New Friend: Roseee the Cat

Roseee is a whimsical cat. For some reason, she has decided to adopt the land of Lilliputians as her home.

Roseee was wooed the way stray cats ought to be befriended: with milk and butter. It was her skeletal look that made us want to fatten her up. Real fast. Perhaps all our milk-butter maneuvers touched a chord in her heart, perhaps she really likes us.

The rather unimaginative name, Roseee, stuck to her because Roshan's Baba uttered the word and she lifted her green eyes, looked at us disarmingly. Writing her name with three eee is my way of making the name extra special. But in my hyperbolic imaginative way, I also like to think that the name, Roseee, has a deeper meaning. The etymology of Roseee can be traced back to the word rose, the rose scent is elusive, roseee the cat is elusive, too. We can’t hold on to her, she likes her independence.

There is also something royal about the name. It was Nur Jehan the queen who accidentally discovered rose essence when she had the reservoirs in her garden filled with rose water in preparation for a banquet for her king, husband, Jehangir. The banquet was actually Nur Jehan’s re-avowal of love for Jehangir after some marital tiff. A highly creative way to make up after a squabble, I must say.

And so, as the story goes, at dawn she found a film of oil on top of the water in reservoirs. She smelled it, loved the fragrance, smeared herself with it, and went to meet Jehangir…..

Roseee has about her that royal air, the haughtiness… yes, it is a bit too far fetched, I concede.

The land of Lilliputians is Roseee’s temporary home. Mercurial as she is, we are subjected to her vanishing acts from time to time. There are days when she can laze away the entire day, lying on a table in the veranda, doing cat stretches at regular intervals. And there are days when the Lilliputians and I wait and wait for her to show up, to lap up the milk we put in her plate in anticipation. Then she arrives, her mew-mew mingling with the shrieks of the Lilliputians and my cooings.

This is the way she likes to be: independent, with no strings attached.

Maybe Roseee can teach us a thing or two about love without its trappings. But then, I guess, you have to be a cat to be so emotionally independent, to be able to occasionally turn your back to the world and sleep peacefully, to love and remain indifferent.

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