Living with many cats. Helen Christina has adjusted to lockdown and hopes people will adopt cats.

People who have lots of pets at home seem to find ways of feeding and caring for them even in a lockdown.

Take the case of Helen Christina Xavier, a resident of Sanjeevi Street at the north end of Mylapore.

There are over a dozen cats at her home, mostly rescued from the streets and all of them have a space of their own and are well fed. As Helen jokes, “They often get better food than I serve myself but I don’t overfeed them.”

Helen is a Japanese interpreter and translator. But assignments have dried uo in this lockdown season so she had tweaked her skills as a culture and travel writer and works on features for a Japanese magazine.

For Helen, Japan and its people, culture and language is a passion, nurtured over many years. And if all goes well, she may make that country her home.

But for now, she has to take care of her pets and pursue her assignments.

“My cats have names. Josephine  and Antony are the cats who lifted me out of depression when my parents passed away. So I gave them my parents’ name to feel close to my loved ones,” she says on the phone.

Neighbours though are often put off with Helen’s passion for cats. “They threaten to take them away. I sometimes feel afraid,”she says. “I’d like people to adopt cats even from the streets and to accept and love them.”

She is looking out for a spacious space and pet-friendly neighbours. But this is hard to come by.