Apples and cats
Thanks for all the good wishes – and Karmic advice alike! – about my Macbook – it’s back! I must say I’m pretty thrilled with Apple’s tech support and warranty. All I had to do was call their India customer service, carry the laptop to a local authorised service station, and two days later, with a replaced logic board, it was back up and running. I suppose this is one of the upsides of living in an “IT city” or “tech city” or whatever corny journalese name that my hometown Pune now goes by. So what if this tech boom means rampant congestion, severe pressure on infrastructure, and hideous blue glass and concrete software gothic* office buildings and malls – it has the exalted status of having an authorised Apple service center. I’m never one to not count my blessings, what? And I’m totally buying another Macbook after this one is fully and truly dead. So there, you PC naysayers! And whoever just thought to themselves – haha, what’s she going to do if it starts randomly shutting down again? – don’t make me curse you, okay? Allow me to point out, instead, that my warranty is valid a while longer.
But thrilled as I am, I don’t have anything particular to blog about just yet, because I’ve been madly working at a talk I have to give this weekend, and have had absolutely no time to do anything else. (Will blog about the talk, but later). So let me introduce you instead to my newest friend. This is a stray that inhabits our housing colony, and has determinedly enslaved me. She is possibly the most ill-tempered and angry cat I have ever met; she has not a kind word or look for anybody. Naturally, I am becoming quite fond of her. She used to break in through the kitchen window and try to steal milk at night, and earned my mum’s ire. I decided to pre-empt that by leaving a bowl out on the window-sill twice a day. Since then, Her Highness has abandoned burglary, and commands the bowl at the window by meowing like there’s no tomorrow. She didn’t touch the catfood I got her from a pet store. All she wants is milk.
The other day she actually grazed against my legs a few times, and I seriously wondered if something was wrong. I would like to have her inoculated and spayed (she recently gave birth to a litter, but I haven’t been able to locate it), but she won’t even allow anyone to touch her (plus the little bastards who live in the colony like to harass her and she’s generally very scared and wary of people, I think), and this much friendliness is about all my pet-phobic parents are willing to take. Even though they too trot out like clockwork to feed her now and, gasp, talk to her! I’ve been thinking about giving her a name, but I have a feeling she would disapprove.
*If you’re reading this, A, thanks for the felicitous phrase!
She’s very cute despite, or perhaps because of, her bad attitude! Are grown cats OK with milk? Somehow I always thought it gave them diarrhea, but perhaps I’m projecting from a lactose-intolerant human viewpoint.
happy to hear that macbook is back to life.
and she is sure cute and ferocious! we too had many cats raid our kitchen. I once woke up screaming in the middle of the night thinking there was a burglar, but turned out to be 3 tiny kittens hanging on the curtains!
One of my surgery lab partners from school owns a practise in Pune (in Sahakar Nagar). She might be able to help you out and even give you some advice regarding trying to catch the cat. Let me know and I’ll track down her address for you if you can’t find her.
She’s quite a handsome cat… very, very regal.
And, hey, I’ve been meaning to write because I went to Stitches Midwest this week (where I saw Laura!), and one of the stalls (can’t remember which) had your rangoli hat knitted up in one of their yarns as a display! And MY MOTHER noticed this… we were walking by and she said, “isn’t that your friend’s hat?”
About the cat: Your cat’s face and expression looks astonishingly like the stray cat I’m feeding over here in Germany. Maybe having no home and being always on the run gives them that thin face and ‘alert’ eyes? Mine’s got kittens as well. I couldn’t resist to take one cutie up and cuddle it a bit, with the result tat she’s hidden them elsewhere now…
Its refreshing. And thanks to my recent trip down memory lane, I managed to get introduced to the world of blogging (guess who to thank?). Yours is the first site I went to. And then Big B’s. How come you have nothing to share/write about your trip to Bangalore?
Aw, poor stray kitty! I admit to having a fondness for the ill-tempered ones myself. Somehow it makes them seem to have more personality, ha ha.
I just found your blog, and have enjoyed reading the older posts. Is the temple where you go for yoga classes on MG road? I’m pretty sure my maushi does yoga there too! Anyway, I live in CO, but my husband and I will be moving to Bombay/Pune later this year on a Fulbright. Just thought I’d say hello…
Glad to know that Apple has good tech support in India – we thought about it a lot before we replaced our old one with a newer one!
It looks like you have been having a great time in India travelling, knitting, yoga-ing!!
Amazing headstand!!!