My weekly visit to Yannawa temple has become a habit for me after a year of feeding stray cats there. These cats have become my good friends and they always show me their affection and trust in my friendship for them. Some cats would run at full speed to greet me as soon as they could hear my footsteps and calling sounds. Some days, a new stranger cat would appear at the temple; the staff told me that some people came to the temple to dump their cats there in the evening. These poor cats got quite a shock and would hide under old abandoned cars at the back of the temple. They were too afraid of the older temple cats. I would see them once or twice, then they just disappeared from the temple which made me quite sad. I would like to confront those people who abandoned their cats at the temple one day.
Whenever I was absent from visiting the temple for over a week, I became worried about these stray cats for I knew some cats would definite go hungry for the whole week. Some cats are just too timid to approach the food station at the skinny monk’s hut. This skinny monk has a soft spot for cats and kittens; but he could only afford to feed them limited amount of food once a day. Those cats who missed the feeding time would have to wait for the following day.
There’s occasional trays of food left for stray cats by other monks whenever the monks had leftover food. Some lucky cats might get a piece of fried fish from those trays. There’s a biker who came to feed stray cats once a week in the evening; but he was missing lately. I wondered what had happened to him; he just began to appreciate my presence at the temple and talked to me. Several monks looked at me while I walked around the temple calling out for cats in Thai and English names. They probably thought I wasn’t a Buddhist as I ignored all the monks and paid attention only to stray cats!
It’s better that I shut up my mouth as I was tempted to tell these monks to leave some leftover food for stray cats instead of throwing away uneaten food in garbage cans. I saw many uneaten food in plastic bags in those garbage cans; I was quite mad. These monks would often get lots of food in small plastic bags from people in the morning alms round. In big and famous temples; food is abundant as people like to make merits by offering food to monks to accumulate some good karma.
Some monks were not very happy with me feeding stray cats and I was told off once about encouraging cats to make the temple dirty. Luckily, my persistence wore off their complaint about attracting more stray cats to gather at the temple. Actually, older stray cats have disappeared while newly born kittens often got bitten by stray dogs or crushed by cars. I missed at least five old cats I used to feed last year. I just hoped they found a better place or a home that would adopt them.
These temple cats were unusually gentle and friendly. They didn’t have any self pity for their hardship and precarious lives. I have learnt a lot from these stray cats. How they never complained to me about their sad lives and how hungry they had been the whole week. They always expressed their delightful eyes whenever they saw me approaching them. Even the small kittens ran towards me without fearing the danger of stray dog around the car park area. These kittens would get into my bags in search of more food and snacks. They were very competitive and driven by hunger for more food!
The adult cats seemed to have very good manners while eating food from my hand; they would not bite my fingers. I thought the bigger cats became well groomed with etiquette appropriate for formal dinner time! It’s amazing to see how considerate and sensitive these adult cats have turned out in such a short time. It was as if they were grateful towards me and they expressed this feeling by being very gentle and polite while eating their food. So, the small kittens often rushed in to steal all their food! I had to invent a system of feeding these cats to make sure that each would get a fair share!
Some cats would sit quietly two meters away from me and just waited patiently for me to feed them. These cats were truly peace loving cats; they refused in rushing in and competing for food. One mother cat would talk to me or cry out to me that she’s still waiting for her portion of wet food. I felt like a school principal trying to feed all the children in my school. I had never known before that feeding stray cats would lead me to a new dimension of friendship with cats and the understanding of cats’ feelings.
I just wish more people would try to learn new understanding or gain strange experiences from being accepted by stray cats in Yannawa temple.
Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.
Stay strong and cheerful.