We have adopted a stray cat, but the cat thinks she has adopted us and she has lovely eyes, one bright green, the other slate grey.
I have never seen a cat with two different iris colours before, but friends say it is a common thing with cats.
I once had a Scandinavian acquaintance with striking blue eyes that were difficult to look away from and I wondered whether I looked blue to him, like a photograph that had been taken in very bright light.
Professional photographers say a mobile phone may be a smart piece of equipment, but you still have to tell it whether you are shooting outdoors or indoors. Otherwise, it just takes white as a reference point and that is why you sometimes get a blue or an orange tinge in your photographs.
My irises are brown and I always proudly put it down in capital letters whenever border control forms ask for my distinguishing features.
But I have found out that security guys do not care about your distinguishing features and what really matters is your name.
My Muslim friend from Kerala has a name that is a mile long and includes everything, including the town he is from, and the security guys always hurriedly let him pass.
I know the colour of my eyes and am proud about it because when I was a child I remember opening our front door one day and standing there were two elderly Anglo-Indian women.
We three looked at each other for a long time, and then one women turned to the other and said gushingly in a stage-whisper to her companion, “Look at his eyes.”
(Anglo-Indians, of mixed Indian and British parentage, have mostly vanished from India and you can find them living quiet lives in the suburbs of Australia).
The cat thinks it has adopted us is because it comes to our balcony at certain times of the day and meows urgently and we have to rush out to feed it.
When we first ignored it, she went around to the front of the building and came inside protesting furiously at our indifference and making a huge racket in the corridor and then sat on our front door mat.
An expatriate family leaving Dubai had apparently abandoned her and she obviously was stressed at her changed circumstances.
“Don’t buy dry cat food,” said my wife, as I drove to the hypermarket. She has learned that cats are carnivores and need high-protein and high-moisture foods. Like most of us humans living in air-conditioned bliss, cats forget to drink water and are prone to urinary infection.
The hypermarket had a special pet food section. If you love your pet dearly, there is also a shelf of gourmet food, such as duck cooked with succulent sauces and a hint of herbs.
We have noticed the cat has also adopted the whole neighbourhood. “Where have you been?” asked a lady on a bicycle as she got down and set up a plastic dish full of goodies in the sand. Our neighbour comes down every evening with a large bag of cat food and shakes it to attract her attention and our cat jumps out of the balcony to check out her lunch.
“Oh, this is where she goes during the night,” said a couple walking by and watching me feed the cat. They live in the building across the street.
The nights have been blustery and cold recently and my wife set up a cardboard box for the cat with a bathroom mat and our son’s black bedsheet for a cover.
If you have been living here for a while, you will soon find out that Dubaiins are people that are kind to stray animals and also ready to help humans who have fallen on bad times.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mahmood_saberi.
