Ah, April show­ers! When the first few droplets fell on my bal­cony on Sat­ur­day evening, I thought it was my neigh­bours upstairs clean­ing their bal­cony. When it started rain­ing in earnest, I rushed out and put my hand out to catch the first few droplets. Rain still excites me for some rea­son. And it’s been so hot and humid over the last few days, that I could almost hear the parched earth ask­ing for some water.

The cat how­ever does not like it all. The rain I mean. This might be because of cats and their intense dis­like of water. I remem­ber try­ing to give the cat a bath in the ear­lier days. It used to be a war out there in the bath­room! She would squeal, squirm and latch on to any­thing she could with her claws (includ­ing me!). I would then try to untan­gle her from what­ever she was hang­ing on to and put some sham­poo on her. Then she’d shrink against one cor­ner or jump up on a ledge and wail so loudly that I half expected the neigh­bours to land up at my doorstep with an offi­cial from a ‘cru­elty against ani­mals’ organisation.

My vet one day, help­fully let it slip that cats don’t need bath. Ah, did he have to wait for two years to tell me this I won­der, half wish­ing I’d grow claws to sink into him for the stress he put me through!

Good sense pre­vailed of course. On both me and the cat and that was the last time I attempted to give her a bath. Cats are intrin­si­cally clean ani­mals and spend much of their time groom­ing them­selves. If you watch them, you’ll know. They are not fond of any­thing on their bodies.

So, when it rains and gets a lit­tle cool the cat remains indoors (specif­i­cally on the bed or the blan­ket). She cud­dles up and refuses to get up unless absolutely nec­es­sary (and that would be if I was phys­i­cally throw­ing her off the bed!).

On the sub­ject of cats, I wan­dered into the Mag­a­zine Shop today on Church Street today and to my delight saw, not one, not two, but 3 Per­sian cats. They were sprawled out all over the mag­a­zines. And there was one lit­tle kit­ten who kept play­ing amongst the mag­a­zine piles. I spent an hour there brows­ing around and look­ing at the cats. Don’t be sur­prised to reach for a mag­a­zine and find a cat instead. Next time around, I’ll try and get them on camera.

And the owner would have prob­a­bly been a lit­tle sus­pi­cious as I seemed more inter­ested in his cats so I picked up three copies of the National Geo­graphic mag­a­zine (old issues, 3 for Rs 100, what a steal!), a Condé Nast Trav­eller and the Kingfisher’s Great Food Guide. Btw, the place opened 10 months ago and has mag­a­zines that you didn’t even dream existed! So if you get a chance, drop in at the shop. It’s below on the base­ment level in the RR build­ing, Church Street.

And here’s my baby say­ing good­night and god bless and hope you folks had a mar­vel­lous week­end. As you might have gath­ered from her dif­fer­ent sleep­ing posi­tions, she def­i­nitely did!