Book Review | Devapriya Roy’s ‘Cat People’ is much more than cats and cat-loving or hating humans

Among the animal species, I hate men the most. Cats and dogs come a close second. Therefore, it may appear preposterous that someone who is not an animal lover must review a book on cats. But the latter bit of the subtitle of this anthology on cats edited by Devapriya Roy, Cat People: A Collection of Cat Stories by Mostly Cat Lovers but Also Some Haters (Simon & Schuster, 2021), somehow convinced me to give it a shot. You must be wondering why I was apprehensive about reading this book. Even if you’re not, I must tell you this. In the locality in the northeast of Delhi where I live, men, cats, and dogs have raised hell.

There’s a group of untameable cats running amok, sometimes making us laugh and most of the time angry. Dogs, the less said the better. They poop everywhere. I hate the sight of shit whenever I step out of the house. Shit reminds me of men. Over here, we’ve either abusive drunkards or someone I know. I skillfully avoid both. Imagine, with this emotional baggage, I had to open this book. However, contrary to what I had imagined, I immediately felt engaged. Full of humorous cat stories, moving essays, and one photo essay, Cat People begins with an introduction by Roy, who writes that her student P believes cats are “writer-friendly”. Or perhaps writers and cats share something in common, which is why this camaraderie of sorts?

Janice Pariat, in her essay on Vincent, a rescue cat, proffers an argument, invoking an essay on Virginia Woolf. Calling it an “artist’s sense of privacy”, she writes that there’s a kernel of selfhood that writers don’t share with everyone. Then she goes on to conclude, “Cats, I think, share this [sense of privacy> with writers”, which is perhaps why cats, like writers, are often described as moody and quiet but calculative, unpredictable, and, probably, unforgiving creatures. This collection successfully presents all these shades. Covering diverse themes that cut across the human-feline love-hate spectrum, this immersive anthology consists of 33 works by journalists, writers, editors, translators, poets, teachers, students, artists, and a photographer.

People from Ashoka University, however, are larger in number for obvious reasons. Thankfully, it’s not about them but feline creatures: the joy they bring, the hearts they break, alongside breaking stuff and ruining sofas, and the void they leave behind when they’re gone. In one such essay, Natasha Badhwar remembers her “adventure-seeking tomcat” Rahat. “He was small, but he lived expansively”, she writes. There’s nothing more joyful I have read or heard in a eulogy for the dead. Though she has successfully written about Rahat, it seems words failed her during this process. Grief is certainly a place where we find ourselves struggling to adjust in the face of events.

I, for one, couldn’t share the same pain that Badhwar must have endured; however, there’s no denying that I was moved. Another such essay was Along Came Billo. Remembering Billo, Maneesha Taneja writes, “She brought joy when things seemed chaotic. At a time when he (her husband Ashutosh) was grappling with his disappointments and the way forward, she provided succour.”

I digress. At this juncture, I am reminded of Kaalu—a stray dog. Yes, I, the animal hater, remember him fondly. (I wonder why I’m using a gendered pronoun, perhaps it’s better than ‘it’?) He was one creature who made his presence felt all the time when my father died. Wherever we (especially my mother) went, he followed us like our shadows. He was well-fed by my mother. As he was fond of our family in particular, we tried inviting him to our home, but he refused vehemently. There was something about him that was pleasant and disturbing at the same time. He was like that complicated lover we all must have had in life. He stayed outside, always. And one day, he disappeared.

My mother remained sad for a few days, months perhaps, but she reconciled with yet another disappearance of someone whom she loved. What was it about Kaalu? “Pets love you no matter what,” writes Taneja, concluding that there’s no one else who can be “a live-in-life booster”. It is natural to feel a sense of loss when they leave. We did. My mother, more than anyone else. With this anecdote about a dog and my mother, it’s fitting to invoke Jai Arjun Singh’s essay Through the Sands of Time: A Dog Person, a Cat Person, and a Mother Who Was Both. Towards the end of this moving essay, he writes: “By now, it is probably clear that this piece is as much about my mother as it is about cats and dogs. My interest in animals came from her, was steered by her, is inseparable from her matter-of-fact admittance that her non-human children were as important to her as her biological child was (and in some ways, in terms of the special responsibility one owes to a creature who can’t understand our language or the workings of a human-created world, more important).”

This is why I must say that this book is much more about just cats or these cat-loving (or hating) humans, it is about an experience that life is, which we share with everyone else on this planet, even though we appear confident that everything is about us. You can’t help but wonder like Nilanjana Roy, who in the essay Stray Cat Blues, writes: “I will never understand what makes animals trust, and risk, approaching humans.” If I may just probe this further: isn’t it true for just about any relationship? What makes one trust? What makes us take that leap of faith? How must one negotiate this thin line between risk and resilience? And above all, what one must do when their lover, on whom they placed all their bets, disappears?

When I was reaching the end of this anthology, I felt as if I have read everything on cats. Or about experiences that enrich our lives. But at that precise moment, I moved back to the portion I had underlined reading Nine Lives, an essay by Aneela Babar: “As a people, we are guilty of repeating our stories. But what if this is not because we have run out of stories to tell? What if we have cornered ourselves in a time loop and now just relive the same anecdotes we are so fond of sharing?”

Perhaps these questions tie back to the one about trust, love, loss, relationships, grief, and vulnerability, for stories arise out of experiences or lack thereof. We tell ourselves stories that help us take control of things. We constantly assign causes to a reality that faces us, for it’s often unforgiving and brutal. At such a time, one never gets enough of the stories that help us sustain which is why one finds themselves in a time loop, according to Babar. However, some stories or experiences repeat themselves inevitably, no matter what. It’s a never-ending cycle: one that both humans and these feline creatures find themselves stuck in. Perhaps we’re luckier for we’ve language to vent it out or make sense of it. I wonder how cats brave it. I think that’s why they ruin sofas?

Saurabh Sharma (He/They) is a Delhi-based queer writer and freelance journalist. Instagram/Twitter: @writerly_life.

Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,

India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .