More Things to Know About Cats

A tiger once chased a cat into a jungle. The cat ran as fast as its legs could carry it, and climbed up a tall tree. And the tiger could not do anything, but to look up at the tree, watching the cat sitting on a branch. From that time on, cats hide their feces in fear that tigers might still be chasing them.

In my childhood, I had two cats - an all-black one, while the other was a perfect assortment of white, black, and orange. One fine morning we - me and my sister - found them in a large bowl, which had been sitting quietly in a corner of the large and spacious veranda of our apartment. The veranda was always very quiet as we hardly spent our time there.

From that time on the two twins became our pets; and we nurtured and took care of them like two members of our family. Me and my sister named them Jayku and Hayma, - a male and a female kitten, the black one being a female. Their mother, a huge black cat with green, transparent eyes (with two thin, black swords in the middle of each eye) came to see her kids from time to time; and we greatly appreciated her visits.

Prophet Muhammad (S) was quite fond of cats. Once he even patted on the back of a cat. The Prophet used to call one of his famous followers (Sahabi) "Abu Huraira", meaning "father of cats", as the latter was very often accompanied by a couple of beautiful cats. My grandmother (on my mother's side) was an extremely pious woman; however, strangely enough, she never liked cats, almost hated them; something that I never quite understood. Most probably, she didn't know these facts.