Bernard's Pick (More)
Fate, as is well known, has a funny way of sticking it to people. Unsuspecting people who, being so unsuspecting, also get very pissed about it and subsequently abandon their faith in whatever God/Goddess they believe in, for even after regular praying and asking to be kept away from all troubles, their God repays them with a fate that sticks it to them where the sun don’t shine.
An extreme case of Fate acting funny is the one regarding a person and the person’s cats. This person, for empathy’s case, has asked to be named with a name other than the person’s name, and as we’ve been calling this person, ‘Person’, for an awful long while, it’ll be the name to stick to. Now Person was by most accounts a rather kind person. It so happened that in Person’s locality, there was a group of stray felines, who, in the earliest example of a long list of a bizarrely twisted fate, took it upon themselves to compensate for the lack of rabbits anywhere in the locality by reproducing like rabbits, and succeeded inasmuch as a cat desperately trying to resemble a rabbit can. This is where the kind streak in Person showed itself in a gleaming light: every day, Person would make it a point to leave whatever was left over after meals out on the doorstep, where a plethora of cats would come in a huge furry mess and fill their perpetually half-empty stomachs. As is the manner of cats, it wasn’t long before they took full advantage of Person’s kindness by deciding to quit searching for food altogether and sleeping around in Person’s veranda.
Another aspect of Person’s kindness was Person’s unique attempts at water-conservation. Person was well aware of the pathetic fact that water was quickly becoming scarce. In endeavouring to postpone the inevitable Water War of the future by whatever small insignificant amount that was possible for Person, Person decided to put a bucket under the water outlet from Person’s terrace so that in the rainy season - ironically, the time when water was most abundant - water would collect in the bucket, which Person would then use for various miscellaneous purposes such as washing feet, hands and shoes, and also watering a few plants. To Person’s great surprise, it also proved to be most useful in getting rid of the cat menace that Person was a victim of.
The cats that had eaten at Person’s doorstep had, in an act of stupidity peculiar to felines, gone and spread the news of the quantity and quality of food being consumed by them to their cat friends, and very soon, there were not only cats from all over the locality but also from localities miles away sleeping on Person’s veranda dreaming happy dreams of chicken bones and spoilt milk. To Person, this had gone too far. It had in fact gone farther than far; it was now so far away that had it gone any farther, it would have reached the point it had started from. Person believed that it was Person’s right to expect the cats to move at least a teensy-weensy bit and let Person pass through the veranda. This leaving the house from the back door just because those feckin’ cats wouldn’t move was ridiculous, thought Person, who evidently enjoyed using the Irish variations on common expletives whenever the opportunity presented itself.
One rainy Sunday morning, Person returned from church completely soaked from cap to shoelaces. Person had also sadly stepped into several puddles along the way, and these were no ordinary puddles, rather they were puddles filled to the brim with muck. When Person entered the compound of his house, Person wasted no time in using the water from the bucket which had been overflowing for quite a while then. After washing Person’s feet, Person looked at Person’s veranda, and the greeting that Person so badly needed at least from the cats was conspicuous by its absence. Pissed to no end, Person took the bucket which was overflowing again, and flung its contents into his own veranda with no regard for life, limb or tail. What Person had expected to achieve was the quick departure of the cats. What Person actually did achieve was an angry horde of stray cats jumping upon Person and scratching every bare surface of Person’s skin that the cats could find, which happened to be mostly Person’s godforsaken face. “Get off, yer bleedin’ gobshites” was all that Person said, following which the cats reluctantly made for the gate. Person then washed Person’s face thoroughly, with the water coming from the outlet of the terrace, and went in.
Person then renounced Person’s faith, and never said a prayer ever again. A few days later, Person also noticed that Person had trouble swallowing, as Person’s glands had swollen. Person also found that Person was suffering from a flu, and so Person decided to go up on the terrace for a bit a fresh air. When Person entered Person’s terrace, the first thing that came to Person’s attention was the presence of animal droppings in each of the four corners of the terrace. On closer inspection, Person noticed that they were cat droppings, and flew into a rage, yelling obscenities at every cat that ever set paw on God’s green earth.
After a visit to the doctor, Person learned that Person had contracted a disease known as toxoplasmosis. The doctor had also explained to Person that one possible source of the disease was cat faeces, and Person realized that Person had inadvertently consumed some of the water from the terrace outlet, which was mixed with cat droppings, while washing the scratch wounds on Person’s face. Person was also told that for some ungodly reason, Person had acquired the more severe form of the disease that almost no one managed to acquire. And then, the doctor had said to Person, “I do hope you’ve been praying to God lately, because only He can save you now.”