I wam referring to the cats in my neighbourhood. It is nothing personal, you understand. I don't even know them very well. To be honest, I am not even sure how many of them there are exactly, except for the fact that there is a grey stripped one, and a ginger one (or is it really two or even three?).
I don't know who they belong to, or whether they belong to anyone at all. Either way, I don't much care. Certainly they do not belong to me -- but does it matter? They seem to act like they own a bit of my turf.
When we moved in to my present home some years ago, they would sneak into the house at night, upturning the dustbin in the kitchen, lounging about on the sofa in the living room, leaving their hair as evidence, and depositing their droppings on the floor wherever it pleased them.
Aren't cats supposed to be intelligent and domesticated? They could at least have been decent enough to use the toilet. But no, they would not. I suspect it gave them more pleasure that way. Show who is boss, as it were.
So now, our house is cat-proofed. We have put meshes over the grille doors, and shut all the windows at night so they cannot come in. Of course, this has not stopped them from having full rein of the house in the day or of the garden whenever they feel like it.
So why I am still so mad at them?
I want the cats dead because they get me boiling when they are in heat. Has anyone noticed that cats like to pussyfoot around -- except when they are mating? What is a private act for us humans, becomes a public spectacle, an open-air no-holds-barred, 120-decibel performance for the neighbourhood.
Not satisfied with having a good time, they must let the whole world know that they are having a ball. Not satisfied with a few quiet snuggles and gentle moans in a dark corner, they must climb to the rooftop to caterwaul, to bawl, to shriek and screech and scream.
Not satisfied with a quick tryst at a decent pre-midnight hour, they must rendezvous, all half dozen of them it would seem, at 3 am, give or take an hour.
This is where I come in: Snatched from a sweet dream. Roused by a cat call. Pierced to the bone by baby-like wails at that inhuman hour. And unable to return to sleep until those infernal felines are dissipated. At such times, murder will spring to the mind of even the mildest, the most animal-loving person. And I am not even that.
It is a confession that I am embarrased to make, but I have done some pretty horrible things to animals. Not since I am an adult, you understand, but when I was a kid. As a kampung boy, to be precise.
Only those who were once kampung boys know the obligation that it brought. You had to live up to the challenge of being the "big guy", play the role that little boys thought grown-up men played. You do not cry when you scraped you knee, you did not turn down a challenge to fisticuffs, and you did not squirm when treating animals badly.
So we caught beetles and tied their legs to strings to see how high they would fly. We even twisted their heads round and round, so that when they were placed on the ground, they would spin around in a tizzy on their backs. We hurled stones at dogs and cats, which were too smart to be hit.
We made spears out of umbrella spokes, and lanced lizards for the hell of it. (Once, in attempting a William Tell, I pierced the chest of a friend, the thin wooden spoke standing out in front of him, having gone in about a centimetre, there was little blood, surprisingly, and we never told our parents, unsurprisingly.)
In truth, the external display of bravade disguised my internal squeamishness and sense of wrong. (I hated the idea of cutting up live frogs so much that later in secondary school, I refused to take biology classes even though I loved science.) Finding the lizards' spilled guts too horrible, I always shot just enough for suspicions about my "manliness" not to be aroused.
Once, passing by a drain where a mother hen and her brood were wandering, I flung a small stone at them just to scare them, and was utterly petrified, and remain conscience-stricken up till today, when what I had thought was a harmless act resulted in one of the chicks being killed.
So my friends and I never participated in any acts of viciousness, such as maiming or torturing cats and dogs. I think we would have stopped anyone who did it. We were, after all, trying to qualify as men, not monsters.
And those whoe behave like monsters deserve every punishment the law metes out.
To get back to those cats: No, I do not really want them killed, even though I have entertained such thoughts as I lay in bed listening to their amorous cacophony outside the window in the clammy coldness of early morning. But, I do not know if that is not a euphemism, for if they go to the SPCA, they are likely to be put down anyway.
We borrowed a trap from the Primary Production Department and actually caught one of them. But my animal-loving older daughter let it go, unintentionally, she claims, so I left it at that, though I seriously doubt she was not just protecting herself (and the cat). After that, the cats are too clever to be snared again.
I know that toms will be toms and tabbys tabbys, and they have to do what nature bids them to, and in the stuyle that nature has laid down for them. So the owners should be held responsible instead. There should be, for example, measures taken to ensure that cat owners spay their pets.
One of the simplest to implement is to have the owners of an unspayed cat pay a fee every year, say $200. After all, these creatures have a social cost. And when the litter comes, homes have to be found for them.
One morning, earlier this year, we found one of the cats dead outside our gate. It had been poisoned. I had been tempted very much to do the same, but could not get myself to do it. But one of our neighbours had apparently decided that it was time to take things into his or her hands. At least, he did not throw boiling water at them, as another neighbour (or is it the same one?) did.
It is sad, but true: Animals can bring out the beast in people. But we should not give anyone an excuse, however feeble it may be.