The Dalai Lama's Cat (15 page)

There I stayed for the next three days, sleeping away as many hours as I could. I emerged only to attend to the most urgent calls of nature, before returning to curl up in a miserable, fluffy ball.

Chogyal was away most of each day at work, and Lasya soon tired of trying to play with a cat who wouldn’t respond. Her visits became infrequent and brief. Gradually, the sounds of families going about their day and the cooking aromas became more familiar. After three days of semi-wakefulness in the semi-darkness I came to a recognition: I was bored.

So, on day four, when Lasya arrived late in the afternoon, I crawled out from under the duvet and hopped onto the floor for the first time. There we discovered a new game, quite by accident. As I brushed up against her right foot, her big toe slipped inside my left ear, the other toes remaining on the outside. Wiggling her toes, she improvised a delightful ear massage—I found myself purring gratefully. Neither the Dalai Lama nor any of his staff were in the habit of putting their big toes in my ear, but as I discovered now, the sensation was utterly delightful. Left ear was soon followed by right, and as I looked up into Lasya’s giggling face, I understood for the first time that my happiness didn’t depend on being in particular surroundings.

I made my way to the door, and into the corridor. With Lasya as my minder, I padded tentatively toward the back of the building. In the very next room a woman and three children sat on the floor, stirring a pot on a single burner and chanting some sort of nursery rhyme. Having listened to them for the past three days as they prepared a variety of meals, I was curious to finally see them. Unlike the clamorous demons of my imagination, they seemed smaller somehow and more ordinary.

The moment I appeared, they stopped what they were doing and turned to stare. No doubt news of my arrival had passed down the corridor. Were they somehow overawed at finding themselves in the presence of the Dalai Lama’s Cat? I felt sure they must be!

Eventually, one of the children, perhaps eight years old, made a move. Extracting a sliver of tender meat from the cooking pot, he blew on it to cool it before coming to offer it to me. I sniffed hesitantly. Café Franc’s filet mignon this was not. But I was hungry. It smelled strangely appetizing. And as I took the meat from his hand and chewed it contemplatively, I had to admit it packed a tasty punch.

Continuing on our way, Lasya and I headed across the backyard—a desolate stretch of bare earth—to a wall about three feet high. When I jumped on top of the wall, I was surprised to find myself looking across an open area to a soccer pitch in the distance. Two teams of teenagers were battling in the dust for possession of a ball fashioned out of scrunched-up plastic bags bound tightly together with twine.
Now
I understood where all the shouting and excitement I had heard under the duvet was coming from.

Lasya perched beside me to watch the match, her legs dangling over the wall. She seemed to know the players and occasionally cried out encouragement. Settling next to her, I watched the game unfold: it was my first soccer match, and compared to the sedentary pace of life at Jokhang, it was riveting.

I scarcely noticed that dusk was falling, until I looked up and saw candles and lamps being lit in the homes all around us. The aromas of a dozen meals wafted on the evening breeze, along with sounds of clinking dishes, laughter and squabbling, running water and TV. How very different all this was from the sights and sounds of my favorite perch in the window of His Holiness’s room. But I couldn’t deny there was a vibrant energy to this place where all of life was lived out in the open.

The sun slid below the horizon, and the sky grew darker. Lasya had long since wandered back to her family, leaving me perched on the wall, my paws tucked neatly underneath me.

This was when I became aware of a movement at the side of the building, a fluid shadow slipping effortlessly down the side of a 40-gallon drum. A cat! And not just any cat but one who was unusually big and muscular, with dark stripes vividly defined. I had no doubt at all he was the same magnificent tiger tabby I had first seen across the temple courtyard, by the green light of the market stall. How long he had been sitting on the drum watching me, I couldn’t guess. But his actions left me in no doubt about his interest.

Padding directly across the barren backyard from one side to the other, he ignored me completely, as if I didn’t exist. Could he have
been
more obvious?

Suddenly I was all a-flutter. To anyone looking on, I might appear to be a cat sitting placidly on a wall. But my thoughts and emotions were in thrilling turmoil. The proprietorial way the tabby had strolled across the yard made it clear that this was his domain. Having ventured as far away as Jokhang, he was evidently a cat of some standing. Sure, the mackerel tabby markings denoted humble origins. But his territory had expanded to an impressive size.

And he was making a play for me!

I had no doubt he would be back again. Not tonight, of course. That would be too obvious. But … tomorrow?

When Chogyal arrived in the corridor from work a short while later, Lasya seized his hand and led him out to see where I was sitting.

“Nice to see you outside, HHC!” Scooping me up, he tickled me under the chin. “Back to normal.”

I was experiencing many things at that moment. Normal, however, wasn’t one of them.

The next day I could barely wait for Lasya to arrive in the afternoon. I had spent all morning grooming myself so that my thick, white pelt positively glistened. Ears thoroughly washed and whiskers shimmering, I had also performed the cello with particular vigor—much more
allegro vivo
than
adagio
, for those of you familiar with Dvořák’s famous concerto.

No sooner had Lasya opened the door than I was out. I returned to the wall in a manner that tried to convey I had found myself there casually, almost accidentally. Once again, a soccer match was in full swing on the field below. From the rooms behind me there came the by-now-familiar sounds of family life. Lasya spent a few minutes sitting nearby, reading a schoolbook, before running back inside.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The shadow appeared on the 40-gallon drum. Getting up, I stretched first my front paws, then my back with luxuriant insouciance before hopping off the wall and making as if to go inside.

As I’d very much hoped, this proved too much for my admirer.

Noiselessly, he slipped from the drum and walked in such a way that our paths must cross. At the accepted distance from each other, we paused. For the first time, I looked directly into those glowing, amber eyes.

“Haven’t we met somewhere before?” he asked, opening with the most clichéd pick-up line in history.

“I don’t think so.” I tried to inflect just the right amount of encouragement into my voice, without seeming easy.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you before.”

I knew precisely where he’d seen me but had no intention of telling him how enthralled I’d been by the glimpse of him.

Not right now, at least.

“There are a few Himalayans about,” I replied, confirming my impeccable, if undocumented, breeding. “Is this your territory?”

“All the way up to Jokhang,” he said. “And down the main street to the market stalls.”

The market stalls were one block short of my own preferred destination. “What about Café Franc?” I asked.

“Are you crazy? The guy there
hates
cats.”

“Best cuisine in the Himalayas, according to
Hayder’s Food Guide
,” I responded coolly.

He blinked.
Had he never met an uptown cat before?
I wondered.

“How would you ever get near … ?”

“You know that saying ‘It’s who you know that counts’?”

He nodded.

“Not true,” I smiled enigmatically. “Should be ‘It’s who knows
you
that counts.’”

For a while he paused, staring. I could see the curiosity in his eyes.

“Have you any advice for a tabby from the wrong side of town?” he ventured.

Oh, so sweet!

“‘Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her,’” I began, quoting the epigraph from the book Tenzin believed to be America’s finest novel—
The Great Gatsby
. “If you can bounce high, bounce for her, too, / Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, / I must have you!’”

He twitched his nose pensively. “Where did that come from?”

“A book I know.”

He began to walk away.

“You’re going?” I called, marveling again at his muscular poise.

“Off to get a hat,” he replied.

There was no sign of him the following morning, but I felt sure I would see him again that afternoon. Never had I felt such romantic delirium, such a giddying, combustible mix of yearning and apprehension and inexplicable animal magnetism. I was so preoccupied that morning that I barely noticed when Chogyal arrived home at lunchtime instead of in the evening. I paid little attention when he produced the carrying cage from under his bed. It wasn’t until he’d lifted me into it that I realized what was happening.

“The painters finished their work early,” he explained, as though I should be delighted at what was happening. “Knowing how unhappy you were to be here, I thought you’d want to return as soon as you could.”

Unceremoniously, I was carted back to Jokhang.

There was no doubt that the redecoration had been a great success. The familiar rooms now gleamed with fresh paint, the fixtures were polished to a high gloss, and everything was as it had been before, but cleaner and refurbished. The only change made had been especially for me: two rectangular cushions had been covered in taupe-colored fleece and placed on the windowsill for my comfort.

Tenzin made a great fuss over me on my return, the scent of his freshly carbolic-washed hands a pungent reminder that I was home. My favorite brand of cat food was presented for my delectation. That afternoon, as His Holiness’s staff went home for the day, leaving me in peace, I should have been content that my trauma in the high-density suburb of McLeod Ganj was behind me.

Only I wasn’t.

I so wanted to be back there! I ached for tiger puss! What were the chances of us meeting again if I remained in my ivory tower at Jokhang? Would he think my sudden absence meant I had no interest in him? A tabby of his leonine magnificence would have quite a following. What if he gave up on me before we even had a chance?