The Cat Lady

Outside the back wall of my small attic, high up on the ground is a long and deep alley, which I call the cat alley. At midnight every day, this is a world of cats. They play, court, chase, fight, and scream like children crying at the top of their voices. When it was too noisy for people to sleep, someone would often push open the window and yell "Go..." or throw a stone or tile to drive them away. I have done this in anger when I could not stand it, and every time they were chased away, not much quiet, they continued to make trouble somewhere else, all night long. In order to escape from these annoying guys, I really want to change my house and move. Strange, where are there so many cats, why do they all come to this alley to party and make trouble?

One day, I went to a friend's house to chat. He has a cat and treats it like his life.

I said, "I hate cats."

He was stunned, twisted around and pulled something white out of a cardboard box in the corner and put it in my hand. Oh, a snowy white kitten the size of a ball of wool! Probably a little scared, it shrunk into a ball, small ears close to the head, a pair of pure blue bright round eyes soft and timid look at me. I couldn't help but quickly take it in my arms, rubbing my chin caressingly against its furry little face, and actually said to my friend, "It's so cute, give it to me!"

My friend laughed, smiling quite proudly, as if he had overcome my resentment with a kind of love that I should not have. His big cat had a pair of kittens in this litter - one with golden eyes and one with sky blue eyes. Although he did not want to give them away, he made an exception for me. It seems that he wanted to cultivate in me the same kind of love that he had; true love is always shared, especially by me, an anorexic.

As soon as the kitten entered my home, it became the emotional center of my family. At first it was small, napping on my palm, my son used a handkerchief as a quilt to cover it, and my wife sucked milk from an eyedropper to feed it. He likes to lie on his back and eat milk like a baby, and when he is happy, he hugs your hand with his four little hairy legs and stretches out his soft, sandpaper-like little red tongue to lick the tips of your fingers affectionately ...... In this way, he grew up and became a member of my family and had the right to do whatever he wanted - he could sleep under anyone's blanket, eat The most delicious piece of fish belly or foie gras, we will not hesitate to give it. Hey, he took my son's favored position, but my son was not jealous of him, but gave him a beautiful, beautiful name, called blue eyes. That's a great name! Whenever Blue Eyes got into trouble - smashed a cup or dropped a vase, I got mad and wanted to hit it, but as soon as I looked at its pure, clear, frightened blue eyes, the fire in my heart suddenly disappeared, instead I would take it in my arms and cover its frightened blue eyes with my hands, not telling it to look, afraid that it would be frightened by its own blunders ......

I also see the cat as my life.

In autumn, once it was dark, some big wild cats kept appearing on the roof of my house, probably from the back of the "cat alley" up. They are all very ugly, and their faces are looking into the house. As soon as they came, Blue Eyes immediately rushed out and jumped up to the roof from the drying platform, yelling and fighting with them, chasing each other. I was worried that Blue Eyes would be bitten to death by these big wild cats, so I closed the door leading to the drying table, but Blue Eyes scratched the door like crazy, and begged me. She came back every night and morning, covered in dust, but her eyes were bright and excited, like sapphires. My wife stood on the drying table with a bamboo chopstick and knocked on its small rice bowl to call it, but for three days in a row, her expectations were not fulfilled. An unexpected disaster struck - Blue Eyes was lost!

The center of emotion was suddenly lost, and everyone in the family was completely empty.

I could not bear to look at my wife and son with tears in their red eyes, so I went to the front and back of the room to find. Black cats, white cats, yellow cats, flower cats, big cats, small cats, all kinds of cats ran past my eyes, but no blue eyes ...... chagrin, a child told me that the top of the cat alley in the back door of a building, there is a wife, raising one or two dozen cats, known as the cat lady, blue eyes are mostly called her cats hooked away. These words lit up my hope.

That night, I went into the cat alley, in the darkness without light to find the door of the cat lady, was trying to check the situation, suddenly heard a movement in the wall, looked up and startled, several large cats crouched in the dark shadow of the wall. I whispered a call "blue eyes", the cats all slightly moving, eyes like a flash of light, and not afraid of people. I looked carefully, no blue eyes, and waited at the root of the wall, and from time to time one went away and jumped into the yard, and from time to time another one climbed up from the yard, and never waited for the blue eyes, but the yard seems to be a big cat cave, my poor baby is most likely in the clutches of the cat lady inside. I ventured to tap on the door and had to go in to see what was going on.

The door opened and a tall old woman appeared - this was the cat lady. Inside the light, she backlit, can not see the face, just a dark, dark, mysterious figure.

I said I was looking for the cat, she did not stop me, but immediately invited me into the house. I followed her through the small courtyard, and low through a small door, is a cold basement. A strong choking cat smell immediately came to my nose. The roof was low, and a small, dirty light bulb hung down in the middle, illuminating the room dimly. A cabinet, an iron stove, a large bed, a few broken porcelain bowls on the floor for cat food, and nothing else, not even a chair.

The cat lady got into bed and sat cross-legged, and she asked me to sit on the bed too. I suddenly saw a gray quilt with several cats lying on it, one in the east and one in the west. I scanned the cats, but they still did not have blue eyes. The cat lady asked me, "What kind of cat did you throw?" I described it, she immediately shouted: "The big white Persian cat, right? Long hair? Big tail? Blue eyes? I've seen it before, it used to come down from the house to play with us, it even ate at our place, it was such a loving baby! How many days have you lost?" I stared at her slightly puffy, pale, old face, only anxious, but not half pretend to look. I said, "Five or six days." Her face suddenly sank, and she paused for a moment before saying, "You don't need to look for it, it's not coming back!" I was suspicious that this was meant to deceive me, and my eyes searched for a place where the blue eyes might be hidden. At that moment, the cat lady's hand suddenly pointed upward, and there was a long row of various cats lying on the iron chimney. Some of them were looking at me, some were sleeping with their eyes closed, and they were warming themselves by the heat of the chimney.

The cat lady said: "Look at them, they are all cats that have been beaten up! Cats that were broken from high buildings! I picked them up and brought them back to life. You see that little yellow cat, that day at the entrance of the hutong called the children to press the criticism, and want to burn it, I was anxious, a snatch out of the children's hands! Think about it, your baby was lost for so many days, which is still good? Now the countryside often come to a group of people, cage to catch cats to eat, evil! They put the birds in the cage, bring the cats in, and close the cage door ...... A few days ago, I lost one of my cats. My cats are all fed well, without birds absolutely can not be led away, those wolf-hearted guys, eat cat meat, told them to eat! Eat rotten mouth, rotten tongue, rotten body, sores, rotten to death!

She said her face trembled, her hands also trembled, when lighting a cigarette, cigarette rolls shake off to the ground. The little yellow cat on the chimney, thin, pointed face, very spiritual, immediately jumped down, pick up the cigarette, tilted up the mouth, handed her. The cat lady smiled and said with a wide grin, "Look, look, this little thing knows how to behave!" Like praising one of her little grandchildren.

What reason do I have to doubt her? Faced with the god of rescue for the suffering cats in the world, I said goodbye with a little shame and a sense of wretchedness.

Although the loss of Blue Eyes made me sad for a long time, from then on I was unaware that I was concerned about the fate of all cats. The cat alley was noisy and no longer disturbed my sleep, as if a cat barking meant that there was a cat alive, which gave me peace of mind. Cat calling became my sleeping song ......

After a year, when it was time for the cats to court, the cat alley suddenly went quiet.

My wife overheard the sad news from a neighbor: the cat lady had died. At the same time - after her death - she learned a little bit about her experiences while she was alive.

It is said that the cat lady was originally the youngest wife of a previous rice store owner, who was driven out of her home by the owner's eldest wife and lived in a two-room house on the first floor of the building in Cat Hutong. Later, she was treated as a capitalist's wife and bombed to the basement. She had no relatives and was left alone, collecting paper for a living and using cats as companions, but none of the cats she kept were good cats, all were abandoned, sick and disabled cats. She picks some stinky fish and shrimp from the fishery store every day and cooks them in the courtyard to feed the cats, which also attracts some homeless feral cats to fill their bellies and feed them, and some simply settle in her house. She had cats, and no one knew how many cats she had in her house.

"Before the Cultural Revolution, someone found a companion for her, an old man who sold meat. After only two months of marriage, the old man couldn't stand the cats, the cat calls, and the cat smell, so he moved out. People advised her to throw away the cats and take back the old man, but she insisted on refusing and insisted on sharing the happiness with these cats that no one could understand.

Two months ago, the cat lady died suddenly of an acute illness, the old man moved back, the first thing is to blow all these cats away, was driven away by the cats attached to the old man's homeland, every time back, will be beaten by the old man, which is the cat hutong suddenly unexplained quiet down the root cause.

This news made my heart seize. Those cats, those cats on the cat lady's bed, quilt, chimney, those disabled, sick, blind cats? Where is the little yellow cat with the pointy face, the thin one holding the cigarette roll for the cat lady? Now wandering the streets, starving to death, killed by children, or caught and eaten in a cage? A kind of sadness and worry from my heart spread out endlessly, scattered out, and then left a heavy blank. This night, I pushed open the back window to look down the cat alley, only to see the moonlight, the cat lady's house around the roof of the wall lying a cat shadow, about seven or eight, dark, all silent. These are the cat lady's partners in life and death, what are they waiting for?

From that day on, I used to throw my leftovers, a piece of steamed bread, a fish head or a piece of cake into the cat alley, which was all I could do, but during the year, I kept hearing about cats dying one way or another. After the winter, I heard a shocking story -

A broken building across the street from my house was having its tile roof repaired. During the day, the tilers did not finish their work when changing the tiles, leaving a hole, a cat in order to protect the cold, into the tile, the next day the tilers cover the tile away, the cat could not come out, so anxiously in the screaming. Five or six families living on the top floor of the building heard the cat screaming and the sound of running around on the roof, but no one refused to break their own roof and let it out. The cat screamed for three full days, the beginning of the sound is very loud, very miserable, creepy, but day by day the sound fades down until it disappears!

Hearing this story, I could not sleep at night.

In the middle of the night, it was snowing heavily, and there was a dead silence in the cat alley, which turned into a cold air that penetrated my bones. Suddenly, a cat cry came from under the back wall, deep in the snow painted white hutong, on the wall of the cat lady's former residence, there was a cat shadow lying alone, huddled in the bitter cold, from time to time, a wail, very poignant. My heart moved, is the small yellow cat with a sharp face? I called out: "Mimi!" Wanted to go downstairs to carry it up, but who knows a call, it will startle, get up and panic and run away.

The cat alley was then empty. There was only the darkness of the night and the white of the snow, and the cold wind whistling in this long and deep space.