A few days ago, I enjoyed catching up with an old friend, Ajeet Chhabra, whom I hadn’t seen in years. We reminisced about old times and caught up on what we’d been up to lately. At that time, both of us worked at a bank and stayed in a 2BHK apartment in Indore. I was also pursuing postgraduate studies and working on a research paper.
As we chatted, we couldn’t help but recall a bizarre incident from our past. It all started in the winter of 1982 when we began noticing that the milk we got from the milkman every morning was mysteriously disappearing. We came up with various theories to explain the strange phenomenon, but the most compelling one was that a ghost was stealing our milk! This went on for a few days until, one morning, we stumbled upon the real culprit: a mischievous cat who had been sneaking into our apartment to drink the milk.
We were determined to catch the cat in the act and teach it a lesson. Before we could hatch a foolproof plan, the cat showed up. We armed ourselves with our trusty slippers, and when the cat finally made an appearance, we sprang into action, chasing it around the apartment and trying to hit it with our slippers. In the chaos that ensued, the cat managed to escape through the window, but not before leaving a mess behind.
As we surveyed the damage, we realized that the cat had not only peed all over the floor and the table but had also managed to knock over my study materials, including my research paper. To make matters worse, the paper was written in a long-copy notebook and was now covered in cat pee! We quickly set to work cleaning up the mess with disinfectant, but the damage had been done. The notebook was soaked through with disinfectant and had to be hung out to dry on a clothesline for hours.
Despite the setback, we were relieved to find that the ballpoint pen ink had held up surprisingly well, and the writings were still legible for typing work. However, the incident had become the talk of the neighborhood. In the end, we had to admit that the cat had outsmarted us, and we were left with nothing but a funny story to tell.
