The annotated budak

Wild thing

Johan Christian Fabricius, a Danish natural historian and student of Carl von Linné who single-handedly dragged entomology out of the dark ages and set the discipline on the path to modern systematics, used the Greek word agrios to describe a group of insects that thrive not in the confines of domestic holdings but in meadows and marshland. The term no longer survives in taxonomical ranks, save as a suffix for widespread genera, but Agrion – those that live in the open fields, the savage and the wild, the untamed, uncultivated and unreclaimed – was the name he bestowed on the insects we commonly call damselflies: the sprites, wisps, coraltails and sylvans that dance on delicate wings and form in their coital union a heart of broken proportions.

She came as a wild thing, a sliver of grey and frightened growls who slipped under a door and hid under a weekend of furniture before worming her way into a household of older cats and still healing hearts. At first, she cowered in her carrier, which served as a temporary crib, and shrank before fatter housemates, who regarded her with disguised curiosity or the capricious impulses of feline spirits with an excess of kinetic energy in their veins. But she soon learnt that lazy Sundays began with a can of savoury goodness, that the comforter offered adventure under soft covers, that given an ounce of audacity, a cozy end of the bed was hers for the taking.

Muffin was never a heavyweight, but she grew to hold her own against cohorts of bad habit and bounce her skinny frame off couch and coffee table for first dibs at the breakfast bowl. Doors, cabinets and bags were fair game for sharp claws, essential supplements to a mauled scratching post, and verbal reprimands were met by indignant retorts, mischievous swipes and a look of innocence that never surrendered to gentle intimidation. A long, lithe tail doubled as a tool for diversion in lieu of a favourite string, and the fur on her underside was much more feathery than that of her back, but ruffling this unruly tangle was usually a risk except when she was lost in slumber on the quilt, her limbs stretched out and heaving belly exposed and inviting, lying wedged between a warm torso and the threads of a revolving chair, or nestled against naked arms on cold, grey afternoons when all that mattered was the stirrings of a curled figure of contentment in common repose. Now she rests forever from hours of play and never needs to endure the chidings due to a kitten with blackened pads who entered our lives for a few short months before slipping away with a broken heart and a body of restless dreams.

Belly afoot

Time-out from the daily scuffle with the Meep.

Abandonment issue

Infants born to women of damned fate or fetal destitution, as well as girls of a feline disposition, were once left before a secondary gate of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, whose nuns nursed and raised the survivors. The Gate of Hope lost its role about half a century ago, and its adjoining house of devotion later saved a little more than half its mortal shell and forfeited its soul in a deal that traded gothic charity for gaudy commerciality.

In the present day, children, being fragile commodities in short supply and hence of inestimatable value in the eyes of their parental units, are seldom, if ever, left for keeps, lest they fall and hurt their pride or worse, make a break for freedom from a life of books. The privileged enjoy the servitude service of helpers who relieve them of age-old duties, while the inadequate make do with the domestic aid of grandproxies who readily succumb to the power of pester and expend their retirement on treats they could neither afford or conceive of in their youth.

Already indisposed to giving up the future value of professional efforts for the present satisfaction of a hatchkey kid, some families further par their risks by ditching their best friends when a baby pops up. A few do so on the advice of ill-conceived physicians or at the insistence of relatives who know better, while others probably realise that it is time to give up playthings they have outgrown for cuter beings.

Abandoned creatures, being biodegradable or otherwise subject to simple removal from the neighbourhood should they outlive their welcome, endure little of the debate that plagues a different beast. The shopping cart, a conveyance of steel wire that has wheedled its way into the world’s centres of household procurement, is a child of contention, with some tracing its origin to an all-American entrepreneur, while others suggest it hatched in the mind of a French inventor. Whatever its paternity, the supermarket trolley is a filthy beast of burden whose utility begins at the aisle and ends by the road, where its overbagged contents are unloaded into boots and backseats, and the hollow cage brushed aside to find its own way home.

Some establishments of humane persuasion probably employ minions who scour the neighbourhood for wayward carts, which in their bewilderment are wont to inflict damage to innocent bystanders. In fair dinkum parts, a "helicopter backed by ground support units" has been used to track and retrieve missing trolleys. There are even recovery schemes that reward the good-hearted with a go at lady luck. But thousands and thousands of trolleys still in their prime are put to sleep in backyards, river bottoms and urban wastelands where they stand little chance of redeeming the coins that brought them into service and which lie embedded in a dead lock. Even advanced specimens, equipped with receptacles moulded to fit the cracks of toddling bums, suffer the fate of their more primitive kin, languishing by the street after having discharged their duties with due care and diligence. Such are the wages of those who toil for a song and wait for godot by a tree on a roll.

Grumpy mancat...

...is grumping.

Meek

A bad habit of imbibing household pests and other unsavoury snacks was what probably caused a minor inflammation in the lower tracts of the Meep last week. Rendered feeble and incapable of biting the hands that feed him, the Meep spent half the week in convalescence, straddling sleep and stupor in the midst of laboured breaths and listless attempts to eat and shit. He managed to eject a pill from his maws with rocket-like trajectories and ghastly coughs, so each morning dose was instead crushed into powder and sprinkled on fish mash, which he nommed none the wiser. Recovery was swifter than expected, but a brief window of scruffiness had resulted in damage to his brows and a kink in one that adds little to what dignity resides in a muzzle of impulse and indignant precocity.

Truce

It's a quarter past one in the morning, and something, or someone, is wailing outside in the nameless pigeonhole of a submarine parade. It's hard to decide if it's a petulant child, like the boy next door who has surrendered his childhood for the heart of a whine, or a small creature in genuine distress. The crying soon stops but no ship stirs. The foghorns are silent, and the ides beckon with a new year of low springs that will draw us from our cradles to the coast and lay bare what lives beneath the waves on such swift, swollen nights, these brief hours of truce between the sea and the men who shun sleep to seek its fleeting secrets.