittens for three consecutive days.

I was also getting emotional and I could mirror her emotions at that time, but during that process, she developed a bond with me, on the 4th day she came to me and finally ate two biscuits and milk which I offered. And from that day our bonding got stronger.

In time, she also got familiar with my Mom and Father. 4 years have passed, and we never leashed her, we never forced her to stay in our home, but she used to stay here during the whole day, and at night he used to hunt rats and rodents.

My father used to say that because of her, the damage of grains done by rats has gone down, so she has helped us a lot passively.

I live in a village, so different types of invasive fauna keep wreaking havoc, some of them include monkeys, Rodents, and different types of pests. In Summer, poisonous snakes also visit our home, I fear them the most, my father can easily catch a few snakes.

Her name is "SAKHI". My father used to call her "SUNDARI". The meaning of SUNDARI in English is "Beautiful".

This is my participation for the Initiative: April Monthly Prompt

Check out the above post if you are keen to participate in a particular topic of the day.

Thank you.

Original Photography using my Smartphone