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Nazneen Pasha
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It all started in Feb 2003 in Hyderabad. A colleague of mine knowing my passion for pets in general and cats in particular gifted us with a Persian cat. Being in Hyderabad and the fact that the cat came from an aristocratic family we promptly named it Nazneeen Pasha. What we did not know was that this gift was bearing two more gifts.
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Maata 2003
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It gave us two cute kittens a couple of months later and was promptly given an alias - "maata". The children were ecstatic and thus we had 3 cats with us.
While one was named Ghazi Pasha (Ghazi means winner in war) due to its tendency to go to war with whatever opponent was available at hand be it another cat, dog, chicken or even a snake. The other one who was the strong silent type was named Rustom Pasha. Both really lived upto their names.
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Baba and Rustom
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While Maata and Rustom were really well behaved and aristocratic Ghazi was the rebel. The children nicknamed it Babafurry since he could not live up to its aristocratic name. Baba was the only cat in my 63 years of cat rearing that could not be potty trained. We got transferred to Mumbai and stayed in Nerul where all three cats added a lot of color to our life. Then we moved to Mumbai proper where we first lost Rustom and then Maata .
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Rustom and Baba
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Baba remained with us never recognized the fact that he was our pet and we were his owners. He behaved as if he was our owner and pretty much made it obvious and ruled our lives. His way of expressing displeasure was to use his "potty indiscipline".
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Baba
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I retired and shifted to Bangalore three years ago. Here too he remained with us without old age - he was more than ten years - bringing any mellowness.
It was Baba's habit to give company to people who used to get up for "Sehri" in Ramazan. This Ramazan as usual he got up and insisted on being let out in the compound. A pack of stray dogs somehow jumped inside and instead of running back into the house he fought back as usual. By the time we could all run out to his defence the Ghazi had become a Shaheed (martyr).
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Baba
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The ten years he had been with us he had been a great influence in the lives of the entire family. Even today we expect him to walk in dirty, dishevelled and victorious from another scrap.
