Olive Farlight Gets a Rare Insight
Written by Dr.Laxmi Iyer

Preposterous! She hadn’t used the word in 30 years. This was the second time in her life that 75 year old Olive Farlight used the word.

Olive Farlight was an English teacher who lived in the Sardinian islands. She loved grammar.

Two obsessions in her life that had sent the most powerful thunderstorms packing away from her face were words and cats.

She was drawn to words the way iron filings are drawn to bar magnets.

If words could sprout and grow, you would have seen her covered by a lush, green thicket of the strangest, weirdest, wackiest words.

Cats! Talk about a woman obsessed with cats! Everyone in the island where she lived knew her as the English Cat Lady.

She carried herself well at 75 – without even the smallest lisp of a stoop stuttering her walk.

With large, expressive gray eyes, a wrinkle free skin and a head full of thick silver hair that glowed like an angels’ halo, she still looked attractive.

She had some peculiar habits…a systematic approach to the loves of her life…things that could drive people nuts… she actually maintained a list of different words that she had used on different days…and in different seasons…in different years. For example, one could ask her, on the 4th of February 1974 was there any word that you used different on that day? She would peer at you intently from below her bushy eyebrows. She actually had bushy eyebrows …because she had never quite got used to having them shaped in her youth.

Then, in a microsecond of time loss, she would exclaim, “ Yes of course! How can I forget! Insuperable – I used that word 3 times that day ”.

The last few weeks Olive had been troubled by a serious problem…The youngest kitten of the Ragamuffin cat Smoke had just become seriously adventurous.

She had called him Robin Hood in jest but here he was - fast growing into Ragamuffin Robin Villain Hood day by day.

He was the weirdest kitten that she had ever seen in her 50 years of serious cat breeding.

He just didn’t drink milk from a saucer like the other cats. He would play with the milk, splash around for half an hour before drinking it.

Many were the times he cried Wolf! Raising an alarm – bringing panic-stricken visitors searching high and low looking for the high-pitched mew that came from a garden bush.

The way, he mewed one would think – there’s a cat who’s been seriously injured by the other kittens.

The moment one rushed up to see, he would go back to his face cleaning and look back as if asking, “ What’s the matter?”

He had even learnt to mimic the voices of the other cats. Ever so often, he would mew like her favourite cats Cleopatra and Nofretti. Olive would turn around happily - only to see pesky Robin Hood emerge from his hiding place.

He loved machines and loud sounds…Switch on the mixer, television, music system, vacuum cleaner – (she still had machines that raised a racket!) or lawn mower and you could be sure Robin Hood would be there close by…and more than a fur’s breadth too close for safety.

Worse was still to come, he loved walking into muddy puddles. Unlike other cats, he wouldn’t bother to clean himself but would walk into the home printing paw marks all over the carpet and sofas.

Then, he would walk back to inspect each paw mark – studying it closely and then standing back to look at them as if in admiration.

He had even learnt to look at people with one eye closed and one eye open.

Sometimes, he would sit still and then raise his paws and throw punches in the air as if practicing some imaginary matches.

Once or twice when Olive had some interested buyers coming over to see the kittens, she had even seen him raise one side of his forehead and one side of his whiskers just a little higher than the other and then walk all around the room with an awful limp and a shrill screechy meow.

One day, Robin Hood did the unforgiveable. He overturned a huge bowl of milk all
Over Olive’s brand new carpet and then ran to catch a fleeing spider from her showcase.

Some of her precious crystal glass collection came crashing down with Robin’s powerful, gymnastic leap.

That was the day, Olive had enough…

She called her animal psychologist and trainer – Joseph Treewise.

He came over immediately, gave her problems a patient hearing and left with a promise in his heart and Robin Hood clinging to his polo neck sweater.

Three months later, Olive was delighted when Joseph called. “Robin’s in great shape now. Quiet as a church mouse, not a shred of antic hidden under his claws ”.

She was happy to see reformed Robin.

When Robin entered the home that day, the only sound that registered on the walls of the Farlight household was Olive’s sigh as she gazed at the young cat sleeping quietly by her side.

“ This is PREPOSTEROUS! I only asked Joseph to make him a little quieter and to hone his special talents…but not like this…he doesn’t even mew anymore. And I have never had a livelier cat in the last 50 years of breeding…he was the most intelligent cat I have ever had and now…this has happened. I miss Robin’s antics and the energy that I had to run to the garden, to climb the stairs ten times…What has Joseph done to my poor Robin now? ”.

The next hour saw Olive calculating when Smoke’s next litter would be due.