My Little Ramazan - Day Twenty

Mon 30th August 2010

Okay, so maybe that extra helping of dinner and supper was not justified last night. I seem to have forgotten the basic rule which Mustafa explained to me on Day One of Ramazan: Do not eat massive amounts of food all in one go simply because the sun has dipped down. Yes, you may feel you deserve it, yes you may be chomping at the bit for that sensation of taste to tickle your tongue once more, but your digestive system will simply not handle it. Plus, you’re missing the point of fasting.

So this morning I was dealing with the consequences. All my tummy parts were playing catch-up to cope with the outrageous amount of food I’d consumed and my head was thumping. Properly banging. I sat in the car in a sickly daze, waiting for Mustafa to finish some business at the kebab shop so we could go shopping. We were going to buy a few presents for Baran to give him at Bayram, the festival at the end of Ramazan. I had a list and everything.

But as I sat there, the sun slicing sharply across the windscreen, I spotted a big, fat hairy cat. I spotted it because it was crouching in the middle of the road and numerous cars had to keep slowing and dodging round it. What the heck was he doing? He had his head dropped close to the ground and his behind curved proudly in the air and he was looking, no staring, across the road. I followed his line of vision and saw the object of his desire. A seagull.

Now anyone who lives in or has even just been a visitor of Nairn, will know that the seagulls are not mere slips of a bird. They are monsters. The residents positively fear them. They are (and I am an animal lover remember) nasty, scratchy, swooping, grabbing, snatching, pooing, delinquent creatures who should have clocked up a million and one ASBOs by now. And this seagull, strutting along the wall in full view of our furry feline friend was certainly no exception.

And as I watched this stand-off, this sultry confrontation, it suddenly struck me that I am the cat. I am the cat! I spend all day every day crouching along the ground, my eyes on the prize, my behind in the air, getting ready to pounce and working out how and when to catch my food. What I am too stupid (I like to think I’m not fat and hairy as well) to see, is that this prize, this taunting feast, is way too big for me. If I am lucky enough to even get close to it, it will squawk, peck, flap and claw at me to within an inch of my life. It will end me. And flounce away as if nothing ever happened.

I’d like to tell you the cat and the seagull story ended well but, as I pulled away in the car, the cat was slinking along the edge of the wall and the last thing I saw in the wing mirror was a rapid flurry of fur and feathers. And Mustafa’s comment, “Stupid cat. He does this every day. He never remember seagull always win”, further reinforced my theory that I am the cat. This is day twenty, after all, and I still haven’t learned.