Tuesday, May 3

Every time we have settled in any place in Kerala we have found ourselves befriended by ownerless animals, either cats or dogs. Every time at least one of them makes a successful appeal and gets temporarily adopted.

When we came to this house for the first time at the start of February a small female cat introduced itself and we began to feed it. This time we found it asleep in the porch when we arrived, and it has not gone away since. It appears to have become pregnant in the period between us leaving and returning. Either that, or its belly has swollen through starvation.

Either way we started to feed it again and it got less hungry, or at least less desperate for food, as the days passed. Now it comes and goes at will. We have given up on naming animals and have decided to refer to it as The Cat. It doesn’t seem to mind.