SI ABU

Where I live, what I hear, when I breathe, I always find love everywhere, anywhere, anytime in everybody's soul, every animal's soul, and every tree's soul. I feel love from my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my entire group of friends, and everything around me.

One of the things I felt love from was my cat. It was small, had grey and white fur and sharp grey eyes. So, I called it “Si Abu” (in Indonesian, the word means The Grey). I got the kitten from my cousin when I was 5 years old. The kitten had been left by its mother and nobody wanted to keep it. I decided to look after it with affection and love.

I looked after the cat all of the time. I gave him meat, I made him a box to sleep in, and I invited him to talk when I felt happy or sad. The strange thing was that I felt Si Abu was an unusual cat. The cat understood how I felt and what I said. And often, the cat replied with "meow" when I talked to it. I was happy to have Si Abu as my best friend.

Wherever I went, the cat always followed me until once upon a time, when I went with the cat to pick flowers for my mother in my father’s garden, I heard the slither of a snake. That made me scream. Unfortunately, the screaming surprised the snake. The snake was about to bite me, but Si Abu jumped in between the snake and me and fought as hard as he could. Finally, the snake went away, but my cat got a poisonous bite. I cried when I saw my cat go limp. I didn’t know what to do, so I just gave him “betadine,” a kind of antiseptic liquid. Of course, the medicine didn’t make my cat better. My cat died and I buried him under the durian tree. I feel sorrow everytime I remember the sweet memory of Si Abu. And I will never forget my cat. That is the reason why I chose my cat as my hero.