The Dalai Lama's Cat

by David Michie

  In the curious way that karma works, Franc’s metamorphosis couldn’t have been better timed.

  One day at noon, an earnest-looking couple arrived at the café and worked their way through the luncheon menu. Dressed in modest taupe colors and ascetic in appearance, they seemed like just another pair of Western intellectuals doing their India tour. Perhaps he was a lecturer in Pali Buddhist Studies from some American campus. Perhaps she taught Ashtanga yoga or was a vegan chef at an alternative health center. From the way they chewed their food mindfully, they seemed to be treating the Café Franc experience very seriously.

  It was only an hour and a half later, when their dessert plates had been cleared and their coffee cups were almost empty, that the male of the pair summoned Franc with a surprisingly assertive jab of his right index finger. This wasn’t the first time the two men had spoken. He had already grilled Franc extensively before choosing his main course, an experience Franc had managed with newfound graciousness.

  “Just thought I would properly introduce myself,” he said in cultivated New England tones. “Charles Hayder of Hayder’s Food Guides.”

  To say that Franc was surprised would be an understatement. He was astonished! Hayder’s Food Guides were among the most revered on the planet. Widely published and highly regarded, they could make or break a dining establishment.

  Franc blurted out something about it being an honor.

  “I heard about Café Franc from a friend in New Delhi. We thought we’d give you a try,” Hayder said, nodding toward his wife, who smiled brightly. “I have to say, the meal we’ve had today was outstanding. Every element of it! I’d go so far as to call it the best in the region. We’ll be providing a commendation in our India feature for The New York Times.”

  Franc was so overcome that for the first time in his life, he seemed at a loss for words.

  “Only one disappointment,” continued Hayder, more confidentially. “I was told the maitre d’ was the most appalling Buddhist wannabe. Was I misinformed?”

  Franc paused for a moment, looking down at his naked wrist. “No. No, you weren’t,” he said. “He was.”

  “Ah, so a facelift at Café Franc?”

  “It goes deeper than that,” suggested Franc.

  “Of course it does!” chimed Hayder. “Permeates the whole experience.” He allowed himself a wry smile. “As much as it goes against the grain, I’m going to have to write an entirely favorable review.”

  It would be foolish, dear reader, to imagine that a single teaching from a high lama would result in a permanent cure for self-cherishing in either cats or humans. Of all the delusions, self-obsession is perhaps the wiliest at disguising itself, seeming to disappear from view completely, only to be revealed in monstrous dimensions in a transmuted form.

  I hadn’t coughed up my last fur ball.

  Nor had Franc.

  But a change had occurred. A new direction was being pursued. And in the months ahead, there were to be all kinds of intriguing developments at Café Franc, as I was to discover.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Are you a creature of habit? Among the coffee mugs in your kitchen, is there a favorite that you prefer, even though any of them would serve the purpose? Have you developed personal rituals—perhaps in the way you read a newspaper, enjoy a glass of wine an evening, or conduct your ablutions—that provide a reassuring sense that life is as it should be?

  If your answer to any of these probing questions is yes, then, dear reader, you may very well have been a cat in a previous lifetime. And I, for one, can think of no higher distinction!

  We cats are the most habitual of creatures. Preferred sun loungers, meal times, hidey holes, and scratching posts are among the considerations in which we take daily satisfaction. And it is exactly because many humans embrace routine that we even consider allowing them to share our homes, let alone retain them as members of our staff.

  There are, of course, some disruptions that we all enjoy. How dull life would be without, for example, the occasional sampling of a new delicacy, like the day that Mrs. Trinci arrived at Jokhang triumphantly bearing a tray of roasted-eggplant lasagna for all to taste. Or the morning’s entertainment at Café Franc, when an Asian gentleman laboriously broke his breakfast toast into small pieces, applied butter and marmalade to each individually, then used chopsticks to eat them.

  Such incidents are a welcome diversion. But when more important events threaten the comfortable pattern of life, that’s a different matter entirely. I am talking here about change. A favorite Dalai Lama theme. The only constant in life, as Buddha himself said.

  Speaking for most cats and humans, it’s probably accurate to say that change is something we would rather have happen to beings other than ourselves. But, alas, there seems to be no escaping it. There you are, assuming that your familiar life, with all its reassuring rituals and habits, is set to continue indefinitely. Then, out of nowhere, like a slavering, unleashed pit bull or some such demonic archetype appearing suddenly on the pavement before you, everything is thrown into wild disarray.

  My own discovery of this truth began uneventfully enough one morning when I strolled unsuspectingly from my morning meditation with His Holiness into the executive assistants’ office. Nothing was said initially. That particular working day began like any other, with the usual buzz of phone calls and meetings and the driver arriving to take His Holiness to the airport. I knew he would be away for two weeks, visiting seven countries in Europe. Having lived at Jokhang for more than eight months, during which His Holiness had made frequent trips abroad, I was used to the idea that he had to travel often. When he went away, his staff would make sure I was well cared for.

  Usually.

  On this occasion, however, things turned out very differently. Midway through that first morning, two men in paint-spattered overalls arrived in the office. Chogyal took them through to the quarters I shared with His Holiness, where they were soon setting up ladders and covering the floor with plastic sheeting.

  Horrifying disfigurement rapidly followed. Photographs and thangkas were removed from walls, curtains stripped from windows, furniture draped with canvas. Within minutes my rarefied sanctuary was reduced to unrecognizable chaos.

  Chogyal picked me up, I thought for reassurance. I fully expected him to apologize for the upheaval, tell me that the painters would be finished in no time, and confirm that my home would soon be my own again. But events became only more distressing.

  Carrying me back to his office, he placed me inside a hideous wooden box that had appeared on his desk. Made of rough-hewn wood, it was so small I could barely turn around inside. Before I could even protest, he was fastening the metal-grill lid and carrying the whole thing downstairs.

  I didn’t know which I felt more intensely—outrage or terror.

  Outrage predominated to begin with. This was kidnap! How dare he take such liberties! Had he forgotten who I was?! And the moment the Dalai Lama’s back was turned! Of all people, the usually warmhearted Chogyal! Whose malevolent influence had he fallen under? If His Holiness knew what was happening, I had no doubt he would have put an immediate end to it.

  Chogyal walked through a section of Namgyal Monastery with which I was familiar before continuing on a path that I’d never traversed. As he walked, he chanted mantras under his breath in his usual, easygoing way, as though nothing untoward was happening. From time to time he paused for a brief conversation, on several occasions holding the cage so that others could look at me like some zoological exhibit. Glaring furiously through a crack between two pieces of wood, I caught glimpses only of red robes and sandaled feet. Had I been able to lash out and administer a severe claw-lashing, I most certainly would have.

  Chogyal continued walking. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that this had happened before. Not to me personally—at least not in this particular lifetime. But there was a time in history when refined individuals of higher breeding were wrenched from their homes and carted off to a bleak fut
ure. As students of European history will already have guessed, I’m referring to the French Revolution.

  Had that been any different from what was happening to me now? Had the mild-mannered Chogyal transmogrified into a sinister Tibetan Robespierre? Was the way he displayed me to those we met not precisely what had happened when the hapless aristocrats were wheeled through the streets of Paris to meet their grisly fate at the guillotine—a gruesome ritual I’d heard about while Tenzin munched on his lunchtime sandwich only the week before.

  Suddenly I became afraid, more fearful with every step that Chogyal took into unknown territory. There might be no guillotine at the end of this particular journey, but for the first time I wondered, what if this were not a mistake? What if some plan had been agreed to with the Dalai Lama’s consent? Perhaps His Holiness had made some oblique remark his assistants had interpreted to mean that he’d rather not have me around anymore. What if I was to be demoted from His Holiness’s Cat to plain McLeod Ganj House Cat?

  The area we were in now was rundown. Through the crack in the wood, I observed dirt pavements and barren gardens, pungent odors and the cries of children. Chogyal turned off the road and proceeded along a dirt path to an ugly concrete building. As he continued, I could just make out that we were in an open corridor with doors leading off both sides. Some of the doors were ajar, revealing rooms in which whole families were gathered, sitting on the floor around plates of food.

  My captor fished a key out of his robe and unlocked a door, then stepped into a room and deposited the cage on the floor.

  “Home sweet home,” he said cheerfully, unlocking the metal grill, lifting me out, and placing my small, quaking form on what was evidently his duvet. “You’ll have to stay with me, HHC, till the painters are finished,” he explained, stroking me in a way that suggested that instead of putting me through the most harrowing ordeal of my life, he had merely taken a 20-minute walk. “It shouldn’t be more than a week.”

  A whole week!

  “They’re repainting everything, walls, ceilings, window frames, and doors. By the time they’re finished, it will feel like new. In the meantime, you can have a holiday with me. And my niece, Lasya, will take care of you.”

  A girl of about ten, with sharp eyes and dirty fingers, appeared from outside and knelt on the floor, where she began squealing at me in a high-pitched voice as though I were both stupid and hard of hearing.

  Slinking to the top of the bed, ears flat back and tail limp, I crawled under the duvet. At least the smell of Chogyal on the bedclothes was familiar.

  I took refuge in the darkness.

  There I stayed for the next three days, sleeping away as many hours as I could. I emerged only to attend to the most urgent calls of nature, before returning to curl up in a miserable, fluffy ball.

  Chogyal was away most of each day at work, and Lasya soon tired of trying to play with a cat who wouldn’t respond. Her visits became infrequent and brief. Gradually, the sounds of families going about their day and the cooking aromas became more familiar. After three days of semi-wakefulness in the semi-darkness I came to a recognition: I was bored.

  So, on day four, when Lasya arrived late in the afternoon, I crawled out from under the duvet and hopped onto the floor for the first time. There we discovered a new game, quite by accident. As I brushed up against her right foot, her big toe slipped inside my left ear, the other toes remaining on the outside. Wiggling her toes, she improvised a delightful ear massage—I found myself purring gratefully. Neither the Dalai Lama nor any of his staff were in the habit of putting their big toes in my ear, but as I discovered now, the sensation was utterly delightful. Left ear was soon followed by right, and as I looked up into Lasya’s giggling face, I understood for the first time that my happiness didn’t depend on being in particular surroundings.

  I made my way to the door, and into the corridor. With Lasya as my minder, I padded tentatively toward the back of the building. In the very next room a woman and three children sat on the floor, stirring a pot on a single burner and chanting some sort of nursery rhyme. Having listened to them for the past three days as they prepared a variety of meals, I was curious to finally see them. Unlike the clamorous demons of my imagination, they seemed smaller somehow and more ordinary.

  The moment I appeared, they stopped what they were doing and turned to stare. No doubt news of my arrival had passed down the corridor. Were they somehow overawed at finding themselves in the presence of the Dalai Lama’s Cat? I felt sure they must be!

  Eventually, one of the children, perhaps eight years old, made a move. Extracting a sliver of tender meat from the cooking pot, he blew on it to cool it before coming to offer it to me. I sniffed hesitantly. Café Franc’s filet mignon this was not. But I was hungry. It smelled strangely appetizing. And as I took the meat from his hand and chewed it contemplatively, I had to admit it packed a tasty punch.

  Continuing on our way, Lasya and I headed across the backyard—a desolate stretch of bare earth—to a wall about three feet high. When I jumped on top of the wall, I was surprised to find myself looking across an open area to a soccer pitch in the distance. Two teams of teenagers were battling in the dust for possession of a ball fashioned out of scrunched-up plastic bags bound tightly together with twine. Now I understood where all the shouting and excitement I had heard under the duvet was coming from.

  Lasya perched beside me to watch the match, her legs dangling over the wall. She seemed to know the players and occasionally cried out encouragement. Settling next to her, I watched the game unfold: it was my first soccer match, and compared to the sedentary pace of life at Jokhang, it was riveting.

  I scarcely noticed that dusk was falling, until I looked up and saw candles and lamps being lit in the homes all around us. The aromas of a dozen meals wafted on the evening breeze, along with sounds of clinking dishes, laughter and squabbling, running water and TV. How very different all this was from the sights and sounds of my favorite perch in the window of His Holiness’s room. But I couldn’t deny there was a vibrant energy to this place where all of life was lived out in the open.

  The sun slid below the horizon, and the sky grew darker. Lasya had long since wandered back to her family, leaving me perched on the wall, my paws tucked neatly underneath me.

  This was when I became aware of a movement at the side of the building, a fluid shadow slipping effortlessly down the side of a 40-gallon drum. A cat! And not just any cat but one who was unusually big and muscular, with dark stripes vividly defined. I had no doubt at all he was the same magnificent tiger tabby I had first seen across the temple courtyard, by the green light of the market stall. How long he had been sitting on the drum watching me, I couldn’t guess. But his actions left me in no doubt about his interest.

  Padding directly across the barren backyard from one side to the other, he ignored me completely, as if I didn’t exist. Could he have been more obvious?

  Suddenly I was all a-flutter. To anyone looking on, I might appear to be a cat sitting placidly on a wall. But my thoughts and emotions were in thrilling turmoil. The proprietorial way the tabby had strolled across the yard made it clear that this was his domain. Having ventured as far away as Jokhang, he was evidently a cat of some standing. Sure, the mackerel tabby markings denoted humble origins. But his territory had expanded to an impressive size.

  And he was making a play for me!

  I had no doubt he would be back again. Not tonight, of course. That would be too obvious. But … tomorrow?

  When Chogyal arrived in the corridor from work a short while later, Lasya seized his hand and led him out to see where I was sitting.

  “Nice to see you outside, HHC!” Scooping me up, he tickled me under the chin. “Back to normal.”

  I was experiencing many things at that moment. Normal, however, wasn’t one of them.

  The next day I could barely wait for Lasya to arrive in the afternoon. I had spent all morning grooming myself so that my thick, white pelt positively glisten
ed. Ears thoroughly washed and whiskers shimmering, I had also performed the cello with particular vigor—much more allegro vivo than adagio, for those of you familiar with Dvořák’s famous concerto.

  No sooner had Lasya opened the door than I was out. I returned to the wall in a manner that tried to convey I had found myself there casually, almost accidentally. Once again, a soccer match was in full swing on the field below. From the rooms behind me there came the by-now-familiar sounds of family life. Lasya spent a few minutes sitting nearby, reading a schoolbook, before running back inside.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The shadow appeared on the 40-gallon drum. Getting up, I stretched first my front paws, then my back with luxuriant insouciance before hopping off the wall and making as if to go inside.

  As I’d very much hoped, this proved too much for my admirer.

  Noiselessly, he slipped from the drum and walked in such a way that our paths must cross. At the accepted distance from each other, we paused. For the first time, I looked directly into those glowing, amber eyes.

  “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” he asked, opening with the most clichéd pick-up line in history.

  “I don’t think so.” I tried to inflect just the right amount of encouragement into my voice, without seeming easy.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen you before.”

  I knew precisely where he’d seen me but had no intention of telling him how enthralled I’d been by the glimpse of him.

  Not right now, at least.

  “There are a few Himalayans about,” I replied, confirming my impeccable, if undocumented, breeding. “Is this your territory?”

  “All the way up to Jokhang,” he said. “And down the main street to the market stalls.”

  The market stalls were one block short of my own preferred destination. “What about Café Franc?” I asked.

  “Are you crazy? The guy there hates cats.”