Poplaine, the Reluctant Hunter: A Cat, a Cruel World and the Kindness of God

 **2 November 2026**

 

There was this feral cat, three-quarters wild and one-fourth domesticated. One-fourth just sufficient enough to allow her to come purring into specific homes, not regularly, but sometimes in the evening, and have her little piece of chapati or a bit of milk, as the host found suitable.

It was a nice, disciplined cat, but a great hunter.

Every year, when she had kittens, she would be shifting the brood to the chosen houses. She would pick out safe places like houses with front yards with big boundary walls or barn verandas so that the kittens would survive within them. She would leave them and go out to hunt, and would arrive with fat rats to feed the kittens.

And during that time, she would literally famish and lose a lot of weight.

It was such a dedicated cat.

Every year, her brood had their time in our courtyard as well. Sometimes they would stay for fifteen days, sometimes for a week, and grow up. She would continue hunting. And then, one fine day, they would start going outside the yard walls to begin their own journey of self-survival on their own.

And later on, the male cats would turn into almost fully feral cats. And the female cats would turn out to be like their mother.

Last year, in June, as usual, as per the routine, she arrived with two kittens, both males.

And it went the way it had been going for the last few years. She would just tire herself out in search of prey, and she would hardly eat the catch herself.

And the kittens were growing fast.

But then, after fifteen days, she stopped coming.

And since then, I haven't seen her. During those last days, she had grown very weak. So, most probably, she did not survive.

But due to her selfless mothering of her kittens, by that time the kittens had grown sufficiently to survive on their own.

They needed—they still needed—some support from our end. So, for a month, they got supplements from our side.

And then the little garden in the yard, the little group of trees, was buzzing with chaos.

Because every year during monsoons, there were so many nestings in our clump of trees and plants, ranging from warblers in the plants to tailorbirds, Oriental white-eyes, bulbuls, doves, spotted munias and a few others.

But this time, these two top predators of the small yard and garden wouldn't allow the birds to nest because they were expert climbers. And due to their little weight, they would even reach the top ends of the branches.

So no branch was safe.

And there was hardly any nesting in the little garden.

They even killed most of the shrews. It was a group of shrews that used to stay in the garden. And shrews are considered to be lucky by people in this part of India.

And usually, cats don't eat shrews.

So these two little rascals just ended up killing all of them, and I would find them killed unnecessarily, not eaten.

So that was quite irritating.

One of the kittens was introverted. It would prefer to stay within the yard. The other was quite outgoing.

And gradually, with the passage of days, the outgoing one was enjoying the freedom of wilderness. It would go outside, would continue coming back and play with his brother.

And then it would even somehow manage to take the introverted guy outside as well.

And during one such outing, the introverted guy was killed by the stray dogs.

There are so many stray dogs in the villages now. Every street has a band of dozens, and they are always fighting for their territory. It's always noisy. They howl, they bark and chase cats.

They have killed many cats.

So that is a very sad sight.

So the introverted kitten was killed.

And ironically, it was killed by a dog that had been crawling on its front legs because its hind part was paralysed due to being hit by a car driven by a drunk farmer.

And it was just passing its time, laboriously pulling itself ahead using its front paws only.

But look at the irony!

That day, when the band of dogs chased this introverted cat, which had been playfully pulled out of the yard walls by its more outgoing brother, it escaped the smart and swift dogs.

But when it was finally leaping to safety, it happened to be caught in the jaws of the crawling, handicapped dog.

And it shut its jaws on it with such force that even a few beatings by a peasant woman who was nearby were not sufficient to set the prey free.

And it put so much effort into the kill, as if it was making up for all the lost opportunities in the fun game of a dogly life.

So the kitten was killed.

So only one was left.

And we took it as an orphan.

Its mother was no more. Its brother was also gone.

So we thought of supporting it a bit more than the other kittens because we always knew that supporting them beyond a limit would just tame down their wild instincts, and they wouldn't be able to survive in the open.

So this one also got a name.

We named it Poplain, after the earthmover, the earthmoving machine.

I don't know how we came to christen it Poplain, but it seemed to suit it very well.

But I don't think it accepted the christening because it never, ever responds to the call.

It is more open to "Pushu."

The moment you call it "Pushu, Pushu," it comes running down to you.

But keep calling it "Poplain, Poplain," and it doesn't even look in your direction.

So it has got a very strong sense of likes and dislikes.

Poplain grew, and it would spend almost fifty percent of its time in our front yard, and fifty percent of the time it would be out.

It learned hunting, and to supplement its natural catch, we would give it whatever eatable suitable for a cat was available at the house. Mostly, it was milk and chapatis.

It turned out to be a very friendly cat.

It would go to some other houses as well, where kids would play with it.

So Poplain grew to be equally balanced between wilderness and domesticity, enjoying the best part of both sides.

Then one day, it went missing for four days, and my sister saw the carcass of an exactly similar cat which had been mauled by the dogs in the street.

So we ended up giving heartfelt obituaries to Poplain.

In fact, we even missed it.

But then it returned suddenly, out of nowhere, after four days.

And we were very surprised that it was still surviving.

After that, Poplain has been quite lucky a few times.

One day, it literally came out of the jaws of the most dangerous dog in the band, in the street band near the house.

The dog snapped its jaws at its neck, but in the last fraction of a second, Poplain must have been very agile, and the dog ended up catching it on the back.

It somehow wriggled out of the jaws of the dog.

Had the jaws snapped on its neck, it would have been gone.

And when it came back, I had never, ever seen a cat more scared.

It was literally on the verge of a heart attack.

It couldn't breathe out of fear.

With such struggling, snappy breathing, it was very, very difficult for it to take even a breath.

And it kept lying for a day or two as if it was on a sickbed in a hospital.

But it recovered.

Thankfully, there was no major injury.

Now, there is another black male tomcat which comes and thrashes Poplain sometimes.

So I thought of feeding it cat food so that it grows stronger than this rascal tomcat.

And I got cat food for Poplain.

But the problem here is that since the day we started serving it cat food daily, it would just abandon all sense of hard work.

It would just keep lying, and within fifteen days it had grown overweight.

Its tummy was bulging like a pregnant cat.

And that was a disgrace!

So I know that in order to survive, it has to stay slim, smart, alert and swift.

Because if it keeps on putting on weight, that day is not far when a street dog will catch it sometime and kill it.

So I keep the amount of cat food served to it just enough to keep it svelte, so that it is forced to go out and work hard and look for some rat in the bushes around the house.

But it is so stubborn that it thinks that as long as it keeps on entertaining us, making those purring and sycophantic types of sounds, we will ultimately feed it.

But now I have devised a very nice way out.

Whenever I see that he has crossed the limits and won't go, despite the fact that I'm not going to feed him any more that day—and that is for his own good—instead of shouting at him or trying to chase him away with mock attacks, what I do is throw water in his direction.

Now, a cat is very much scared of water.

So Poplain makes very accusatory sounds.

I can make it out. He gets very angry.

He makes very loud, howling sounds whenever I throw water in his direction, and looks at me very, very angrily.

And then jumps over the yard wall.

But that is for his own good.

I have to keep him hungry just enough so that he goes into nature and does what a cat is supposed to do.

That is, have patience, go into hiding and hunt rats and other cat prey.

That would keep him smart, active, athletic.

And that would help him in beating the dogs in their chase.

The other day, I was thinking: just like I am trying to discipline Poplain by making things a bit difficult for him, maybe God also does the same to us when He puts up little, little challenges in our path.

Because if we get everything without doing anything, we will grow overweight like Poplain, and then we will become victims of circumstances.

So now I realise that maybe God, as a very kind father, does the same to us.