Black Snow

this one's for T.G.

The white tomcat looked at his fast disappearing paw prints in the black snow. He knew that the black snow will overwhelm him sooner or later. He has been trying to ignore the possibility for as long as possible, but he is cold and tired now. His destination is nowhere in sight. He had in mind a nice warm nest where he can curl up and rest for the longest time, but the cold hurt his eyes, and he couldn’t see clearly anymore. “Just get it over and done with, no point prolonging my misery,” he thought. He felt like roaring at the black snow, pretend for one instant that he was one of the big cats he descended from.

Roar in insolence at the black snow which had claimed his companion. Being black, he didn’t realize that she had succumbed to the blizzard way back on their journey. “She should have tried harder,” he thought. He knew she was complaining of the cold, but she always complained of the cold. “STILL she should not let the black snow defeat her. She lost the battle, she lost herself. Maybe that’s what she was planning all along, just give up.”

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Walking with purpose now, he was bent on getting out of the black snow which had cost him his companion. Little did he know that his anger which was tinged with despair would save him one of his nine lives.

Every step he took brought him back to sunny days passed with the black cat. She was as black as he was white. He found her years ago injured and abandoned in the woods he called home. He nursed her back to her paws. She loved to chase birds and butterflies. “I just wanted to play…” she would complain when they ran away from her, or when she accidentally hurts one of them. Her right ear would fold over with shame and regret; she would walk with her head down looking like a perfect portrait of wretchedness. Only the tomcat can lift her spirits when that happened.

“It’s alright. It’s your nature to be playful, but you must remember that they are fragile,” he tells her time and again. She loved to laze in the sun, snapping at the occasional fly or swiping her paws, trying to catch the sunbeams. A sunbeam could have saved her now, he thought, “Too bad we can’t capture and keep sunbeams forever, and use it when we most need it.”

Strange companions they made. Apart from their day and night coats, they liked the same things; wandering in big tall grasses, peeping at the humans and their weird ways, racing through the fields till they felt like a bird themselves. If only they had wings, they would rule the skies, thought the tomcat. “Then there will be very few birds left!” said the black cat to her companion.

Both of them would laugh themselves silly with the thought of sprouting wings. “I want butterfly wings, as colourful and ethereal,” she would say. “Typical impractical female. I want eagle-wings, built for power, go everywhere on those wings. By the way, you’re too heavy for butterfly wings…you need vulture-wings to carry you!” he would say. Usually they end up squabbling over such talk, and many other small talk. But the tomcat never could stay angry for long.

He couldn’t voice out his despair, not yet, he thought. “Let me get out of this damned black snow first.” His anger also took him to the darker moments when the black cat would be melancholy. Lately, those moments were getting more and more frequent. “It’s just that I can’t see the blue sky anymore, all I can see is black snow, I can’t see your eyes,” she says in tears, complaining as they got into deep winter. “I want the blue sky, I want to see your eyes in the sky,” said the black cat.

She had a special name for him. “Blue-Eyes”. The white tomcat’s eyes mirrored a cloudless summer sky. “So look at my eyes and NOT the sky”, says the tomcat, “Let my eyes hold you through till the myosotis come out again,” he said.

“Alright Blue-Eyes,” that’s was what she said, secretly in shame because she felt like a weak little kitten, and because she made him shout at her again. He couldn’t bear her sadness. One day he made the decision to go where the sky was always blue, and where there is no black snow. “Then you can always see the sky, AND my eyes,” he told her.

Blue-Eyes didn’t know that his companion’s despair had taken a toll on her body and her spirit. To him the black snow was merely an annoyance. The black cat on the other hand, had only recently come to live in a land where black snow was more frequent than sunbeams, and she hated its oppressing presence. It coats everything, and even during the day, it made sunshine gloomy. Such was the power of black snow when it falls without reprieve. She became just a shell of a cat. She grew more distant, slipping into the shadows as the black snow continued its descent.

The tomcat didn’t understand why his companion was so terrified of black snow. It paralysed her hunter’s spirit. She couldn’t reason anymore, like a trapped animal, her only will was to escape, run, and disappear. Her fear became worse each time it fell. In the end she could not overcome her dread, and the very thing she tried to run away from claimed her.

Blue-Eyes’ howls made the hairs on humans stand, and gave them goose bumps. The animals in the barn where he was passing through could feel his suffering and became as agitated as he was. But he was just passing through. The thought of being surrounded with other creatures did not appeal to him. As the snow continued to fall mercilessly, the tomcat put one paw in front of another and forced himself to continue.

At that moment, he did not know which he hated most, the black snow or the black cat.

He hated her for succumbing to the coldness. He hated her for abandoning him, when he had promised to bring her where the sky stays blue. He hated her distance and melancholy, and thought of her as a weak spoilt little housecat, and not the feral prowler she really was. She was never grateful for everything he has done, or tried to do, he thought. He just hated her.

It took him a while to realize that he was howling. He could see the beginning of a new day at the edge of the woods. He has walked far enough. Blue-eyes looked for the closest shelter, which happened to be an inviting wooden cabin with opened doors, with a cheerful-looking fire burning at the hearth. An old man was standing at the verandah, peering into the darkness of the dawn. He was wondering where the caterwauling came from. He saw the poor white tomcat spotted with black snow a few steps away. Blue-Eyes didn’t know how the human would react. “That’s all I need now, a crazy old-human male who will end my suffering with a blow to the head,” he thought.

The old man came closer. Blue-Eyes, too tired to move, stayed very still.

“You look like you’ve been through hell,” says the old man. “Let’s get you nice and warm now.” He picked up Blue-Eyes like he would a human child, and brought him into his home. “I’ll just stay a while, rest a while,” thought Blue-Eyes. He was placed in front of the fireplace, and he snuggled into an old blanket which smelled of mothballs, a strange new smell for the tomcat which made him sneeze a few times until he got used to it.

Blue-Eyes slept through the next few days, barely waking up and hardly eating what the old man placed in a small tin bowl next to him. He just couldn’t. Even with his eyes closed, he could see black snow. It was gone, but he could still feel it on his fur, and even under his skin. He refused to open his eyes and look out of the glass windows.

The old man thought Blue-Eyes was dying. He left the tomcat alone until he became exasperated with worry. Kind soul that he is, he finally decided to talk to the tomcat. “It’s alright now. Everything is alright. Look, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the trees are beginning to bud. A healthy tomcat like you should be running around catching mice now,” says the old man, stroking the tomcat’s head. Blue-Eyes screwed his eyes shut even tighter, because the old man’s words made him think of his black companion trying to “play” with the birds and waiting impatiently for the myosotis to appear.

It took him a few more days before he ventured out of the old cabin. No more black snow. No more black cat. Yet it was so peaceful here, he thought. “I’ll stay for a while”.

Over the days to come, Blue-Eyes became the old man’s companion. The old man was a painter. He loved to transform blank canvas into nature, and Blue-Eyes would become one of his subjects. When he would have other human visitors, he would tell them, “No matter how much I try and capture his essence onto canvas, there is still something missing. Some thing I cannot capture, as though he is bearing a burden which I cannot see,” says the old man, whose visitors would think he was getting senile.

“Only close friends can see these things,” thought Blue-Eyes. It took the tomcat even longer before he started racing through the forests again, but he never pretended to be a bird anymore, nor did he ever wish for wings again. That part of him was lost in the blizzard, lost along with the black cat. Now he had the forest, the cabin, and the nice warm little nest he could snuggle up in. He had found what he had always wanted.

Only when the forget-me-nots blossom and the butterflies dance, would the old man hear spine-chilling caterwauling again… on a cloudless sunny day when the sky is blue. - by a.h. sharm