Midnyte's My Madness

THE first time our eyes met, I screamed the scream of my life. The scream was only in my head, but the fright I felt shocked my senses. I had never eyeballed such an ugly, ugly creature!

The creature was tiny, its head and body bald except for a few strands of hair standing on its end. I thought I was looking at a live version of a cartoon illustration of a frightened swamp rat.

“It isn’t a rat, ma’am,” one of the three workmen behind me said, his tone amused.

“It’s a kitten,” confirmed the other. “Although it really looks like a rat that was doused with hot water.”

The last remark got my attention.

My stomach churned.

I had heard how a few cruel people in the country, the Philippines, and children in some cases copying the acts of their sadistic elders, would splash stray cats with hot water.

I did not know how true this was. It could be mere exaggeration so don’t take my word for it.

But looking at the nondescript kitten which looked as if it was sloshed with very hot liquid, I thought I was seeing man’s viciousness at its height.

No room for man’s wickedness at Wicked Web

It was a Sunday morning, relatively not busy at that time in this commercial spot where my youngest daughter, a very young entrepreneur, would locate her Internet Café. It was to be called Wicked Web. We had just received official government approvals and licenses for this business.

The location was perfect. Students were Wicked Web’s target customers. It was across Angeles University where my other daughter started to teach. There were also secondary schools nearby. Situated between Wicked Web were various cafeterias, fast-food restaurants, bookshops, school-supply stores and a print shop.

Wicked Web’s rival Internet cafés were not as auspiciously located – and not as pleasant, I must add.

That Sunday morning’s task was for me to open the doors to the workmen who were renovating the space. It used to be a cafeteria, catering to the staff of the training hospital in the university. As an Internet café required big structural changes, I was there to make sure that specifications were met to the smallest details.

And then I found a creature whose green eyes, when I met with mine, did not flicker. The kitten stared at me with its begging eyes, unwavering. Perhaps it was frightened of me, too, but it did not move as I stared back. Writing about it now, frankly, is making me cry.

I took the kitten in the office, a separate room in Wicked Web, away from the noise made by the working workmen.

When my daughter and other family members arrived to check on the progress of the renovation, they saw the poor thing with me. But they didn’t know whether to cry at the stray kitten’s condition, or to laugh at me trying to feed it with fast food from MacDonald’s.

Midnyte

Looking back, the kitten’s appearance in my family was fortuitous. At that time, we had Meg, another stray cat. Meg was found by my daughter, on her way home from school, on the grassy patch at the foot of a lamppost outside the gate of the expat compound where we lived.

Meg was a Japanese Bobtail cat and had recently given birth to three kittens. While the three kittens – Foxy, Sassy and Kaela – were already being introduced to eat kitten food, they were also still being fed by Meg.

My daughter coaxed Midnyte, as the kitten was later named, to feed on Meg’s milk. It was a sight to see a black kitten feeding from a white-cat mother.

Midnyte, timid and afraid of Meg’s eldest, Foxy, in the beginning, soon became well. His fur grew to a thick, glossy black, as black as deep midnight. The household was soon full of playful, happy cats including the other adopted stray, Chance.

Midnyte will live forever, at least in my book

Sadly, Midnyte lived for only a short time. But the few years that he had lived might have given him some sort of solace. That many humans are not bereft of humanity, and that the heartless treatment he received in his first week of life was, somehow, compensated for with humans who cared.

One thing was certain, my family and friends who visited relished the moments with our strictly-stay-at-home cats. And Midnyte, the shyest of them all, had somehow or other given them the fright.

Midnyte loved to sit still in dark corners, its carbonite furs melding in the murkiness. And woe to the human who would spot seemingly floating emerald eyes ablaze with naughty surprise.

SHORTLY after Midnyte died, I started to write a novel with a black cat, which I named after Midnyte, at the center of the story. The first edition was published on Amazon KDP in 2014. A second edition, also as e-book, was published on December 2020, a few months after I quit my corporate job.

Midnyte in Midnyte Madness was nothing like the cat that I and my family loved in real life. It was the incident of wicked people dousing strays with hot or boiling water that spurred me to write something about it.

I am hoping that Midnyte is enjoying his time in Cat Heaven.

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Wicked Web Internet Café ceased to exist in early 2008 after its owner left the Philippines to permanently make the UK her home.

Thank you reading.

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