Our son was just a toddler and I was alone with him on a very wet rainy afternoon. There were a few urgent chores to attend to, but the little one was a little fretful that he could not go outside to play. I sat beside him and told him an imaginary story about a magical cat and left him playing with his stuffed toy animals beside an open window in his play room. “Look out this window for the magical cat, and when he comes along, tell me.” Saying this, I left the room to attend to my urgent chores.

Hardly ten minutes later, there he was excitedly saying, “Please, please Mom, come quick the magic baby cat is crying outside in the rain.” Rats! This child is trying to out smart me I thought, and followed him to the window. Lo and behold, true enough there was a miserable bundle of a kitten all wet and muddy, right outside this window. I could not believe my eyes and thought that I was hallucinating. This cannot be happening with all my dogs around who made sure that there were no cats in the vicinity, matter of fact, the whole village!

I had no choice but to bring the miserable creature inside and make it warm and feed it. But its muddy condition was too much for me and I thought well if this creature is to remain here till we find its owner I might as well bathe it and make him clean. Held it under the tap and washed and towel dried it. Yet it was feeling cold and shivery so I dried it with the hair dryer. Gave it some bread and milk, and put it down. From that day on it was my tail, putting the dogs in place and won over the whole family with its antics.

He did not like fish that I specially cooked for him. Other than that he was not fussy about his food and showed a great liking for raw jak fruit and pumpkin. He was a vegetarian cat!

My husband taught it a few tricks. He taught him how to catch lizards off the wall - our house is full of these creatures- when the cat saw a lizard he would go mewing to my husband and he would pick him up and throw him up to where the lizard was and down he would come with the lizard.

The neighbourhood was pestered by bandicoots and one of the neighbours had set some traps in their garden. Our Mr. Smart Cat must have put his foot in one as he came home after a couple of days with his hind leg almost ripped off. I took him to the vet and the vet told me that it was too late to save the leg. We took great care of it but the wound was slow in healing and the vet was not too happy. Then one day he went missing again only to return after about a week, a sad looking bundle which looked at me with sadness as though he was trying to convey something. I cleaned him up again, dressed his wound, gave it his favourite food which he barely touched, and he went away never to return again. No matter where we looked Smarty was no where to be found.