Moments in Time: Reflections and Reviews

The Adventures of Midgey the Cat

Most of you are aware that I am a self-declared cat slave. My cat master Midgey often likes to give me interesting challenges. Back in 2019, this was her rupturing her diaphragm and staying in the hospital for 3 full nights until she could move around. In 2020, the year of the covid, she had decided to jump from the fourth floor for some reason only God knows. This caused her to break her leg. What followed was a POP cast that she ably dampened, allowing for a lot of necrosis and improper setting of the bones. After these two life threatening feats, we began calling her Midgey seven lives. Clearly, she had lost two of them in the process. In 2021 for some reason, she decided to give me a break. I was hoping that it would be a long break, but then, she decided, let me test out how good my slaves are.

Sometime around 12 yesterday (I know this because that was the last time, I saw her in the house), Midgey decided to go out on an adventure. She was just missing. After searching for her all around the house, in her favorite spots, and shaking the cat food tin to lure her out, we figured out that she was not there inside the house. What followed, was a series of steps that we had perfected to an art over the course of the last one year stay in our building. Step 1, go to the 33rd floor through the lift, take the first stair well, and walk down all the way to the stilt all the while shouting “Midgey.. Midgey”. Step 2. Get back into the lift, go to the 33rd floor and repeat step 1 through the other stair well. Step 3, in the event of not spotting her in the stairwell, go to the security guards and ask them to show us the footage of the lifts. We then skim through that to find out where exactly she is. While we were in the requesting for the video footage phase, I went home to have a relook and that when I started hearing a faint meow. After looking around everywhere, I went to the balcony, just to see if she’s there somewhere on the park downstairs. Given her flaming red fur, it would have been child’s play to find her on an open green field. However, she was nowhere to be found. Just as I withdrew my eyes from the distance and began turning, I spotted something out of the ordinary. I saw Midgey. She was in the floor beneath us. The 16th floor. The daredevil cattu had decided to jump from my floor to the next for some reason. How she managed to perform this feat, I do not fully understand yet. But there she was, looking into my eyes on a balcony that was never washed once since the building was constructors (about 2 years ago). The owners stayed abroad, and no one knew how to reach them.

Midgey when we discovered her location in the balcony of the apartment below ours.

Poor thing, she must have been terrified. What followed was us sending her food and water in a bucket. All this while, one of us was trying to find out if there was any way we could get her back home safely. The fact that it was a Sunday did not help. The maintenance people promised us that in the morning, at 9.00 when the project office opened, they would get a spare key and help us retrieve her. We were clearly terrified. Both Sangha and I are very fond of her and cannot imagine spending a day without her around. Waiting until the next day was something that we were not willing to do. Given that we could not get the keys from the security team, the next best option was to talk to owners straight and ask them for assistance. For this reason, we decided to find out if we can reach out to the owners of the houses on our own, and ask them to help us with the keys. Our logic was simple, we thought the owners might have left a key behind in India just in case there was some issue precisely like the one we were in right now. For this reason, I sent out a message in our apartment’s whatsapp group asking for help. This sparked a heated discussion that I thought I should highlight. Here are a few crazy messages that I received in the group simply because I asked for help.

Some messages that I received from the members of my apartment complex

Having said that, there were so many people who prayed for us and offered us excellent advice that was really useful to us. I have no words to thank them!! Our efforts to get the contact information did not bear fruit. There was absolutely no one in the whatsapp group or in the projects team who knew who the owner was or where they could get a spare key. Some people called me careless, and used this opportunity to take shots at me. While this entire drama was unfolding, we managed to get some sleep. The key was to not look at the phone at all and focus on the problem at hand. Sleep was going to be useful.

Once we woke up, we started once more. This time, throwing down one cover after the other. Midgey was very fond of covers and was happy to crawl into one at first sight. Our idea was to get air lift her once she enters. This was the only thing we could do at 5.00 am in the morning. If not, she would have to be there for another 4-5 hours at least before the projects and security teams could figure out a workable solution to save her. Hours of pleading with her bore no fruit. I had to leave home considering i had to be in office for a very important meeting. Sangha would have to handle the project on her own. Here is a picture from when I last saw her. I was relatively certain that she would be home by the time I was going to be back.

Midgey getting supplies from the seventeenth floor

Although there was a lot of work to do at the office, the only thing I could focus one as how to rescue midgey. While I trusted Sangha to handle the projects and security people and get them to help Midgey out, I was very anxious. I tried to reach out to the honey extractors, painters, and plumbers. Just in case the project team was unable to find the key in an hour, then we’d need a plan B. It was only then that the projects people told Sangha that they did not have access to the keys of the house. Clearly, this meant that we had to go with plan B.

After having mopped the place thoroughly with her shiny fur, my cat master was apparently a little over the edge. Sangha had gone through tons of youtube videos on how to rescue a cat and was reaching out to animal rescue people. However, they were not interested in coming all the way over to Bokarbada to secure a cat (which I think is a service for which they charge very little). I completed my meetings at the office and was trying to help Sangha out in any way I can. Many of my friends were also coming over to our house to help us get Midgey out. In our mind, we were quite positive that we could go 2.5 meters down, pull this cat and come back safe if provided with the required tools. This is when magic happened and I am sad that I could not see this in person. Midgey decided to jump into the bag after Sangha asked her for the 100th time since morning. Once Midgey was in the bag, she patiently suspended the bag for some more time to make her comfortable and then began pulling her up, home.

Here are some pictures that were taken during various stages of the rescue mission. Midgey is home safe now. When I got back home, I did hug the hell out of her and gave her a dozen kottus to teach her a lesson. I think Midgey now wants to conserve the rest of her lives. By my count, we’re 3 down, and 6 to go.