Le Chat Noir - In Loving Memory of Tom

My name is Tom.

I never really knew which family breed of cats I came from, but that didn't really matter to me much as long as I was still popular with the lady felines. Le Chat Noir they would call me. Of course my family doesn't know this. They think I'm a house cat. Technically I am. But hey, le chat noir has to keep the ladies happy. In my younger days of course. So don't judge. See, I'm 21 years old now. That's maybe a century for a human. If there were a cat Guiness Book of World Records for the longest living cat, I would definitely qualify.

Right now, I'm in a really bright room. It smells of chemicals here. I can't move. More because of the pain in my body. I see Michel through the window. He looks nostalgic, and sad. I may be just a cat, but I kind of sense that this will be the last of my nine lives. I want to get up and reassure him like I always do. Tell him it's going to be okay. But I can't move. Damn this pain! Maybe this is for the better. Am I ready?

Lying here gives me time to think. I do that a lot now at my age. It doesn't hurt as much when I'm not moving about. All I can think about are memories of my life with my family.

When I was younger, I loved to climb about and explore. The house seemed like a treasure trove to me! There were corners, and little spaces behind doors, under the beds, between the covers - countless places I found that made a good hiding place. Ideal for a kitten like me back in my days. There was a huge balcony filled with fresh flowers, and birds would perch themselves on the balcony rail. Another one of my favourite places. I think I was born with a fascination for these creatures of the air. They walk funny, they talk funny, they even look funny. The fat ones are the easiest to chase. They're so clumsy it must be hard and tiring for them to carry that fat body around with those tiny flappers. Chasing them off the balcony rail has become somewhat of a hobby and pleasant pass time for me. I could do that all day and before you know it, it's lunch time!

Lunches are great! So are dinners. There's salmon, ham, and sometimes leftovers from the table when Julien comes for dinner. I don't know when, but it was probably during this period that I developed an indescribable liking for PIZZA. Ah, pizza, the small of bread, tomato, bacon, cheese, and the occasional egg. All these individual ingredients are great alone. But combine them together and I'm whisked into a world of wonderous ecstasy.

I like Julien. He's a nice kid. We grew up together in the same house and spent a lot of time together in our childhood. I like being around him. When he was sad about something, or angry, I'd go up to him and tell him it was going to be alright. No one usually comes round him when he's upset. He doesn't allow anyone around him, except me. I think he understands me. We have some sort of affinity with one another. Then one day, he went off and never came home for a long time. I thought I'd never see him again. Now I'm blind and deaf, but my nose never takes a holiday. I could smell Julien in the house last Christmas. Could he really be home? I asked myself. Then he stroked me with his big warm hands, and I knew he was. He's back! Now I'd spend the rest of my life with him like old times. Truly the best day of my life, and one of the many great memories I would take with me.

Everytime I'm with my family, I don't feel like a cat. I did everything they did. I ate what they ate. I slept on their beds, sometimes I'd go under the covers when it's cold. When I feel like reflecting, I'd sit on the couch. They made me feel like I was one of them. Like family. And that, to me, is what we are. Still. Sure there were times when I misbehaved in my youth. Like any teenage cat, I once peed into Julien's school bag just because it was fun. Also because I was all alone at home that day and I didn't like that. I felt bad afterwards, and tried to tell him. But he wouldn't listen. He carried that bag to school that day. Wonder how his day went. Other times, I get grouchy, especially when I'm hungry. Sometimes, I'd claw Elizabeth just to show my displeasure. I like Liz. She's a very harmonious lady of the house, who seems to always know what I want. That's why I am only comfortable to show my displeasure to her. A really good cook too - I've tasted her salmons.

Another one of my favourite pass-times, is to sit on the leather couch in the living room. It's a huge place - the living room. Sometimes Michel reads there, and I love to sit by him while he's reading, listening to the clock tick. It calms me. I like calm, quiet places. Which is maybe why I enjoyed going to the countryside so much when I was a wee kitten. I do remember a big field of flowers and the smell of fresh grass was everywhere. What a complex, yet delicious mix of smells. I was so engrossed with my new environment and new smells that my nose was detecting with every step I took; a flower, some grass, another flower, the moist scent of dew, the earth beneath my paws. It wasn't too long that my nose had caught on this foreign scent. I sniffed harder, and searched the ground with more vigour. Suddenly, the sky went dark. The air grew warm, and a bad smell started to linger. I slowly looked up, curious to know where the sun had gone, and came face to face with a huge ugly creature. It was massive and it smelt really awful. I didn't know what it was, but I do know I didn't want to be someone else's food. So I cautiously back tracked, my gaze firmly locked onto the towering figure before me. One step, two steps, three steps back. When I was far enough, I turned and bolted! My heart beating so hard against my chest I thought it was going to punch itself out of my body. Never again. I told myself.

Right now, I'm in a lot of pain and I can't move. There's this cold wave flushing through my body. Funny enough, I don't feel scared. I feel calm, and at peace, almost relieved. And tired. Yes. I feel tired. Like I haven't slept in ages. Ironic for a cat, since I sleep most of the time. I think I should close my eyes and rest. Yet I don't want to. Somehow, I know that if I fall asleep now, I may never wake up. I want to call out to Michel. I see him by the window, looking at me with such a longing gaze. Almost as if he was saying goodbye. Is this really goodbye? I want to call out to Michel, but I'm too weak to speak. I hope he'll know. I hope they'll all know - my family......

That it's going to be alright. That I have lived a full, good life. Yes. I am ready. I may not wake up from this sleep, but what I can leave this family with - my family, is my honest love and my eternal gratitude. I am the happiest cat alive.

xoxoxo

Tom

Oh Putain!

Monday was the start of the great move, and we’ve been poking our heads into one box after another, reorganising and repacking some stuff. This continued all through to Thursday. Phew!! Who decides to do a surprise welcome for us in our bedroom, but the mother of all cockroaches we have seen by far. It’s gigantic, and very well fed, and it FLIES. I don’t know how it got into our bedroom or when, but we only took notice of it because the cats were trying to get to it.

This one was a runner too. We didn’t know what to do at first because we were kind of intimidated by its size, so we just stared at it blankly for a good 5 mins or so. Then it moved!!!!

“AAAAHHH........!!!! JULIEN........!!!! DO SOMETHING!!!!!”

“I’m thinking!!!”

“Just DO something!!! Take some tissue or something!”

“Did you see the SIZE of that thing???!!!”

“Yes I did, Take 3 or 4 sheets then!”

So I was instructed to keep an eye on it while he came back with maybe about 5 sheets of kitchen paper. We tried the good old method of catch. But this bugger was fast! He was SO fast Julien just wasn’t able to catch him by hand! It went behind the shelves, along the walls, on the floor.... and then... it FLEW!!!!!

This sent the both of us running out of the room screaming into the living room. (Gross!!!!!!!!) At some point it flew onto Julien’s T-shirt and crawled around a little before flying off again!!!! (Double Gross!!!!!!!!!) It took us some time to calm down, but we went back in to look for it again. We weren’t going to be sleeping with it in our room. Found it by the stereo. This time, Julien decides to try something else..

“I’m going to burn it.”

“What?! How???! It’s on your stereo. Won’t that catch fire too?”

“I’m just going to burn it.”

He takes his deodorant spray and his lighter, and sparks up a mini burst of flame. NOTHING. It’s still there by the side of the stereo and it didn’t even flinch. Maybe it’s burnt and dead? We took a while to look to see if it moved. It moved again! Then comes another mini burst of flames. It survived it still and it’s probably getting tired of us. So it makes a sudden dash, towards the door in our direction, which sends me screaming off into the living room again. This time my brave Julien stayed in the room. He was determined to catch it tonight!

From the living room, I thought Julien was dancing at first, but then I realised he was hopping because the cockroach was running about at his feet!!! The next few moments happened in a flash. I heard more feet shuffling, and a loud “OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”, and then I heard “THOUGHT I COULDN’T CATCH YOU, HUH???!!!!” and then, FLUSH goes the toilet. Then silence.

“You can come in now. It’s safe.” Julien, with his deep voice of chivalry. So different from the one when he was screaming.

MY HERO!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahaha!

Our New “Home”

I actually wrote a full blog and had published it, but just as I clicked “publish”, something happened and I lost my post. So I’m typing this again.

Hmmm, how should I start (again)? We’ve moved into our new flat and already we want to move out. There were a series of happenings that led up to our eventual moving, and it’s been tough. We just didn’t say it. But now I will.

When the maid came over to the new flat, she couldn’t stop about how old, run down and dingy this new place was. And that she couldn’t believe we were paying this amount of rent for such a place. What she didn’t know was: 1. That rental prices have shot up since, and 2: The previous few flats that we saw were a lot worse than this. This place that we’ve moved into is very similar to the first flat we rented when Julien came to Singapore, but we had paid rent for this first flat at a lot lower a price compared to the market rate. Our first landlord or landlady I should say is nice. She was a retiree and she and her husband were going to stay with their kids in a bigger home. She was really attached to this flat, and couldn’t bear to sell it, so even after she moved, she regularly came back to clean the flat. When I met the landlady, she told me that she wasn’t really renting the flat for the money, which explains why we got that flat at below market rate. She just really wanted someone to look after and take care of the place while she was “away”. So why did we not rent the same flat from our first landlady? Well, because she’s already found a tenant.

We had signed a 1 year lease with this landlady to be renewed yearly until we found a place of our own. She knew we were just married and looking for a place to buy. We’ve stayed there about 2 years, and our lease was almost up for the 2^nd year. I guess perhaps Julien prefers variety and did mention loosely that maybe we should look for a new place to rent. If we did find a place we liked, good. If not, the rent will be renewed anyway at the end of that year, so we were not too bothered.

Lesson 1: If it’s too good to be true, then it’s not good.

I received a call from a relative one day, proposing us to rent his parent’s place. His situation was pretty similar to the land lady’s – he had bought a bigger place and the plan was for his parents to live with him. Hence, we could occupy his parent’s flat. A bigger flat for the same rental price as our first flat. That sounds pretty good. We were told that we could stay until we found a place of our own. The deal was on! We told our landlady that we found a bigger place and we didn’t need to renew the rent for the following year.

Lesson two: Pay attention to your spouse. They pick up things you may not.

When we went over to my relative’s parent’s place to collect the keys before the move, Julien had somehow picked up some vibe that his parents were not too keen on moving. I wasn’t feeling it, so I didn’t think too much about it. Looking back now, I do wonder if they wanted to move in the first place and what were they told about our lease at the first flat? Because I have an inkling that this could have been the cause of a huge misunderstanding. Now, it seems that they had the impression all along that they were doing us a favour by renting us the flat since our lease was going to be up. That’s not the case here. We broke our renewal with the landlady. The infamous line to us before we left, was “Anything can be discussed in the future since we’re all family”. That would be lesson 5 for me.

Lesson 3: Always, Always, Always draw up a contract, because it could be the only thing that could protect you, even from family.

So we broke our renewal and moved into the bigger flat. About 2 – 3 weeks after moving into the flat, we were told that my relative’s dad wanted to move back! What a situation to be caught in! What was funny about this, was that this news didn’t come directly from my relative or his dad. We had to hear it from other relatives who would call me up and volunteer the information. Apparently the news was passed around till it reached me – his dad would stress out his wife, his wife would call my aunt and stress her out, my aunt would call my parents and stress them out, then my parents would call me. I don’t like this merry go round system, so I called this relative direct to check if the rumours were true and they were. We even offered to move out, since we had time to move back into the first flat as the landlady had not rented it out yet, but we were told that it’s alright, and that he could be over reacting.

Lesson 4: It’s easy to let someone in your home, but never as easy to get them out.

Over the course of about 6 months, things changed from, it’s alright, to yeah he’s a depressed but it’s ok, to I think you may need to start looking for a flat. And look for a flat we did! We looked hard. Most of our time, including our weekends, was spent either visiting flats, or looking through websites for property rental. Unfortunately, most of the flats we viewed we could not LIVE in literally. There was hardly any renovation done, no new paint, the paint was falling from the ceilings and the walls, the toilets were old and the squat type which are not ideal for our cats, some of them did not include any furniture at all. This went on for months! We got sick of looking at rotten flats we couldn’t see ourselves living in. So we asked for help. Our relative did help forward some links for property rental, but some were already rented out, others the agents did not even bother calling us back, and one or two, Julien was honest about our cats and we were rejected.

I don’t know when we decided this, but we were so sick of living at someone else’s mercy, and maybe also sick of looking at rotten rented flats, we changed our minds and decided to look for a place to buy. And we did view many flats. Even shortlisted 3 to buy. But for various reasons, we didn’t in the end. I was spent. I remember sitting at Holland Village after a viewing and I started to tear uncontrollably. I just felt helpless, lost, and homeless.

Lesson 5: At crunch time, there may never be room for discussion, even as family.

Another few weeks after, I received an sms from this relative asking me if we could let them know when we would be able to find a flat to buy so they can inform their dad, because he’s started to ask them everyday now when we are moving out. I think that was probably the biting point for us. I don’t know about others, but for me personally, I don’t know how to answer to a question like that. How long would I take to find a place I like to buy? I don’t know. When we see it we will know it. I didn’t want a situation where we committed a time frame and come that time, we still haven’t found anything suitable. What then? Are we to blame then?

One quick phone discussion with the Yeti and it was decided that we would move out immediately. This stress was just not worth it. Never mind that the rental prices have gone up. Never mind that the next flat is not even what we would like. Never mind that it’s far and inconvenient. We just want out. So the next day we just arranged for as many viewings as we could in that one day and picked the least lousy flat to rent.

Lesson 6: It’s always better to just be honest, even if it seems like it’s the hardest thing to do.

I’m pro honesty. Tell me the truth even if it hurts. That’s me. Perhaps for the longest time this relative has been trying to buy time for us (I don’t know that for a fact), by telling his dad that we’re moving soon, but at the same time telling us that things are ok and that his dad’s just over reacting. I don’t know this for a fact but I’m quite sure something along those lines happened. That the situation presented to me was not as it was completely. And probably more so for the father.

Lesson 7: Accept, Deal, Adapt, Forgive, Let go.

I also don’t know what had transpired between my relative and his parents, but it seems like they have the impression that they have “given us a lot of time to move but we didn’t do anything about it.” And I don’t appreciate their sentiments one bit. We were stressed, frustrated and spent just trying our best to find what was ideal. The maid complains about our current place, but she doesn’t know how bad the other places we had viewed prior to this place were. Given a choice, we wouldn’t even choose this place! We just did plainly because we had no choice.

We tried to think of alternatives for my relative’s father to move back in as soon as possible because that’s all he seems to be able to think about. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a place to go to. It doesn’t matter that we need time to find an ideal place that’s liveable. It doesn’t matter that rental prices has gone up. It doesn’t matter that the lease was broken even before it was finished. It just doesn’t matter. All that matters is how much he wants his flat back. We proposed for him to move back and we take the guest room while he stays in the master bedroom, and we look for another place from there. But that was declined. Also, I’m just realising that had we really signed a contract with them, they would have to compensate us for the rest of the year since we moved out before the year was up.

So I’ll just say this. Stop the speculation/gossip. If you really want to find out what happened, then speak to me directly. There’s this great invention called the telephone. There’s no need to call up people who are not involved to stress them out unnecessarily, and there’s definitely no need to sift out information from the maid either, especially after we’ve moved.

I’m upset and disappointed, but I guess my next step would be learning to accept, deal, adapt, forgive and finally, to let it go.