And finally there is the cat

My brother has his Charlie, the next-door cat who has adopted my brother and trained him so that every time Charlie utters a meow my brother hastens with a cup of full-cream milk.

I was free from such tyranny till I took pity on the scrawny little kitten who has rifling through my garbage bag. It is, I think, progeny of one of the cats whom Alpana was feeding.

I fed it a bread piece on that day. The next day it landed up once more and once again I felt sorry for it. I gave it a bread piece.

Today it landed up again. I was watering the garden when it made an appearance. It meowed loudly to attract my attention. I went to the kitchen to check on the bread but it had got fungus. I came out and explained to it the problem and promised bread the next day. But it was not satisfied with my explanation. Sitting outside the door, it kept up its meowing, at times scolding me for my tardiness. So I took out a beaker, poured milk and gave it.

I now fear that I too have been trained.

NOTE: I have no name for the cat. Suggestions are welcome.

A frog in the house

That is exactly what I saw in the bathroom: a frog. It hopped across and disappeared into a crack in the wall.

One must thank the CPWD for constructing such thoughtful houses.

On the other hand, I am getting more and more tolerant towards creatures.

The wasps and I

The wasps started building a nest in April in my verandah on my clothesline. Appa found it out the hard way when one of the wasps took exception to his handling of their nest. A little investigation showed that the wasps had shown exceptional ingenuity and had started building the nest on the clothespin. Appa left the clothespin alone and moved another clothespin in front of it so that none of us would accidentally use it.
I was amused. Pigeons, peacocks, cats, dogs, sparrows, mynahs, bulbuls...and now wasps. I watched. The initial pair become four and then eight and then...one clothespin was not enough. They moved to the next clothespin. When I came back from my vacation a mass of them were busy working hard to expand their nest. My amusement turned to alarm. I wondered what was the best way of removing wasps from verandah.
On Sunday the monsoons arrived in Delhi.
I went outside to remove some clothes and the wasps, who were clearly in a bad mood, no doubt because the rain had spoiled their day, stung me.
That did it.
I finally took the courage and removed the two clothespin from the line and threw them away. The wasps were hopping mad, of course. But they soon sense and left the verandah, no doubt searching for some new clothespin to build new nest.
Meantime, I dashed down and saved one of the clothespin from utter destruction. It now rests in my office where I can admire it from time to time. I still have not figured out how they managed to build their nest on a plastic clothespin.