On the doorstep returning from Bugis a half-familiar figure was found seated on the stone bench by the entry. Boyish hair-cut, the dye just beginning to let through strands of white. Once or twice before the same lady had been found there without any exchange.
Maureen?… Oh! Sorry to hear about your cat. Helen told me this morning.
Maureen indicated the parcel on her lap. The form within was part-covered by large sheets of paper perhaps—at the time it appeared to have been stiff banana leaf. Maureen patted the body stretched there to indicate this was the said cat. The cat that had passed away overnight.
Orangey-brown and black streaks, its eyes half open, it seemed. The form and Maureen’s kind of attention, her gentle patting, had suggested an ailing animal.
It’s a lousy feeling, Mr Paulo.
Maureen would have been surprised to have been addressed by name, and certainly Mr Paulo here was surprised. We had never spoken previously.
Maureen was shy like the cats. Over the term she had been sighted two or three times, and only briefly; at the house and once at the NTUC supermarket after Helen had revealed that she worked there, in the store it must have been, or else only part time, as the supermarket was regularly patronised. In Helen’s conversation Maureen figured prominently.
Maureen lived in landed property further down in Carpmael, with at least one elder sister. The cats were a point of friction with one of the householders. More and more cats were being brought home by Maureen and she was spending more and more money on them.
It seemed that afternoon too that Maureen might have been Eurasian; some money had come down from either the parents, or the earlier generation.
That morning Helen had come into the kitchen early again seeking some chat. Zelna price, desirous of talk, the Montenegrins said. The JW witnessing was part of it, but Helen also enjoyed the exchange. A way had been found with her treading a little carefully through theology, the state of contemporary culture and coming end of the world, her feline devotions and our ordinary household affairs.
Helen lived in the refurbished garage in front of the Carpmael house, with a separate entry and her cats having room to freely roam along the driveway and up and down the street. There was some kind of sanitary provision in her room for peeing, but not Number 2. Showering was also in the main house.
Helen’s emerging personal history was interesting. Nothing as yet properly nailing the progress to that high feline devotion of organic feed that was carefully prepared in the camp kitchen in her room. If there had once been a man somewhere along the line, it would take some doing uncovering. Could it be anything else, some prospect suddenly denied? Helen would not have stayed down for long; got herself back up and on with it. Crossing to the JWs had taken a fair while; now Helen studied the scriptures and related daily. Gatherings up in Malaysia she was rarely able to attend because of the street feeding. (In Singapore the group was banned.)
A couple of her sisters still ran a maid agency in Orchard Road, one that in fact had served in its time the local potentate, friend to Henry Kiss & Marg Thatch. The business was a lotta work, but a lotta dosh was earned too. In her condo in some sought after location, one of her sisters had a wardrobe, or one of the walls of the rooms, hung with branded handbags a thousand plus dollars each.
The girls and one brother were raised and schooled by the Catholics; therefore Helen’s level of English. Dad had eventually attained a position as clerk and read the bible regularly. After being widowed, when maids were employed for his care, the father pestered them with untoward attention. Helen had been the one to live with him and listen to his oft repeated stories.
A few days before in the kitchen Helen had told of the 150, or 250, years of life of Abraham, the late parenthood of him and Sarah. Moses too may have lived even a longer span.
With Greg in Melbourne having passed away yesterday, Helen was asked some hard questions and Darwin’s Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals had been recommended to her. On her side Helen had been recommending a number of times particular verses of the Psalms, which continued unexplored as yet.
Helen sent lots of Watchtower material. In order to keep nice with her, two or three of the items had been perused and provided conversational material.
Helen was a darling, an irascible old crotchety spinster devoted to her cats and Jehovah.
When Maureen called Helen late night to tell of the passing of the cat she asked whether Helen might contribute to the cost of cremation. Some year or two ago Helen had had an association with that particular cat that included feeding. It was an attractive cat, even now in death lying there in Maureen’s lap. Around in Onan Road Bee Choo too had once taken a liking to this cat, Helen in the kitchen offered as further evidence. A number of Maureen’s ailing cats had passed away over the years, but not all of them produced sorrow for Helen like this one that she had fed and come to know.
Shortly after 5 at the return from Bugis, Maureen must have been waiting for Helen to accompany her to the crematorium. Or else it was for the money and farewell. If Helen was to accompany Maureen she must have done her feeding an hour early that afternoon, as she sometimes did if there were threatening clouds. The cats could not be left to go without.
Joo Chiat, Singapore
NB. Published Dec 2022 by Literary Veganism in a sequence titled, For Pity’s Sake
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