Agniswar Misra Ganguli was once working on his science project when his cat Putkuli came and sat on it. “It’s no big deal. We have four cats and they often do such things out of affection,” says the sixth grader. Except that that day Putkuli had an upset stomach.

“She pooped on my project!” Agniswar laughs. “I had to seek extra time from the teacher and redo it. And of course, I couldn’t tell her the real reason why. Since then I have trust issues with Putkuli and never let her sit around my books.”

Agniswar has four cats – Chiku, Bonde, Putkuli, and Momo — all rescued. “All of them came in poor health but we tied around their necks strips taken from the sacred flag that flutters atop Puri’s Jagannath temple. The Lord’s blessings saved their lives,” smiles Agniswar’s mother, Sudeshna.

Of the four, Chiku the oldest, is perhaps doubly blessed as he has even travelled to Puri for darshan. “We went during Rathyatra and he was inside the “cat backpack” that I carried,” recalls Agniswar. “Since I’m quite thin I slipped through the crowd and went up to the chariot’s rope. There I took Chiku out and held him up with both my hands facing the idols. He got the best and closest view of Jagannath.”

The younger cats may not have visited Puri but they’ve been to FE Block’s Durga puja pandal for blessings.

The family’s first few cats went missing, so they have now started attaching iPhone trackers to their necks. “The others don’t mind staying indoors but Chiku often goes to fight with alley cats and returns with cuts and bruises,” says the DPS Megacity student. “This one time we couldn’t find him for hours and used the tracker to trace him to a dilapidated, abandoned house nearby that we think is haunted. My father went to look for him there and saw two tiny eyes glowing in the dark. Chiku had got stuck there!”

Son of singer Sudeshna Ganguli, Agniswar is a musical prodigy who can play tabla, dhaak and learns the drums and djembe, the latter from Taufeq Queresi, brother of Ustad Zakir Hussain. “I spend a lot of time practising and while most cats are indifferent to music, Chiku looks at me — and my mother when she sings – mesmerised,” Agniswar says.

Chiku, in fact, is quite unlike other cats. “He doesn’t like fish but whenever my sister Aadarshini bakes, he lands up for VIP trials before any of us,” the boy smiles. “We doubt if he’s a cat at all. I think he’s a monkey.”