Cats

I haven't written here for a long time. I don't think anyone's going to see this. ._. But here it goes. Photo of mentioned cat at the bottom.

This is about the cats in Bukit Batok Central Block 625.

I have lived in Block 625 since I was born. I’m 16 now.

I do not have much memory of the cats in the area as a young child. Unlike other children who are usually excited and intrigued by the cats that live together with them, I ignored them and certainly did not desire any physical contact with them. This must be why I really cannot remember their presence in my early childhood.

I started to notice them in either Primary 3 or 4. (2006 – 2007) It was not because of my curious nature, and it was not because I found them cute. I can’t even remember how the cats looked like and how many of them there were. I noticed their presence because they started doing their toilet business on other floors of the HDB flat, particularly mine which was the second floor. I remember seeing cat droppings along the corridor of my floor. I remember smelling the droppings. I remember hearing my parents talk about how annoying the cats were. I think some residents brought the issue up with the town council, and there was some lively discussion for a while about what to do with the cats.

I do not remember the cats.

I don’t know what happened and whether anything was done to the cats, but the cat droppings stopped appearing along the corridor. The issue died down after a few months, and life went on. I continued to ignore the cats in my upper primary years. (2008 – 2009) But there must have been a surge in the love for cats in this block, because portions of cat food started to appear around the area.

In my lower secondary years, this love for cats from the residents peaked. (2010 – 2011) This was when I really started to see them. There must have been around 4 cats in the block. I saw them everywhere, from the void deck to different staircases to the corridor. I saw cat food everywhere as well. Portions of cat food everywhere, cat everywhere. In 2010, when I got my first mobile phone, I could have snapped some pictures of them. I certainly couldn’t ignore them in 2011, because they grew really fat. They grew so fat they looked pregnant and I really couldn’t ignore them because WHY WERE THEY SO FAT? Sometimes they walked around, sometimes they lazed around. And oh, the displays of affection from the residents! I remember seeing young children, teenagers, adults and elderly alike paying such attention to the cats. Feeding them, stroking them, talking to them, attempting to talk to them in cat language even…suddenly, their presence was so pronounced. One day, my parents and I noticed collars around the necks of these stray cats. We were amazed. A resident loved these stray cats enough to do this?

Although the attention I paid to these cats increased, my affection for them did not. Perhaps it increased just by a little bit, only because I noticed their presence. But I kept my distance. I took pictures of them with my mobile phone, and I had staring competitions with them, but that was all. Sometimes I stuck out my tongue at them or snapped my fingers at them, hoping to elicit some response. They just glared at me with these really cold eyes, (which I weirdly cannot remember, and that saddens me) as though they hated me. They seriously looked like they hated me, and their hostility kept me from getting close. Sometimes they mewed aggressively when I stared for too long. I would bolt off lest one of them fat ones turned out to be pregnant and was ready to unleash some protective motherly violence on me. I tried to take pictures of them when they were asleep, but often failed because I wasn’t good at being quiet. They would wake up glaring straight at my phone, and I’d run off, ending up taking a photo that didn’t look like anything.

It was during this time that I started to recognize them. All of them were fat. All of them had deadly glares. There was a dark grey one with a blue collar. Two white ones with brown patches so I couldn’t really tell them apart. I don’t remember the last one. Was there a last one? Whatever, at least I acknowledged their presence as a whole.

I entered Secondary 3. (2012) I was pretty busy. So were my parents. I still saw the cats, and I still had staring competitions with them, albeit far less often, but I had better things to think about than cats. I took some pictures sometimes, feeling less afraid of their glares which were becoming less piercing to me. They were still fat, and I no longer suspected if any of them were pregnant.

I was really busy. My eyes saw the cats as they lazed around. My eyes saw the cats as they were sprawled on the ground awkwardly because of their fat bodies. My eyes saw the cats grooming themselves sometimes.

My brain didn’t register that they were starting to be asleep more than being awake. My brain didn’t register that there was less cat food around the area, maybe because the cats were getting fatter still for some reason. My brain didn’t register that there were increasingly less humans around them, and that I no longer heard humans attempting cat talk.

Maybe the glares of these cats were really becoming less piercing.

My brain certainly didn’t register that I hadn’t seen some of the cats for a really long time.

My memory of the cats in the late half of 2012 draws a blank. I had become an exco member of my CCA, and I had better things to worry about. My parents had family issues to worry about too. So we didn’t talk about the cats, except to say right in front of their faces that they were horribly fat whenever we walked past them. At this point, I can’t remember if there was only one cat left – a white one with a large brown-black patch in the middle.

I didn’t notice anything and I didn’t care. The cats (cat?) were/was no longer a part of my life as a resident in Block 625.

By this year, my secondary four year, I had cleanly forgotten how popular and prominent these cats used to be. I didn’t see cat food anywhere or any acts of human affection for a long time. I didn’t see them everywhere. I only saw one of them – the white one with the large brown-black patch in the middle. It was so fat. Whenever I saw it, it was sprawled awkwardly on the ground or a step or a chair in the void deck or in an empty shoe rack along my corridor – more often than not, asleep. I don’t think it groomed itself at all this year. Its eyes held no more than half of its past hostility.

My family and I were all busy. My mother talked about how good a life this cat lived, sleeping all day.

Sleeping all day.

I thought about how bored this cat had to be. He was indeed sleeping all day, and certainly he had to be fed in some way because he was still alive. In comparison to the cats in the coffee shop who are all thin fur and bones, his life seemed to be better.
But that was his life, sleeping all day in different places.
Isn’t he tired of sleeping?
Isn’t he tired of life?
Isn’t he lonely?

I didn’t really care. This fat cat that only knew how to sleep was just a part of the landscape of Block 625 whom I sometimes took pictures of and had even fewer staring competitions with (since he was always sleeping). That’s all. I had better things to worry about.
Or so I thought.

Its presence was no longer one of life, like the presence of an animal should be, but one of utter depression. I couldn’t ignore it. My eyes couldn’t avoid looking at this horribly depressed animal, sleeping when he was tired of sleeping, fat but hungry.
He must be so lonely, being the only cat in Block 625, and receiving no attention from humans except for my staring competitions.
Yesterday, when my family was going to the coffee shop at night, I pointed at that cat and said to my brother, “That cat must be lonely?”
He didn’t hear me clearly. “That cat is dying?”
“No, I said he must be lonely.”
“No, I don’t think he’s lonely. If you told me he was dying, I would believe you.”
“You think he’s dying? No lah, he’s just lonely.”
“No, I think he’s dying.”

He was sprawled on a seat in the wide rectangular hole of a pillar of the block. I tried to do a staring competition with him.

He didn’t stare back at me.

I couldn’t really tell in the darkness of the night, but his eyes looked sad. He was supposed to turn his eyes to me when I stand in front of him but his eyes were looking forlornly in the distance. It was as though he didn’t see me at all. Those eyes were soft and glassy. I wanted to take a closer look, but my brother told me not to bother him any more.

When we came back from the coffee shop, it was still there. It suddenly occurred to me that it had been there either since that morning when I went out for breakfast, or that afternoon when I went out for my violin lesson. Either way, it had been there for hours.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Today, when I left the house to go to church, I tried to find him without really looking for him. I was just glancing around the empty area under the block, the empty void deck opposite.

Empty.

I didn’t see him when I came home from church and dinner in the evening either.

I wonder if he’s really dying, or maybe even dead. He could have left this place to find a cosy dark place to die peacefully, as cats tend to do according to my Internet research the previous night.

Somehow I wish I could have been with him with his final hours, stroking his fur like many residents used to do, although I’ve never done that before.

If he has already died. I don’t know, really.

If he’s gone, that’s probably the end of stray cats in Block 625. In a weird way, I am sad. I hope perhaps there’s still a cat somewhere lurking in a part of the block I don’t go to regularly. After all there are about 3 void decks in this U-shaped block. I’m hopeful, because my brother just told me that he saw the grey cat with the blue collar when he went for a haircut just now. He’s still fat, apparently.

I thought I didn’t care, but right now I’m searching through my brain for dregs of memory about the cats of Block 625 that I can put together. They will always be a part of my memory of this place.
1 AM 5 August 2013

Grace