I Am a Cat Read online

  Ting-ting-ting-ting. Four o’clock it is. I can no longer dilly-dally and I raise the teacup once again. D’you know, it really was most strange. I’d say that it was certainly the uncanniest thing I’ve ever experienced. At the fourth stroke my sickliness just vanished, and I was able to take the medicine without any trouble at all. And, by about ten past four—here I must add that I now realized for the first time how truly skilled a physician we have in Dr. Amaki—the shivering of my back and the giddiness in my head both disappeared like a dream. Up to that point I had expected that I was bound to be laid up for days, but to my great pleasure the illness proved to have been completely cured.”

  “And did you two then go out to the theatre?” asks Waverhouse with the puzzled expression of one who cannot see the point of a story.

  “We certainly both wanted to go, but since it had been my wife’s reiterated view that there was no hope of getting in after four o’clock, what could we do? We didn’t go. If only Amaki had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, I could have kept my promise and my wife would have been satisfied. Just that fifteen minute difference. I was indeed distressed. Even now, when I think how narrow the margin was, I am again distressed.”

  My master, having told his shabby tale, contrives to look like a person who has done his duty. I imagine he feels he’s gotten even with the other two.

  “How very vexing,” says Coldmoon. His laugh, as usual, displays his broken tooth.

  Waverhouse, with a false naivety, remarks as if to himself. “Your wife, with a husband so thoughtful and kind-hearted, is indeed a lucky woman.” Behind the sliding paper-door, we heard the master’s wife make an harumphing noise as though clearing her throat.

  I had been quietly listening to the successive stories of these three precious humans, but I was neither amused nor saddened by what I’d heard. I merely concluded that human beings were good for nothing, except for the strenuous employment of their mouths for the purpose of whiling away their time in laughter at things which are not funny, and in the enjoyment of amusements which are not amusing. I have long known of my master’s selfishness and narrowmindedness, but, because he usually has little to say, there was always something about him which I could not understand. I’d felt a certain caution, a certain fear, even a certain respect toward him on account of that aspect of his nature that I did not understand. But having heard his story, my uncertainties suddenly coalesced into a mere contempt for him. Why can’t he listen to the stories of the other two in silence? What good purpose can he serve by talking such utter rubbish just because his competitive spirit has been roused? I wonder if, in his portentous writings, Epictetus advocated any such course of action. In short, my master,Waverhouse, and Coldmoon are all like hermits in a peaceful reign. Though they adopt a nonchalant attitude, keeping themselves aloof from the crowd, segegrated like so many snake-gourds swayed lightly by the wind, in reality they, too, are shaken by just the same greed and worldly ambition as their fellow men.

  The urge to compete and their anxiety to win are revealed flickeringly in their everyday conversation, and only a hair’s breadth separates them from the Philistines whom they spend their idle days denouncing. They are all animals from the same den. Which fact, from a feline viewpoint, is infinitely regrettable. Their only moderately redeeming feature is that their speech and conduct are less tediously uninventive than those of less subtle creatures.

  As I thus summed up the nature of the human race, I suddenly felt the conversation of these specimens to be intolerably boring, so I went around to the garden of the mistress of the two-stringed harp to see how Tortoiseshell was getting on. Already the pine tree decorations for the New Year and that season’s sacred festoons have been taken down. It is the 10th of January. From a deep sky containing not even a single streak of cloud the glorious springtime sun shines down upon the lands and seas of the whole wide world, so that even her tiny garden seems yet more brilliantly lively than when it saw the dawn of New Year’s Day.

  There is a cushion on the veranda, the sliding paper-door is closed, and there’s nobody about. Which probably means that the mistress has gone off to the public baths. I’m not at all concerned if the mistress should be out, but I do very much worry about whether Tortoiseshell is any better. Since everything’s so quiet and not a sign of a soul, I hop up onto the veranda with my muddy paws and curl up right in the middle of the cushion, which I find comfortable. A drowsiness came over me, and, forgetting all about Tortoiseshell, I was about to drop off into a doze when suddenly I heard voices beyond the paper-door.

  “Ah, thanks. Was it ready?”The mistress has not gone out after all.

  “Yes, madam. I’m sorry to have taken such a long time. When I got there, the man who makes Buddhist altar furniture told me he’d only just finished it.”

  “Well, let me see it. Ah, but it’s beautifully done. With this, Tortoiseshell can surely rest in peace. Are you sure the gold won’t peel away?”

  “Yes, I’ve made sure of it. They said that as they had used the very best quality, it would last longer than most human memorial tablets. They also said that the character for ‘honor’ in Tortoiseshell’s posthumous name would look better if written in the cursive style, so they had added the appropriate strokes.”

  “Is that so? Well, let’s put Myōyoshinnyo’s tablet in the family shrine and offer incense sticks.”

  Has anything happened to Tortoiseshell? Thinking something must be wrong, I stand up on the cushion. Ting! “Amen! Myōyoshinnyo. Save us, merciful Buddha! May she rest in peace.” It is the voice of the mistress.

  “You, too, say prayers for her.”

  Ting! “Amen! Myōyoshinnyo. Save us, merciful Buddha! May she rest in peace.” Suddenly my heart throbs violently. I stand dead-still upon the cushion, like a wooden cat; not even my eyes are moving.

  “It really was a pity. It was only a cold at first.”

  “Perhaps if Dr. Amaki had given her some medicine, it might have helped.”

  “It was indeed Amaki’s fault. He paid too little regard to Tortoiseshell.”

  “You must not speak ill of other persons. After all, everyone dies when their allotted span is over.”

  It seems thatTortoiseshell was also attended by that skilled physician, Dr. Amaki.

  “When all’s said and done, I believe the root cause was that the stray cat at the teacher’s in the main street took her out too often.”

  “Yes, that brute.”

  I would like to exculpate myself, but realizing that at this juncture it behoves me to be patient, I swallow hard and continue listening. There is a pause in the conversation.

  “Life does not always turn out as one wishes. A beauty like Tortoiseshell dies young. That ugly stray remains healthy and flourishes in devilment. . .”

  “It is indeed so, Madam. Even if one searched high and low for a cat as charming as Tortoiseshell, one would never find another person like her.”

  She didn’t say ‘another cat,’ she said ‘another person.’The maid seems to think that cats and human beings are of one race. Which reminds me that the face of this particular maid is strangely like a cat’s.

  “If only instead of our dear Tortoiseshell. . .”

  “. . . that wretched stray at the teacher’s had been taken. Then, Madam, how perfectly everything would have gone. . .”

  If everything had gone that perfectly, I would have been in deep trouble. Since I have not yet had the experience of being dead, I cannot say whether or not I would like it. But the other day, it happening to be unpleasantly chilly, I crept into the tub for conserving half-used charcoal and settled down upon its still-warm contents. The maid, not realizing I was in there, popped on the lid. I shudder even now at the mere thought of the agony I then suffered. According to Miss Blanche, the cat across the road, one dies if that agony continues for even a very short stretch. I wouldn’t complain if I were asked to substitute for Tortoiseshell; but if one cannot die without going through that kind of agony, I frankly would no
t care to die on anyone’s behalf.

  “Though a cat, she had her funeral service conducted by a priest and now she’s been given a posthumous Buddhist name. I don’t think she would expect us to do more.”

  “Of course not, madam. She is indeed thrice blessed. The only comment that one might make is that the funeral service read by the priest was, perhaps, a little wanting in gravity.”

  “Yes, and I thought it rather too brief. But when I remarked to the priest from the Gekkei Temple ‘you’ve finished very quickly, haven’t you?’ he answered ‘I’ve done sufficient of the effective parts, quite enough to get a kitty into Paradise.’”

  “Dear me! But if the cat in question were that unpleasant stray. . .”

  I have pointed out often enough that I have no name, but this maid keeps calling me “that stray.” She is a vulgar creature.

  “So very sinful a creature. Madam, would never be able to rest in peace, however many edifying texts were read for its salvation.”

  I do not know how many hundreds of times I was thereafter stigmatized as a stray. I stopped listening to their endless babble while it was still only half-run, and, slipping down from the cushion, I jumped off the veranda. Then,simultaneously erecting every single one of my eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred, eighty hairs, I shook my whole body.

  Since that day I have not ventured near the mistress of the two-stringed harp. No doubt by now she herself is having texts of inadequate gravity read on her behalf by the priest from the Gekkei Temple.

  Nowadays I haven’t even energy to go out. Somehow life seems weary. I have become as indolent a cat as my master is an indolent human. I have come to understand that it is only natural that people should so often explain my master’s self-immurement in his study as the result of a love affair gone wrong.

  As I have never caught a rat, that O-san person once proposed that I should be expelled; but my master knows that I’m no ordinary common or garden cat, and that is why I continue to lead an idle existence in this house. For that understanding I am deeply grateful to my master. What’s more, I take every opportunity to show the respect due to his perspicacity. I do not get particularly angry with O-san’s ill-treatment of me, for she does not understand why I am as I now am. But when, one of these days, some master sculptor, some regular Hidari Jingorō, comes and carves my image on a temple gate; when some Japanese equivalent of the French master portraitist, Steinlein, immortalizes my features on a canvas, then at last will the silly purblind beings in shame regret their lack of insight.

  III

  TORTOISESHELL is dead,one cannot consort with Rickshaw Blacky, and I feel a little lonely. Luckily I have made acquaintances among humankind so I do not suffer from any real sense of boredom. Someone wrote recently asking my master to have my photograph taken and the picture sent to him. And then the other day somebody else presented some millet dumplings, that speciality of Okayama, specifically addressed to me. The more that humans show me sympathy, the more I am inclined to forget that I am a cat. Feeling that I am now closer to humans than to cats, the idea of rallying my own race in an effort to wrest supremacy from the bipeds no longer has the least appeal. Moreover, I have developed, indeed evolved, to such an extent that there are now times when I think of myself as just another human in the human world; which I find very encouraging. It is not that I look down on my own race, but it is no more than natural to feel most at ease among those whose attitudes are similar to one’s own. I would consequently feel somewhat piqued if my growing penchant for mankind were stigmatized as fickleness or flippancy or treachery. It is precisely those who sling such words about in slanderous attacks on others who are usually both drearily straight-laced and born unlucky. Having thus graduated from felinity to humanity, I find myself no longer able to confine my interests to the world of Tortoiseshell and Blacky. With a haughtiness not less prideful than that of human beings, I, too, now like to judge and criticize their thoughts and words and deeds. This, surely, is equally natural. Yet, though I have become thus proudly conscious of my own dignity, my master still regards me as a cat only slightly superior to any other common or garden moggy. For, as if they were his own and without so much as a by-your-leave to me, he has eaten all the millet dumplings; which is, I find, regrettable. Nor does he seem yet to have dispatched my photograph. I suppose I would be justified if I made this fact a cause for grumbling, but after all, if our opinions—my master’s and mine—are naturally at difference, the consequences of that difference cannot be helped. Since I am seeking to behave with total humanity, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to write about the activities of cats with whom I no longer associate. I must accordingly seek the indulgence of my readers if I now confine my writing to reports about such respected figures as Waverhouse and Coldmoon.

  Today is a Sunday and the weather fine. The master has therefore crept out of his study, and, placing a brush, an ink stone, and a writing pad in a row before him, he now lies flat on his belly beside me, and is groaning hard. I watch him, thinking that he is perhaps making this peculiar noise in the birth pangs of some literary effort. After a while, and in thick black strokes, he wrote, “Burn incense.” Is it going to be a poem or a haiku? Just when I was thinking that the phrase was rather too witty for my master, he abandons it, and, his brush running quickly over the paper, writes an entirely new line: “Now for some little time I have been thinking of writing an article about Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man.” At this point the brush stops dead. My master, brush in hand, racks his brains, but no bright notions seem to emerge for he now starts licking the head of his brush. I watched his lips acquire a curious inkiness. Then, underneath what he had just written, he drew a circle, put in two dots as eyes, added a nostrilled nose in the center, and finally drew a single sideways line for a mouth. One could not call such creations either haiku or prose. Even my master must have been disgusted with himself, for he quickly smeared away the face. He then starts a new line. He seems to have some vague notion that, provided he himself produces a new line, maybe some kind of a Chinese poem will evolve itself.

  After further moonings, he suddenly started writing briskly in the colloquial style. “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity, reads the Analects of Confucius, eats baked yams, and has a runny nose.” A somewhat muddled phrase. He thereupon read the phrase aloud in a declamatory manner and, quite unlike his usual self, laughed. “Ha-ha-ha. Interesting! But that ‘runny nose’ is a shade cruel, so I’ll cross it out,” and he proceeds to draw lines across that phrase.

  “Though a single line would clearly have sufficed, he draws two lines and then three lines. He goes on drawing more and more lines regardless of their crowding into the neighboring line of writing. When he has drawn eight such obliterations, he seems unable to think of anything to add to his opening outburst. So he takes to twirling his mustache, determined to wring some telling sentence from his whiskers. He is still twisting them up and twirling them down when his wife appears from the living room, and sitting herself down immediately before my master’s nose, remarks, “My dear.”

  “What is it?” My master’s voice sounds dully like a gong struck under water. His wife seems not to like the answer, for she starts all over again.

  “My dear!” she says.

  “Well, what is it?”

  This time, cramming a thumb and index finger into a nostril, he yanks out nostril hairs.

  “We are a bit short this month. . .”

  “Couldn’t possibly be short. We’ve settled the doctor’s fee and we paid off the bookshop’s bill last month. So this month, there ought in fact to be something left over.” He coolly examines his uprooted nostril hairs as though they were some wonder of the world.

  “But because you, instead of eating rice, have taken to bread and jam. . .”

  “Well, how many tins of jam have I gone through?”

  “This month, eight tins were emptied.”

  “Eight? I certainly haven’t eaten that mu
ch.”

  “It wasn’t only you. The children also lick it.”

  “However much one licks, one couldn’t lick more than two or three shillings worth.” My master calmly plants his nostril hairs, one by one, on the writing pad. The sticky-rooted bristles stand upright on the paper like a little copse of needles. My master seems impressed by this unexpected discovery and he blows upon them. Being so sticky, they do not fly away.

  “Aren’t they obstinate?” he says and blows upon them frantically.

  “It is not only the jam. There’s other things we have to buy.” The lady of the house expresses her extreme dissatisfaction by pouting sulkily.

  “Maybe.” Again inserting his thumb and finger, he extracts some hairs with a jerk. Among these hairs of various hue, red ones and black ones, there is a single pure white bristle. My master who, with a look of great surprise, has been staring at this object, proceeds to show it to his wife, holding it up between his fingers right in front of her face.

  “No, don’t.” She pushes his hand away with a grimace of distaste.

  “Look at it! A white hair from the nostrils.” My master seems to be immensely impressed. His wife, resigned, went back into the living room with a laugh. She seems to have given up hope of getting any answer to her problems of domestic economy. My master resumes his consideration of the problems of Natural Man.

  Having succeeded in driving off his wife with his scourge of nostril hair, he appears to feel relieved, and, while continuing that depilation, struggles to get on with his article. But his brush remains unmoving.

  “That ‘eats baked yams’ is also superfluous. Out with it.” He deletes the phrase. “And ‘incense burns’ is somewhat over-abrupt, so let’s cross that out too.” His exuberant self-criticism leaves nothing on the paper but the single sentence “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity and reads the Analects of Confucius.” My master thinks this statement a trifle over-simplified. “Ah well, let’s not be bothered: let’s abandon prose and just make it an inscription.” Brandishing the brush crosswise, he paints vigorously on the writing pad in that watercolor style so common among literary men and produces a very poor study of an orchid. Thus all his precious efforts to write an article have come down to this mere nothing. Turning the sheet, he writes something that makes no sense. “Born in Infinity, studied Infinity, and died into Infinity.