13 - 19 December 2001
Issue No.564
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 December 2001 Issue No.564 |
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Terrorist at home
I saw him for the first time on the Internet. Someone had sent his photo with a note explaining that if nobody claimed him, he would be executed that week. I looked at his face for a long time. His eyes were infinitely sad as if he knew that he had been condemned. Later, those who saw his picture said that he had the vacant stare of the seasoned terrorist, but that was not fair, because by that time they knew more about him.
Anyway, I could not sleep that night thinking about how lost he had looked: as if he were hoping against hope, but at the same time convinced that the world was a cruel place and that in the end he would not be saved. The following day, I made arrangements to visit him. He was sleeping in his cell but when he heard his warden he immediately jumped up. We got acquainted through the bars of his prison with the guard muttering in the background, that "he was a bad sort, undeserving of our attention."
After the formalities were over, he was handed to me. His name was Tom, I was told, and from now on I was wholly responsible for his life.
On that first day, we gave him some food, which he wolfed down before going to sleep in a corner. Reassured, we left for work. On our return in the evening, everything appeared normal if one discounts the unusual restlessness of our cats; but that was to be expected with a stranger in the house. For a short while, everything seemed to fall into place, although Tom was rather nervous, starting at the slightest noise and spending much time in hiding. He must have been badly mistreated, I assumed and would eventually settle down when he got used to his new home. I repeatedly congratulated myself for saving him.
Then it happened. It was the third day after Tom's arrival. I was sleeping and suddenly saw my daughter standing over my bed. Without my contact lenses I could not see her face in the shadows, but something in her voice alerted me. I realised that she was doing her best not to cry. "What happened?" I asked, my heart pounding. "It's Tom," she said. "He's wild. He scratched me and bit me and he won't calm down." I jumped out of bed and scrambled for my lenses. I could hear strange noises like snorting coming from my daughter's apartment.
Then I saw Tom. He had grown to twice his size; he was shaking his large head, breathing hard. He looked more like a midget lion than a cat. He was positively scary and there was blood everywhere -- my daughter's. I felt anger well in my throat. I grabbed a magazine and smacked it hard against my hand thinking the noise would bring him back to his senses. He came at me, baring what I was sure were fangs; then he thought better of it, turned around and began looking for his next victim, but the other cats had gone into hiding. With much coaxing, we managed to lock him up in the living room. I was trying to think. If I took him back to the veterinary clinic, he would be given no reprieve, and would be put to sleep at once. But how could I keep him? And then it struck me.
Tom is a really beautiful specimen of a cat, with long soft white and light brown fur. He has a well-formed head, large piercing hazel eyes, and strong paws. Normally he is extremely cuddly and lavishes his affection without restraint, purring vigourously to express his feelings. Any cat lover would be smitten at first sight. Why had he gone mad and mauled my daughter? And why had he ended up in a cage, in the charity ward of the animal hospital?
Several days later, I had pieced the story together. Tom had belonged to a family who abandoned him without explanation at the animal hospital with a 20-pound note in his box. There, he had gone on a hunger strike and eventually fallen into a coma. A member of Animal Friends took pity on him and took him home, where she nursed him back to health. Barely out of danger, he attacked her viciously one day, without warning. Like my daughter, she had been trying to break up a fight between him and another cat. He had turned against her, doing maximum damage to her arm. She took him back to the clinic, where he was neutered in the mistaken belief that it would calm his nerves.
It didn't. Now I could understand what the guard was trying to tell me. Maybe he had similarly warned previous potential owners, who had been more receptive to his chatter.
"Should we try to give him away?" I asked my daughter after a friend called me to tell me: "Everyone knows Tom's story -- ask your vet." The scars on my daughter's leg will be there for a long time. She did not hesitate, however. "We took him, we keep him," she said firmly. She has had to sacrifice her living room, where Tom now sits on the coffee table and calls us when he wants company. After being duly petted and made a fuss of, when he has had enough, he invariably snaps his jaws as if to warn us: "Remember what I can do if I choose to." I have noticed that he has a marked predilection for bare feet and make sure that I am wearing boots when I go to visit. Like all hardened offenders, Tom is back in prison, but this time it is more like house arrest, in comfortable surroundings and with home cooked food. And I still harbour the hope that we will be able to rehabilitate him.
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