CATS, DOGS AND MY NEIGHBOUR

Have you raised dogs that bark only at cats and other dogs? Well, I have. My dogs bark only at these beings and just to make sure that these animals do not ever return the same way, they bark about half an hour more, long after the other beings have disappeared. I forgot to add that my dogs bark only in the night and take their much deserved rest during day time. They spend the entire day time sleeping. They couldn’t be bothered if someone opened the gate and walked in. To make matters worse in the night, two cats appear out of nowhere and meet on the terrace of the neighbour’s house. They spent the entire night hollering the most unprintable adjectives at each other. The pitch rises to a crescendo and breaks off for sometime. But the dogs never cease to express their displeasure at having to listen to the choicest of harsh words nor show any let up in barking back their loudest form of protests. Needless to say, these innuendoes fall on deaf ears and the cats ignore the dogs with a contemptuous flick of their ears and a wink that contains a most derisively coined expression, something like the middle finger up.

”Shut up, Denny, Timmy“. I lean out of the window and yell at the dogs.

The dogs turn around to stare at me and utter a short “whooof”, which I always thought was the short form of “ahh .…shaddap, dumbo”. It was either that or something worse because the dogs immediately resumed their shouting match with renewed vigour. I seemed to be the only one who was affected by all this noise in the night when my parents, sister and the entire neighbourhood can sleep through the entire ruckus and not hear anything at all in the night.

“Peaceful sleep last night. I remember having hit the bed and woke up just now, feeling great. This is a great neighbourhood and you could cut the tranquility with a knife.” Said my sister.

“I could use the knife too, to slit the neck of these damned dogs. I am sick and tired of not being able to sleep in the night because of their incessant barking.”

“Come on, Chetta. It was so silent last night that you could hear an ant burp a mile away.”

“If you were sleeping so peacefully, how did you hear the ant burp? I was up all night and I did not hear any ant burp.” I had never heard an ant burp nor was sure if I would recognize it if the ant sat on my ear lobe, leaned forward and burped right into my ear, but I was not going to give up so easy.

And as with the dogs who “whoof” at my reprimands, she turned away and sighed deeply, “hhhhmmmfff” with a heavy emphasis on the “fff”s. Now, this was often the kind of response I got from my parents and sis, when I asked them questions that irked them.

If it was the dogs that punctured my long strip of sleep in the night, it was the turn of the cell phone which rang intermittently, with a vengeance during day time. I had realized a few days after buying this sim card that this number belonged to someone who used to run a restaurant.

“Two double omelets, 4 chapatti with subzi, please. Deliver them to ZRBNA 4005, varkala at 11.30 am.”

“Sir, this is not the restaurant anymore. I happen to have bought his number”

“Do you know the phone number of the guy who owned your phone number before you owned his phone number?”

“No and dear sir, believe me, there are things I would like to tell him if I knew his number.” I would hiss thus.

Imagine how it is for a man who cannot sleep well neither during the night nor day. He would be hopping mad and ready for fisticuff at the drop of a hat. I was going to do something about these dogs from barking so much in the night. From experience I realized that dogs barked only if they were annoyed at something. They did not greet each other with a few short whoofs which may sound like “hello” or “howdy”. Dogs barked only to express their displeasure. I have never heard them say “thank you” for the food they get everyday nor have I heard them say “I love you”. It was always complaints, complaints and complaints. I wonder how any being can exist such.

My plan of action was very simple. Remove those things that made these guys holler in fury. This meant that the cats that appeared on the terrace of the neighbour’s house have to disappear or simply, not appear at all, each night. I only had to wait till these critters appeared, pick up stone, throw at them and that should scare them off. I might have to repeat this procedure a few days before these dumb creatures got the message and melted into the darkness.

It was past 11 pm when the cats appeared on the terrace, the next night. I did not see them arrive at the scene of action until one of them vehemently expressed his repugnance at the other’s arrival. I did not blame him because that was exactly how I would voice my disgust, albeit in a different language. I picked up the stone and taking careful aim, threw it at the cats. The cats seemed totally unconcerned that a stone had missed them by a few inches nor did they mellow down their cacophonic meows. But what they and I heard was the window pane of the neighbour’s house break into a few hundred pieces. They jumped up with a start at this sound, but soon settled down as they decided that this sound was not any of their concern. I also waited for a few anxious moments for the lights to flicker on, the neighbour to appear at the terrace and threaten me with dire consequences. But nothing of the sort happened. The cats waited just long enough to make sure that the last piece of the glass pane had settled down and went back to their repertoire.

I was very upset with this turn of events. I was very sure that no one would see me in the pitch darkness and so, did not budge from where I was perched, which was on balcony of my bedroom. After giving the neighbour about ten minutes to wake up, run up to the terrace and shout at me, I decided to act again, since the neighbour did not bother to respond to the hullabaloo. I picked up the next stone and threw it in the direction of the cats again. I was positive that this stone would not break any window pane, as I had already achieved as much with my first throw and the path of the second stone was thus cleared. Hardly a nano second must have elapsed before I heard a loud scream. It was unlike any that I had ever heard before. It went like EAAAOOOOHHHHWW!!” and it was quite unlikely that the cats would have made such a sound. This screech was followed by a loud thud which resembled something like a big log falling on the ground while being lifted into a lorry. I peered hard into the darkness to see what it was, but the next thing I knew was waking up from the balcony of my bedroom, the next morning.

My forehead hurt so bad that I thought it was going to explode. A careful exploration of the concerned area with my hand revealed a lump which was just about the size of the stone I chose to throw at the cats. The back side of skull hurt too, probably because my hands failed to initiate action to support my body weight on the way to the floor and the rear side of my medulla oblongata must have tried hard to break the fall. Needless to say, another lump developed there too. I could not fathom how this could have happened.

“What happened to your forehead?” My sister asked without looking alarmed and least bit of concern. She believed that I was prone to meeting with such accidents and was only curious to know how it happened. “It happened again”, she announced to my mother who looked quizzically at my forehead.

“What do you mean, again?”

“He doesn’t remember what happened?”

If I remember right, the last time it happened was when I was playing cricket. I remember trying to take a sneaky single, but then nothing afterwards except waking up in the hospital bed. The other players say that I nicked the ball to the first slip, started to run for the single, when the ball which was thrown at the wicket hit me on the head. This time it was very different. I vaguely remember this explosion in the head, a brilliantly lit flash of light inside and then nothing afterwards. Angry with the cats was the least I could say at this turn of events. I squarely blamed the cats for this lump on my forehead. If the cats had not appeared at the terrace, the dogs would not have caused the ruckus and I would have slept peacefully in the night. I would not contemplate such a drastic step which cost the neighbour his window pane and won me a lump on the forehead. The lump seemed to growing every hour and by evening, it looked almost like the horn of the fabled creature Unicorn.

I went out to the balcony of the bedroom in the evening and found the neighbour was at the terrace inspecting the surroundings. Surprisingly, he also sported this Unicorn like protrusion on his forehead, exactly the same size as the one I sported on my forehead. I also noticed with a pang of guilt that a gaping hole has come about where there was a window pane until last night. On closer scrutiny, I came to the conclusion that the neighbour did not suspect me of the window pane carnage in the terrace.

“Yoo hoo” I waved at him

“Yoooo hoooo” He waved back.

“What is on your forehead?” I was curious to know how he could have gotten an exact clone of my lump on his forehead.

“What happened to yours?” He was as curious about mine as I was of his.

“Don’t know how it came to existence at all” I told him the truth

“Neither do I, about mine. I heard the window pane break and came up on the terrace. The next thing I know, there was an explosion and a brilliantly lit bright light inside my head, which brought me closer to mother earth. I came around and threw a stone in the general direction from where a stone could have arrived to break my window pane”.

That explained the lump on my head. Now, I was very happy that I broke his window pane. He had it coming, what with his terrible attitude of throwing stones at the neighbour’s house with scant regard to whoever may be up and prowling about in the balcony.

“Perfect climate. But it could strike up a bit of a chill in the night and you could catch a terrible cold if you were in the terrace in the night, around 11 pm”. I did not want him around tonight when I was going to throw stones at the cats again and thought it was a fine idea to warn him of the impending consequences if he stepped out in the night.

“That is what I thought too. 11 pm is not a good time to be up on the terrace, whatever noise you happen to hear”.

And as decided earlier, I was up and waiting in the balcony for the cats and they arrived on time. It was business as usual for the cats as they picked up the thread from where they dropped it the night before and carried on without missing a beat. The dogs too raised their usual protests, which as usual fell on deaf ears with the cats occasionally blinking their eyes and flicking their ears. If I was going to throw a stone at these little balls of nuisance, I was going to hit them and was not going to take any chances this time. The only way to do that was to get as close to the cats as possible.

Now, this idea of mine required that I jump up on the terrace of the neighbour so as to reach the cats. This also meant that I had to climb up my compound wall, jump up on the sunshade of the neighbour’s house, before clambering on to the terrace. My dogs stared at me in astonishment as I prepared to clear my compound wall and one of them even encouraged me with a few “whoofs”; not the same blasphemous whoofs, but a different kind of whoof which was hitherto never heard before from their throats. The cats were still pitching innuendos at each other and did not notice that I was already up on the sunshade. But here, I was faced with another problem. If I got myself up on the terrace, there was nothing that offered me any cover, to get as close to the cats. And the cats would spot me and disappear into the darkness as they always do, in the night. I decided to walk along the sunshade until I reached quite near them before throwing the stone in their direction. A sudden sinking feeling developed in my stomach and same brilliantly lit flash of light illuminated the insides of my skull for a brief moment, the same way it did the previous day before all lights went off.

I woke up the next day with more pain in the head than the day before. On careful examination of the concerned area, exactly as the careful examination of the concerned area I did the previous day, I found that the lump I had on the previous day had given birth to a smaller lump very next to it. I also realized that I was not lying on my bed, but on a surface which had a lot of sand and flower pots on it. I sat up and looked around. On closer examination of the surrounding area, very unlike the closer examination of the concerned area I did earlier and the day before, I came to the conclusion that I was still at the neighbour’s house, in his compound and had spent the entire night sleeping there. I tried to think back, but my brain was acting a little jammed and not receptive to commands like “think back”. I jumped back into my compound where the dogs treated with more whoofs which may have been closest thing they ever said to “hey, good to see you back”.

I turned around to look back at the sunshade, which area I was treading before waking up from the arms of Mother Earth, in the neighbour’s compound. I shuddered in horror as I saw what had befallen me the night before. The sunshade was just long enough to reach the end of the window and did run the entire length of the building. In the pitch darkness, I walked upto the edge of the sunshade and had fallen face down, which explained the second lump on the forehead, and woke up just in time before the neighbour found me out.

“Hey, you had been to a stag party, yesterday?” My sis met me at the door.

“Nope. Why do you ask?”

“You seem to be developing horns all over, the kind only stags have”

“Very funny”.

I was more determined than ever to rid the cats from the neighbourhood. Now that I knew the terrain of the neighbourhood, it was going to be easy this time. I would choose the window which was right below where the cats would be sitting, straighten myself upto a standing position and throw the stone right at one of them. From that distance I could hit an ant’s behind without taking aim.

I was all geared up for action when another bright idea hit me all of a sudden and I wasted no time praising myself on such quick thinking. My mother and sis would not have believed that I was capable of such brilliance and I had half a mind to wake them up to let them in on the whole show. But my sister being a hard core animal lover would have objected to the very idea and put a spanner in the works. She was the kind who went around saying that cats and other animals had as much rights as we humans did, which she said was guaranteed in the Indian Constitution. I could argue on that point for months, but never did lest she got annoyed so much as to alter my physical constitution.

I decided I was not going to throw stones this time, but simply creep up on these cats and say a loud “BOO”. I would crawl up on these darned cats by getting to the sunshade above which they were sitting, slowly raise my head to position, arch back my entire upper body as a regular rooster did before blasting out a vociferous ‘cockadoodle doo’ and then shout out “BOO”. This would scare the living daylights out of these beings and would never contemplate coming back to the same area, ever again. Now, who wouldn’t be terrified if someone crawled up on them in the dead of the night, took aim in the direction of the ears and screamed “BOO” with all the lung power at his command? I congratulated myself over and over at this great flash of brilliance. This idea, when put to practice, also simply halts me from wasting stones at window panes as also hitting the cats as to cause grievous injury.

“Yoo hoo” I greeted the neighbour as cheerily as I did the previous day, as he appeared at the terrace that evening.

“Yooo hooo” He reciprocated with the same enthusiasm. “Now, did you have two horns yesterday or you grew one more today?” He asked me with a malicious gleam in the eyes.

I glared at him and vowed to break a few more of his window panes as early as I could. But now, I had other important things in mind. My eyes scanned the entire house of the neighbour, carefully noting in mind where the sunshade ended as also the usual position taken by the cats. There was no window shade right under that area and the closest one was just under the broken window pane. I decided that if I shouted loudly enough, it would still scare the cats. I may have to repeat the procedure for a day more or two, but I was sure it would do.

Strangely enough, the dogs did not break into a relentless staccato of yaps at the sound of the cats. They seemed to wait for me and even encouraged me with a few whoofs to climb up the wall. Slowly, ever so slowly I lifted myself onto the sunshade. The cats were about ten feet away from where I was crouching. Slowly, slower than my slow ascend onto the sunshade, I straightened myself up and arched back to bellow a full blooded “BOO”. As my body arched and then straightened with springiness of a coiled spring and the “BOO” was half way out of my mouth, I saw out of the corner of the eye, a figure clad in black clothes with its head covered, get up from the other side of the parapet of the terrace. This figure appeared so close to me that it was the scariest thing to happen to a man who believed in ghosts, devils and other alien beings. I flung myself around and screamed the entire “BOO” right on the ghost like figure’s face. The creature let out a screech which exactly the same in intensity and tone as the “EAAAOOOOHHHHWW” I heard on the day I broke the window pane. I did not wait to see what happened to the ghost after it was hit by my “BOO”. I was sure I heard a loud thud, again, very similar to thud I heard on the day I broke the window pane.

I jumped back onto the compound wall, down to the ground and was about to race back into the house when this explosion and brilliantly lit bright light appeared in my head again. And as was their practice, they went off as fast as they came in and me, flat on the ground unconscious.

I woke with the same heaviness in head. The last three days of practice had not gotten me used to it, but it only got heavier. On careful examination of the concerned area, I found I had three lumps on the forehead and one on the back side of my head too. As I opened my eyes wider and let in more light, more pictures started to appear before me. They were in the shape of my mother, sister and the neighbour. The neighbour was wearing the black dress which I recognized as the one worn by this ghostly apparition on the terrace. I was very amused to see that the neighbour also had unicorn like protrusion on the back side of his head. In fact, I liked it so much that I burst out laughing. I was so happy that he who was callous enough to throw stones at the neighbour’s house on mere suspicion that a stone may have arrived from there, is suffering the same way as I did.

“What are you laughing at?” He spat out the question with a murderous intent, but it was lost on me, because I was busy laughing.

“You look like a secretary bird, with that tuft of hair at the back.” I continued laughing

“And you look like a Triceratops with two extra horns at the back.” He quipped back.

“Shut up, both of you. Pray tell me what happened?” My mother got in between us.

“I was sleeping when someone threw a stone at my window and broke the glass. I came to the terrace and was hit by another stone. I do not think that it was the same stone that hit my window that hit my forehead, but a different one, which accounts for this lump on the forehead. Since that night, I would peep out of the broken window pane every night, to see if any one threw more stones. Yesterday, I saw a figure clamber on top of your compound wall, while I was peeping through the hole. So I crept out of the room, crawled myself up to the parapet of the terrace and got up to see who was on the other side, when this figure sprung up and yelled “BOO” at me. I jumped about five feet high in the air before falling flat on my back; my back side of the head hit the floor which accounts for the other lump on the back of the head. Upon standing up, I saw this figure jumping back into your compound and I threw a stone at him. Only after it fell down and all of you descended on the scene that I realized it was this idiot who broke my window pane, threw a stone on my head, scared me stiff with a “BOO” and that which caused me to fall down. I do not understand why this clown climbed up on my terrace and scared me with a ‘BOO”.

“I thought you were a cat” I ventured my opinion.

“WHAT?!”

“I meant I was going to scare the cats on your terrace with a loud “BOO”, but you got in between the cats and the “BOO”.

“You got onto my terrace to scare a cat?”

“Two cats”

“Two cats?”

“Yes, two cats”

“You mean to say that it is alright to jump on to a stranger’s house to scare off a few cats, when you could have done the same standing in your compound”

“My dogs have been trying to shoo off the cats with the loudest form of barks, but to no avail. So I thought it was best to get as close to the cats as possible”.

“He is lying about the cats. I have never seen any cat in my compound. He probably got in to my house for something else”.

“I think so too. I have never seen any cats around here”. My sister put in her two pence.

“NO, NO, the cats were there. You could check with the dogs, if you want. Or you could wait till 11 pm tonight and see for yourself”.

But the cats never ever turned up at that spot ever again. The “BOO” must have scared them away for good. The dogs too have given up barking in the night but the entire episode wrecked the neighbour’s sleep permanently. The entire terrace was brightly lit every night from the next day on, to prevent me from springing any more surprise “BOOS”. Every now and then, I would see him prowling on the terrace, in the night or peeping out of the hole in the window pane which he never repaired. In fact, my neighbour had completely lost his marbles. I would also occasionally see him stare into the darkness, probably looking for those cats, which probably chose another place very far away to shout at each other.

My mother and sister have not given up asking me why I jumped on to his house and do not believe that there ever were any cats in the entire neighbourhood. They still believe that nights don’t get more silent than the ones in their precinct.

“It is so peaceful here, in the night. So silent that you could hear an ant burp a mile away”.