At the moment, we have seven cats. Five of them do not catch mice. They spend all day near our house waiting for us to give them something to eat. They don’t settle for one ration a day as pets should have. Our cats walk around all the entrances of our house, hoping we will open a door so they can slip inside and snoop around to see if they can get or find a treat. It got me thinking about cat life. I am happy that I’m not a cat whose only concern is getting through the day and stuffing its belly. I am grateful I am a human who can think and create.

The only cat who catches mice regularly is our Molly. A devoted mom who has brought six kittens into the world, whom she has cared for meticulously, even nursing them for a month longer than the breeding manuals say. Even after that, she still brought them mice and continued to hunt, bone-thin herself. We gave away four of the kittens and kept just two. Finnick is just like his mom, doesn’t make a mess, catches mice, comes over occasionally, gets petted, and sleeps contentedly on the sofa, much like Molly. We can’t let the other cats in — they can’t behave. If one of our children, overwhelmed by compassion, lets them in, they thank us by littering flower pots, the carpets, or the floor, scratching the sofa and the chair covers.

I pondered the cat life some more. We had given away four of the seven cats. Nevertheless, by the grace of fate, we kept on accumulating more cats. We saved our smallest kitten, Oliver, from certain death when we picked him up straight from the vet’s waiting room. A lady brought him in, sad that she had to have him put down after rescuing him and treating him at the vet’s because she was going abroad and no one wanted it. We raised the kitten with much care, feeding him with a bottle every 2 hours for days. He grew up on a milk bottle, with no mother to give him the proper habits. Oliver seems not to care about catching mice. He expects us to continue feeding him.

My daughter Elizabeth and I rescued the other ginger cat, Foxy, from the road. Saw him standing there and pulled the car over. He meowed pitifully and wanted to get in the car. So we brought him home. We don’t know what family he came from. To add to the fun, two little black kittens came to us from who knows where. They also roam around to see what they can get. Molly’s other son, Joe, is best friends with Foxy. He is the first to stand at the window and ask to come in. I also haven’t seen him catch a mouse in a long time. My husband Bobeš says it’s because we feed them all the time. The cats have no reason to “stand on their own two feet”.

I’m thinking about the importance of finding a balance in love so that it’s not “mother Bear’s love” on one side of the scale and hardness of heart on the other. It seems cats aren’t that different from humans in this aspect.