Our Animal Family

 

Our Animal Family

There is Boo-boo now. She is the one that looks like a fur scarf. Her fur is so long in places, my daughter has to cut it short in unmentionable areas of her body so that her poo is not hanging off her tail. The tail itself is a feather duster, which whisks briskly when she is angry. With a name like Boo-boo, what can you expect? She was already Boo-boo when she came to us.

Boo-boo is my daughter’s cat; pines when she is not at home. When I go past her, sleeping in the empty fruit-bowl or the laundry basket, she wails, asking me – what? I stroke her and talk to her gently and she lets me go. But her eyes are imploring. Where is my mom? she seems to ask.

All the animals in the house adore my daughter. No matter that all four of us in the house spoil them, it is my daughter they come looking for. That girl has some animal-witchcraft within her.

Then there is Pepper; the smart one. She does not have thick fur and actually has a working brain. Both the cats are now eleven years old and Pepper holds long conversations with us. She often sleeps on my legs, at the bottom of my bed; gets quite offended when I move my legs or turn over. Tells me off. Sometimes I find her near my pillow, like a child sleeping with mother. Rare times of magic!

Pepper is a wandering cat, whereas Boo-boo never leaves the compound. Neither has any time for our Jack Russel, Lily.  The little one in the photo, thin and long, is Keeri. She adopted us while I was on holiday in India. She was starving and distressed, so I took her in and brought her to England.

Keeri looked so like a mongoose, I called her Keeri, Malayalam for mongoose. Keeri knew how to love humans. She slept in my arm-pit and every night, she would wait downstairs till I was ready to go upstairs to bed. Following me ino our garden she would be running so fast, she couldn’t get her breaks on near the little oak tree and would go right up. She also wasa roamer.

One day she went out and ended up splattered in the middle of the road in front of my home. We have not added to our cat-family since. I dream about a few more kittens but don't dare.

So, there you are. Except the pup. Lily, the Jack Russel does not really know whether she is dog, cat or human. The less said about her the better.

 The white working class child is educationally disdvantaged. Apparently the schools that they go to are being neglected. Now,we know that the black working classes, and the brown working classes, are equally disadvantaged (probably more). Furthermore, black and and browns get nowhere near the same access to justice or  jobs. Young black men are treated with little respect by the police -- they DO NOT get fair consideration. 

As for jobs, I should know. I came to the U K as an immigrant in 1974. I was grateful for the chance to work as a teacher. I was one of three graduate Mathematicians in a nineteen member Maths department. I loved my work. I thought I would get promoted eventually after a few years, when I had established my credentials, but that never happened. I watched people getting promoted over me, who did not know the new Maths being taught then; many would come to me at break to learn the Maths just before going in to teach. So I moved to Dagenham, where I was treated with much more professional respect. In Dagenham, black and brown teachers were a dime-a-dozen and the classrooms were multi-coloured I had found my niche.

I suspect black and brown school children do better than their educational environments would suggest because of the support they receive at home. It is relentless. I remember teaching Secondary School Maths to my daughter to get her a place in a boarding school in Suffolk. And now, my grand daughter has no choice but to perform when my daughter takes over her learning. We, black and brown, are all like that; we don't take education for granted. 

This is not totally about colour or class; it is about respect for learning, and the effort required by parents to make a success of it.