Dr. Luis Dias
An elder relative met me some years ago, highly amused that I had written a whole column in the wake of the untimely death of our adopted cat Ginny (who adopted us rather than the other way around). In our human-centric (‘anthropocentric’ may be more accurate) world, devoting column space to a ‘lesser’ being may seem indulgent, perhaps even an early indication of senescence.
But it was Mark Twain that said, “The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”He was even more explicit when it came to cats. “If man could be crossed with the cat,” he once wrote, “it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”
Without meaning to belittle the importance of human relationships, it is possible to have just as intense emotions, sometimes even more so, for non-human forms of life. It may be because they don’t come with all the baggage involved in human-to-human interactions.
Coming to cats in particular, Twain shared his fondness or love of them (ailurophilia apparently is the technical term) with several other writers. Fellow ailurophiles included T. S. Eliot (as is evident from his famous 1939 collection of whimsical light poems, ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’) and Ernest Hemingway.
Twain owned up to 19 cats at a time, all of which bore fantastical titles, from Beelzebub to Satan, Sin, Zoroaster and Pestilence. If away from home, he’d ‘rent’ replacements, leaving behind money once the ‘rental period’ had ended, “to help cover their care during all nine of their lives”.
Twain’s biographer Albert Bigelow Paine describes an incident that is quite telling in terms of Twain’s ailurophilia: “Once, as he was about to enter the screen door that led into the hall, two kittens ran up in front of him and stood waiting. With grave politeness he opened the door, made a low bow, and stepped back and said, ‘Walk in, gentlemen. I always give precedence to royalty’.”
When Twain’s favourite cat Bambino went missing, he took out an advertisement in the New York American offering a $5 (a tidy sum at the time) reward, with this accompanying description: “Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light.” Many felines were brought before Twain, somewhat matching the verbose description before the prodigal Bambino came home of his own accord, safe and sound.
I am a lukewarm ailurophile compared to Twain, and an opportunistic one at that. Cats literally come into my life instead of my actively seeking them. And so it was with Goldie, the friendly neighbourhood supermarket cat.
As is obvious from the accompanying picture, Goldie was a strikingly, arrestingly beautiful creature of God, a living breathing work of art. With a fantastic glossy coat like that, could even Mark Twain, with all his penmanship, have come up with a more fitting name than Goldie? And you can see how words like ‘regal’, ‘majestic’ and ‘royalty’ leap to mind at the sight of him in such a perch, pose, and poise.
It is difficult for me to remember exactly how long ago I first encountered Goldie in or around the Little Presidency supermarket at the foot of the Corte de Oiteiro. I began hash tagging my phone pictures of him (#Goldie) around 2021, after the first COVID-19 lockdown lifted, so we may have met before COVID-19 struck in 2020.
The other hashtag accompanying his pictures was a little longer: #shoppingtriphighlight. But I think I can speak fairly justly on behalf of the supermarket’s patrons from both the wards it serves, São Tomé and Fontainhas. Goldie was truly the high point on any shopping expedition there. From supermarket staff to customers, everyone adored and doted on him. I would volunteer to do the grocery shopping there, or even the fruit and vegetable shopping nearby, just to catch a glimpse of Goldie, and if he deigned to let me, a pat, stroke or cuddle.
An employee at Little Presidency told us this amusing story about her first few days on the job, when a foreign customer (who returned annually to vacation in Goa) dropped in asking for ‘Goldie’. The employee thought it must be the name of another colleague, and said she wasn’t in that day. The foreigner then told her about Goldie the cat. Goldie’s fame quite literally knew no bounds, with devotees spread across the globe, a tourist ‘attraction’ in his own right.
You must be familiar with the optical illusion game, where you have to ‘find the missing cat in the picture.’ Looking for Goldie in the supermarket was a 3-D version of that. Quite often he’d plonk himself squarely on the checkout desk. When entreaties by staff for him to move proved futile, they’d indulgently work around him as he got fussed over by everyone.
But sometimes he’d seek solitude in cooler parts of the shop, sometimes hide himself in the store-room, or out of sight under a shelf. If the indoor space got monotonous, Goldie would approach the door and meow to be let out, either to bask in the sunshine somewhere nearby, or to perch on the Lawande house boundary wall (as seen in the picture) or to sit atop the ice-cream freezer to cool off.
Visits from the friendly neighbourhood fish-vendor Laxman on his bicycle were greeted by the signature low-register Goldie meows, purrs and grateful rubs against Laxman’s legs. But offers of sardine, vellio or lepo were disdainfully ignored; Goldie was used to fancier fare á la
Little Presidency!
Goldie often bore battle scars from territorial fights with other felines, but more often near-escapes from stray dogs, an ever-present danger, to say nothing of the chaotic traffic from all directions in our lawless city. Perhaps some of his nine lives had already been accounted for in those brushes with death.
For his own safety, Goldie would be locked in the shop for the night. But cats march to their own drumbeat. Tragically, on the evening of Sunday, January 23, 2025, Goldie didn’t report back to the shop, even though the staff waited a good while for his return. His beautiful lifeless body was found the next morning outside the bakery nearby, telltale fang marks on the scruff of his neck. Like our own Ginny, Goldie too had fallen prey to an attack by a pack of stray dogs. One can only hope the end came swiftly.
The news spread like wildfire on WhatsApp groups. Hoping against hope that it wasn’t true, we hurried to the supermarket, only to confirm the sad news.
For brightening so many lives by your sheer lightness of being, the warmth in those bewitching green eyes, and bringing joy to everyone who met you for so many years, a big thank you, Goldie. You will be sorely missed.
