The Christmas Cat: Part Two - Christmas

For me, one of the most enduring features of the Christmas story is the idea of a God in child form. The innocence and helplessness of a baby is affecting at the best of times. If that baby embodies a redemptive, yet all powerful God, the story gains a beautiful irony. I have often wondered, why the Christian religion, being, like all religions, rich in colour and stories, we focus so much on this part, on the birth, the beginning. Is it that we never get past it, we are so busy trying to get our minds around this part that we cannot begin to comprehend the rest, especially when it ends so tragically, so bloodily and yet so triumphantly? Or is it that this part of the story, with its symbolic offerings, Gold for a King, Frankincense for suffering, Myrrh for death, actually embodies, somehow, all of the rest? And then there is that haunting phrase. ‘Mary saw these things. And pondered them in her heart.’ What dark forebodings did she have? What a terrible and wonderful mixture of emotions. What awe and wonder.

And if you believe it’s just a story, with no truth in it, but a clever and deep analogy, it still works. If you are doggedly against the whole thing, and focus only on Santa Claus and Christmas Trees, is the whole festival not about life and love? About children and innocence? About Good and Evil? At the very least, tis the season to be jolly. And that’s quite something.

Looking at our very own cat nativity this Christmas, I feel the power of children. There is something indescribably touching about the four, furry forms which suckle, squeaking, at their Mother’s breast on Christmas Day. They are helpless, and in fact a little dull. All they can do is suckle and sleep. They cannot even manage a meow yet, and their eyes are not quite open. They are utterly dependent on Favourite Cat, and in fact it is she, that Mother love which is most fascinating. When I sneak a peek every so often, (all too often according to M) into our cupboard, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness, it is her that I look at. The way she cleans her babies, her protective paw over them, her stretched out abandonment as they climb roughly about over her, seeking her teats. Her brief periods of respite, when she leaves them, exhausted, to venture out for some food. Her watchful gaze as we approach the cupboard and even more touchingly, how her body and her eyes relax as she recognises us, submitting to a stroke on the head, purring mightily.

After discovering her yesterday, I ran to the shop to buy food, knowing that a suckling cat will be ravenously hungry. We supply her with food and water, and, with a twinge of guilt, I head out again to seek, not S, whose house it is, and in whose house we seem to have started to feed stray cats, but B, whose love for her own rescued kittens is so strong, bordering, rather like mine, on the obsessive. B and Boris come over to have a look and Boris, who knows a lot about cats, tells us that the kittens are not new born. They are about a week or two old. She must, he says, have had them outside and then brought them in here because she felt they would be safe here.

We are hugely honoured and deeply touched. But we are not stupid. The gift Favourite Cat has given us, of bringing her family in to our home for Christmas, has a bitter edge to it. We can’t let them stay because we don’t actually live here. And we can’t take a cat family of five, including young kittens, around the world with us. It wouldn’t be fair, isn’t allowed (you can take only two animals per person on a flight), and would do the cats much more harm than good.

Boris, being Thai, and basically the knowledge imparter in this situation, (B and I are reduced to melting pools – I especially am so excited, so touched and so moved by this addition to our temporary home, I am unable to do much more than goo. Literally.)  manages to speak to our next door neighbour.

There is an excited conversation in Thai. Boris turns to us.

“She put a collar on her,” he says, “because she thought it looked nice. But she’s not her cat.”

“So she isn’t owned?” I say wonderingly, and disappointedly. Cats for Christmas is lovely for us, but I want them to have a more permanent safe house.

“No,” says Boris, though he frowns as he says it, “but she looks much too well cared for to be a stray.”

The question, hanging in the air, but as yet unvoiced, is whether in fact Favourite Cat was once owned by our Thai neighbours, but abandoned when she became pregnant.

That was yesterday. We chose not to think about it for today, because it’s Christmas. But it’s difficult to look after a cat who you know you will ultimately have to abandon, who you know you will ultimately have to loose. Are you doing the cat a disservice? Or a favour?

Either way, right now, the kittens should not be moved. So we feed Favourite Cat, and we supply her a stable.

Which is rather stretching the anology. But still. Is it blasphemous, I wonder, to draw analogies between a cat family and the nativity?

I don’t know. But it’s a little difficult not to.

As we might be the only people in the village who are marking this day, (neither Buddhists, Sea Gypsies or Muslims celebrate it), somehow our home, with its cat family seeking refuge, and its carefully planned Christmas meals using Thai ingredients and a tiny oven which we have to check underneath for Lazurus the lizard before we turn on, feels, for today, like it somehow contains Christmas. We have made a Christmas decoration, out of a candle from Jin’s shop, and some shells from the beach, and arranged it on the table. M and I have swapped ‘cards’ though these are not so easy to get hold of in Thailand. Mine is a notebook, in which M has written a carefully worded message and an endorsement to use the notebook to record nice things. Compliments, triumphs, etc.

“You haven’t only discovered bad things on this journey”, is a summary of his sentiment, “try to remember the good.”

It is certainly more natural to remember, and to beat yourself with, the bad things you’ve done. The failures, the disappointments. It takes more effort to do the same thing with the positives. Why, I wonder. Or is it just me?

M’s card is actually a card, though emblazoned with a colourful picture of an elephant. So not especially Christmassy. It contains a long message in which I thank him for journeying with me, for not abandoning me half way through, for his wisdom and his patience.

We do not swap presents. We have decided that for each of us, it is the traditional, carefully worded, heart felt message we write in our cards, which is the thing we most value.

And is the most easily transported. If you happen to be travelling around the world.

And so, we celebrate Christmas. We have a cat family in the cupboard, an enormous amount of food, and a Christmas film.

We are, for the moment, perfectly happy. But that perfect happiness is made, oddly, the more perfect for not being. The cats, like the baby Jesus, are a mixed celebration. They are, as for Mary, so bitter, and so sweet. Christmas itself, without our families, though with each other, has its own edge of sadness, and our skype conversations, though short snippets, riddled with internet unpredictability and with all the joys and sorrows of family life, all those absent, and all those who miss them, all those suffering, and all those who love them, are all the sweeter for their sharper edges.

We go to bed in a whirl of love. For the people who weren’t here with us, and the people who were. For the opportunities we have, and for each other.

Downstairs, a cat stretches out with her kittens. She licks them busily, falls asleep curled around them. She does not know what their future holds. But perhaps, for now, it doesn’t matter.