King Jeremy the Queen

No, am not talking about drag queens..

The queen I'm talking about had a rabid jungle cat for a mother and Mephistopheles the demon as her father.

Her previous owners gave her the insipid name "Brownie" but after a day with her we renamed her Jeremy after a Pearl Jam song about a good looking boy who went off the rails and shot all his classmates.

"King Jeremy the wicked

ruled his world"

She was beautiful with her sleek body, her tawny red-gold and black stripes and golden eyes. And she was meaaaannnn >:(

She had an unerring instinct for detecting cat-haters and whenever one came to our house, she would jump them, sinking her claws into their legs and hanging on stubbornly while they whirled in a panicked dance. She never responded when we called, but the moment we sit down to read the newspaper, she'd sprawl right on the paper, giving us a challenging look.

And when we reprimanded her, she'd stand on her hind legs and wave her claws at her, daring us to a cat-fight. She refused the food we gave her and subsisted instead on the sparrows around our home. She also hunted us. Sis Ayie gave her the Mizo name "Puss-phaki".

One day she came home pregnant and meaner than ever. We had a gentle, eager-to-please pregnant dog at the time too and Jeremy went and scratched the poor dog everyday. And the stupid dog always protected her from other cats and dogs.

She gave birth to two lovely kittens, while dog had three puppies. When one of the pups died, dog nudged her all day, licking her and whining softly. And Jeremy- Jeremy ATE her babies.

I threw her out of the house. I learnt later that cats sometimes kill their young if they were too weak to survive. But at the time I didnt know it, and I was too angry with devil cat that not only did I throw her out, I gave her a kick too.

Jeremy never forgave. Vengeance was her middle name- King Jeremy "Vengeance" Puss-phaki Pachuau. Long name. And Pachuau girls are said to be stubborn and domineering, and while submissive, docile me never had those traits, they were magnified manifold in Jeremy. She avenged sevenfold herself on us.

She cursed the family, and especially me. I failed my XII Boards that year and my sisters also did horribly in their studies too. Not only that she puked every morning right at our front door. She also shredded my mom's plants.

But her biggest retaliatory move was to entice every tomcat she came across, and lure them into our backyard, and they did the deed at midnight. And she would yowl reaaaallly loudly and primally and it greatly embarrassed us. Hell, her primal screams would have made the Marquis de Sade blush. Anyway, she gave birth to a lot of babies over the years and they inter-mated and proliferated and terrorized us. We were lucky none of her spawn were as vindictive as she was. Their genes were probably diluted by the spineless tomcats she mated with. Now if she had gotten together with the Hitler-lookalike cat that lived a few houses away from us, it would have been a different story.

I don't know how Jeremy met her end. She wanted to keep us guessing, I guess. Most probably she went and died at a cat-hater's house just to freak them out. She was like that.

So this is why I will probably never have a cat again. Not because I hate cats but because after Jeremy, every other cat seems really tame and insipid and boring. And I also find it hard to respect dogs. Maybe one day I'll get myself a dog that looks like a wolf....