Despite its obvious tribulations, human motherhood is not without its perks: Half-burned toast and a cup of milky tea-in-bed on Mother’s Day; elaborate bunches of flowers snidely pilfered from the gardens of elderly neighbours for Easter, a plethora of pasta necklaces for birthdays and Christmas.
And as the children get older, the bounty only gets better. My mother has four children and over the past 30-odd years has developed a sophisticated strategy of guilt inducement designed to send us all running for Space NK at the tiniest hint of festivities: “Don’t worry about getting me anything for Christmas, dear. All I want is a nice cup of tea and five minutes to rest my multiple-pregnancy-induced varicose veins and the calluses I’ve acquired in 30 years of washing, cooking, cleaning and looking after you and your brothers. But if you must get me something, some bubble bath would be nice.” And when a mother says “bubble bath” you know she means “an expensive selection of ewe’s milk, whale sperm and myrrh bath products developed from some poncey French dude and available on the shelves of Space NK and Space NK only.” and not “a bottle of that cheap stuff from Boots”.
Us cat mothers, however, have to make do with offerings that usually consist of the lifeless bodies of small mammals or birds, or worse, bits torn off of the lifeless bodies of small mammals or birds. In Buenos Aires, the cat-mother’s-day gift situation is even worse: As the city is a fairly built-up area with little bird life that a cat could feasibly assassinate, my little angels have taken to capturing large, flying cockroaches and then depositing them at my feet (or worse) with a flourish and that “can I have some tuna now?” look.
Pitolin was a skilled, cockroach huntsman, particularly fond of capturing a large one, alive, and then bringing it to me in his mouth in order to allow me the pleasure of finishing off the job. One particularly humid summer, I awoke to a snuffling sound in my armpit. As I lifted up my arm to see why on earth he was nose-deep in the pit, out scurried a humungous roach who had obviously been seeking refuge from the cat in the crevasses of my body!
But what else can a cat mother do, but bash the gift over the head with a shoe, thank the cat profusely and keep reminding oneself that it’s the thought that counts!
