Memento Mori

A month ago, I bought this orphaned kitten home.

It was a strange feeling, the kitten could have died, but I gave it a second chance to live on.

My father and I took care of its needs. Feeding milk via a syringe, cared for it. Later on when it started to eat solid food, we would prepare boiled eggs and give it. Overtime, it became accustomed to us. We were its family. Regularly jumping on our feets, climbing the sofas to sit on lap, when we are lying down it used to come to our ears and nibble lightly, bite lightly on our fingers. My father even named it "Kaali" meaning black since the dominant color was black.

Just today afternoon around 2.30 PM it was killed by a stray cat (probably for crossing the boundaries), my father and I were both shocked. I could see the sadness growing in him. He wanted to cry. He was more close to it, since he took care of the kitty when I was not around.

It had disappeared for a moment when the front door was opened, it had gone to its usual play spot and then my father noticed that the kitten was lying near the car porch dead. I went to see if it had any life remaining in it. The pupils were dilated, the neck broken and bleeding. The kitten was viciously bitten to death by another Cat for crossing its boundaries.

My father dug a small grave, while I was still checking for signs of life hopelessly. Finally I had to give in to the fact that the kitten was no more, I grabbed by its legs and slowly placed it in the grave. Then the grave was covered.

The kitten did not have a long life span, even though I saved it from certain death, it was only a matter of time when death wanted to take the life of it, death was waiting for the right opportunity.

Life is so fragile, even though many of us take it for granted, 5 minutes was all it took to change things forever. For one moment it was there and then the next moment its gone.