It has given birth to five kittens, and over the course of several weeks, they started to die one after another.
I come back from home one day to find the box empty, and then from then onward, the countdown began. First the mother moved them at the drain, underneath the covers. Then it started to rain. Four. Then she moved them to the neighbour’s backyard, between pipes and tall, long grasses. I went away for the week only to return to the place with my litter brother, and found them no longer there. In the mean time the mother greeted me every morning, meowing restlessly from one corner to another, in cupboards, underneath the sofa, in search for lost things. One days when I feel like it I lift it up and lie it down with me, “Why do you sound so sad?”. Mother has gave up on her – bitter by the act of neglect – she shuts her up every time she emerges from from the door. So I feed her every morning before I go to work.
Sometime this week, my brother found the last kitten, hidden in a flower pot. It was blind.
The next morning it was dead. He threw it in the bushes.
When I come home that evening, I saw the kitten lie on the porch. Ants were swarming around it.
I asked my mother what happened and then after dinner, I told my little brother to open the keys to the back and find the cangkul. As I retrieved the corpse, the mother followed suit. I put it beside the soil and started digging. Soon the brother joined in to help and I laid it down in the small hole we dug under the tree. He recited something and I saw the mother lying at the side, watching the procession as it ended. She lingered for a while, long after we all went inside.
***
“Do you want to stay together in your next life, or never meet again?”
perkaraperkara 