Most of the stray cats at Yannawa temple have begun to recognise my footstep and voice from far away. Now some of the cats even recognise my car; two cats would be running up to my car while I was trying to park it properly. I did wonder how they could see the difference in car models, colours or number plate! Perhaps they could read the letters on the car registration plaque. Their ability for pattern recognition just baffled me. Sometimes I intentionally changed the way I walked; this seemed to confused them as they stopped followed my footsteps.
The more I spent time with these cats, the more amazed I was with their intelligence and fast problem solving capabilities. Their brains work very fast and they would take risk to get their food! The kittens have learned to distinguish between the packaging of dry food and wet food! They would pay attention to the package of wet food in my left hand. Their eyes would follow my left hand so I had to hide the package and told them they had eaten them all. I had a hard time persuading these kittens to continue eating dry food once they spotted the wet food package.
One family of orange cats has become my good friends. The mother cat was called Somcheng (meaning Chinese orange). The thin monk told me that this cat used to be very sick and he had to nurse her for several months. He expected her to die as she hardly put on weight. But she had four beautiful kittens who have become overly friendly towards me. Somcheng would always come out of her hiding place whenever I called her name. Sometimes she was some hungry that she came up to me to complain about her sufferings. These cats really expected me to understand her barrage of meowing language. The expressions in their eyes gave away all their emotions. I could communicate with these cats by using eye-contacts.
When Soncheng’s family was very little; she was very protective with her kittens and these kittens tended to be very timid. It took me ages to take their photos and to earn their trust. After three months, these orange kittens have become very friendly and brave; some even ran after me hoping to get more wet food. There was one Siamese kitten , her three siblings had been adopted over a month ago, who was still very wild and aggressive towards me. But I was determined to take this beautiful kitten soon.
Somcheng has put on weight and she was getting a bit bigger than her kittens! At first I couldn’t believe age could successfully raised four healthy kittens. I tried to feed her extra wet food while she was pregnant and nursing her tiny babies. So, Somcheng would run out to the car park to greet me as soon as I parked my car. I wondered how she knew I had just arrived.
One black cat has become very wordy with her meowing as soon as I walked onto the car path. She just came out from hiding under a parked car. The gang of black mafia cats had been broken so each black cat has become a loner with less aggression. I tried to feed them when they requested for some. These black cats are amazingly quick witted and much smarter than other cats.
The thin monk told me that two kittens were bitten by stray dogs. I saw a white cat with bad scars from dog’s attack. He used to looked so smart and beautiful but he looked rather nervous and shaky from his bad ordeal. Sometimes visitors came to walk their dogs in the temple without taking them on a lead. I had to chase these expensive dogs away from temple cats twice so far. I was quite furious and ready for a kick boxing with these dogs!
The security staff of the temple seemed to become softer towards me on feeding these stray cats! I did wonder what changed their attitude and hard words towards me earlier. Lately, I started to bring my old car to the temple to save some walking time from the shopping mall where I usually parked my car. I should have been more careful as the cctv in the temples were top notch spying camera with microphones! That security guard had details about my car and details of my status from pass-stickers on the car. That’s why he came towards me one evening to tell me that he never forbid me from feeding stray cats! Oh! He was afraid I could complain about his rude behaviour to someone higher up. I did have some good connections in the past but I rarely pulled any string for my own problems. I could always worked out conflicts by cool negotiations and give-and-take attitude. But he must have been quite surprised when seeing my pass which allowed entry into a palace. This temple has been under this palace patronage. But I tried to follow the temple rules about feeding stray cats. All the temple security staff seemed to become more respectful to ordinary laypeople; they remembered very well that we had a big argument months ago on feeding stray cats. But my cool stubbornness won the day.
So, I could feed these stray cats more freely without having to avoid these security staff. I do hope that these stray cats would be well treated by temple staff and not be chased out of the temple ground. I knew some monks would like to see all these stray cats gone so the temple would look orderly and beautiful. I really had no time for nice talk with some tribes of human beings. It’s best that we stay on our separate paths and let temple cats live there lives with some peace and compassion.
Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.
Stay strong and cheerful.