Cat Country

by Lao She

  Nothing happened for a long time. I pretended to close my eyes, leaving them open just a crack. There it was! That dark shadow again!

  I wasn’t afraid. This was certainly no ghost, but a cat-man. The Cat People’s vision must have been highly developed, for apparently this one could see my eyes open and close from a great distance. Tense and excited to the point where my breathing had almost stopped, I waited. When he got right up to me I’d be able to take care of him, whoever he was. I seemed to feel quite superior to Cat People, although I couldn’t have explained why. Was it just because I had a gun? What a childish reason to feel superior!

  Apparently time had no value here, for it seemed as though several centuries passed before he got very close to me. It seemed to take him anywhere from a quarter-of-an-hour to an hour for each pace. It was as though each of his steps carried with it the accumulated caution that he had inherited from an entire history. He’d hazard a step to one side, and then the other; he’d bend down and then slowly stand up again; he’d twist to the left, retreat to the rear, and then fall prone on the ground like a snowflake. He’d crawl forward a bit and then arch his waist, moving like a young cat practising mouse hunting at night. Fascinating!

  If I so much as opened an eye, much less moved, he might very well, with a single bolt, run outside the very bounds of space itself. I didn’t move, but I did keep my eyes open a very tiny crack to see what he was up to. I could tell that rather than having any hostile intentions, he was afraid that I might harm him. He certainly couldn’t have intended to murder me, for he had come alone and weaponless. How could I make him understand that I had no intention of harming him either? I decided that the best thing would be simply not to move; for then, at the very least, I wouldn’t scare him away.

  He got closer and closer. Finally I was even able to sense his body warmth. He inclined his body away from me like a relay runner standing ready to receive the baton from his teammate. He waved his hand back and forth across my face, but when I nodded my head ever so slightly, he pulled it back again at lightning speed. He maintained his on-the-mark position, but he didn’t run. He was watching me. I nodded gently again. He still didn’t move. I raised my hands very slowly, palms up for him to see. He seemed able to understand this hand-talk, for now he nodded too. He even drew back the leg that he had held poised in the direction of possible retreat. Still keeping my palms up, I bent my fingers slightly as a sign of greeting. He nodded at me again and I began to sit up straighter to get a better look at him. Apparently, he had no intention of taking flight now. After having whiled away the time in this exceedingly painful and ludicrous manner for at least half an hour, I stood up.

  If whiling away the time is equivalent to working, then the Cat People are great workers. What I am trying to say is that after I stood up, we went on whiling away the time like that for God knows how long. We used hand gestures; nodded our heads; screwed up our mouths; twitched our noses; and brought practically every muscle in our bodies into play – all to show that neither of us had hostile intent towards the other. We could have gone on like that for at least another hour, perhaps even a week for that matter, if dark shadows hadn’t appeared in the distance. He saw them first. By the time that I made them out, he had already run four or five paces in the opposite direction. He motioned for me to follow, and I did.

  The Cat People run silently and fast. I tried to keep up, but I was just too hungry and thirsty. Before we had run very far, little stars began to appear before my eyes. However, I seemed to realise intuitively that if the Cat People in pursuit caught up with us, it was certain that there wouldn’t be any great advantage in it for either my friend or myself. Besides, I felt that it would be well to stick by this new friend, for he might prove very useful to me in my Martian adventure. The Cat People behind us must have been catching up, for my friend put on even more speed. I kept up for a bit longer, but then I couldn’t take it any more. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. There were some sounds behind us, sharp wailing sounds. The Cat People must have been very worked up about something, for I had already discovered that ordinarily they were quite quiet. I thought that my only hope would be to hit the dirt, for if I went on running, my life might well end in a mouthful of blood by the very next step.

  With the last ounce of strength I had left, I pulled out my pistol, threw myself to the ground and wildly fired off a shot. Without even having been conscious of the explosion of the shell, I passed out. When I opened my eyes again: a drab room, a circle of red light, the earth . . . the spacecraft, a pool of blood, a rope . . . I closed my eyes.

  It was only several days later I learned that my cat-friend had dragged me back to his home like a dead dog after I had passed out. Had he not told me, I should have never known how I got there (the ground on Mars is so beautifully soft that not a single place on my body had been torn open by all that dragging). The Cat People in pursuit had been so frightened by the shot that they probably hadn’t stopped running for three days. This little gun and only twelve rounds of ammunition had made me famous all over Mars!

  WHEN IN ROME . . .

  HAD I not been awakened by a fly biting me, I might have gone on sleeping for an eternity. You will have to excuse me for using the word ‘fly’, for I really don’t know what it was called. In appearance, it was like a beautiful little green butterfly; but in action, it was many times worse than a fly. There were millions of them, and every time I raised my hand, it was as though I had occasioned a flurry of little green leaves.

  Since I had slept on the ground the whole night, I was very stiff. I decided that in the cat-language there was probably no word for ‘bed’. Brushing flies away with one hand and rubbing my stiff body with the other, I surveyed my new environment. There was nothing to be seen in the room. Apparently it was used as a bedroom, but since the ground served as the bed, the most important part of a bedroom was missing. I was hoping that I might find a sink so I could wash. I had been salted in my own sweat for half a day and a full night; but there was no sink to be seen. Since there was nothing else to engage my attention, I began inspecting the walls and roof. They were made of mud. There was no decoration of any kind. Four walls surrounding a foul smell: that was the room. There was a hole in the wall a little over three feet tall; this apparently served as door, window, or anything else that you wanted to use it for.

  It was a miracle that my gun hadn’t been taken away by the Cat People or lost on the road. I packed it away and clambered out through the little hole. Now I realised that it wasn’t a window; windows would have been useless, for the room was situated in the midst of a dense forest (it was probably the same forest that I had seen last night) and the leaves on the trees were so thick that the strongest rays of sunlight wouldn’t have been able to penetrate, even if the sun hadn’t been hidden by the murky atmosphere. No wonder the Cat People had such good night-vision! It wasn’t cool in the forest either, but moist and steamy. Despite the lack of sun, it seemed as though there was warm air wrapped inside the thick, viscous atmosphere. There was no wind. I looked all around hoping that I could find a spring or stream to bathe in, but met with no success. I encountered nothing but thick leaves, moist air and a foul smell.

  Then I noticed my cat-friend perched in a tree! He must have been watching me for a long time. But when I caught sight of him, he went digging into the leaves to hide himself. That irked me a bit. Was that any way to treat a guest? Just give him a stinking room and not be concerned about his thirst or anything else? I considered myself his guest, for coming here had certainly not been my idea; he had invited me. However that might be, I realised I would get nowhere with him by standing on ceremony. I marched discourteously over to the tree where he was hiding. He responded by retreating out to the end of a branch. I climbed up into the tree, grabbed hold of the branch and began shaking it as hard as I could. He made a sound that I didn’t understand, but I stopped shaking the branch. I jumped down and waited for him. He seemed to realise that t
here was no escape. Ears back against his head like a tomcat who has just lost a fight, he came slowly down.

  I pointed to my mouth, stretched my neck, and opened and closed my lips several times to signal that I was hungry and thirsty. He understood and pointed to the tree. I thought that he meant for me to eat the fruit. I shrewdly deduced that perhaps Cat People didn’t eat wheat or rice as a staple. But there was no fruit on the trees. He climbed back up into the tree and very carefully plucked four or five leaves. He put one in his mouth and put the rest on the ground. He pointed at me and then at the leaves.

  Feeding me like a sheep – that was more than I could take! When I didn’t go over to take any of his leaves, the expression on his face became extremely unpleasant. He seemed to be angry too. Naturally I couldn’t fathom the reason for his anger any more than he’d probably been able to figure out the reason for mine. I realised that if we continued getting on each other’s nerves like this, no possible good would come of it and, moreover, it was pointless. If we kept this up, neither one of us would ever understand the other.

  Still, I really couldn’t bring myself to go over, pick up and eat the leaves he’d dropped in such a cavalier fashion at his feet. I gestured to him to hand some of the leaves to me. He didn’t seem to understand. My anger began to change to wonder. Could it be that the rule set down by our ancient Chinese sages proscribing physical contact between members of the opposite sex when things are given or received was practised here on Mars too? And could it be that on Mars, males were also required to observe this rule amongst themselves? I couldn’t say. Uh-huh, it might just be that they did observe the same rule at that. (This surmise was, in fact, accurate, as I proved to myself after a few more days residence on the planet.) All right then, it would be ridiculous to get into a squabble just because of a failure to understand each other. I picked up one of the leaves and wiped my hands off on it. Actually my hands were too dirty to be cleaned by wiping, for they had been torn open in several places on the broken ribs of the spacecraft and were still covered with dried blood. But habits are not easily broken, and I tried to wipe them off anyway.

  I took a bite from one of the leaves. It was quite tasty and there was a lot of juice in it. Due to my inexperience in eating leaves I let a bit of the juice drip out from the corners of my mouth. My cat-friend’s hands and feet began to twitch as though he were preparing to run over and catch the few precious drops that I was losing. These leaves must be very valuable indeed, I thought to myself. But since the forest was so large, why should he begrudge me a few measly leaves? Forget it. There were enough odd things going on without worrying about that. After having eaten two of the leaves in a row, my head began to feel a bit dizzy, and yet it wasn’t at all an unpleasant sensation. Not only did I feel that precious juice enter my stomach, but I was also conscious of an anaesthetic effect that communicated to every part of my body; though, it did not make me very numb at first. My stomach began to feel full and languorous, and my brain became a bit sluggish as though I should like to doze off but couldn’t. It was almost like I were benumbed and excited at the same time – the kind of feeling one gets when slightly high. I was still holding on to a piece of leaf, and my hand had that loose and comfortable feeling that one experiences just after waking. I didn’t have the strength to lift it any more. In my heart I felt like laughing, but I couldn’t have told you whether or not that feeling had been transmitted to my face. I leaned against a large tree and closed my eyes for a while. Then after a very short interval, I shook my head lightly once or twice and the feeling of intoxication was past. Every last pore in my body felt relaxed and happy enough to laugh, if pores could laugh. I no longer felt the least bit hungry or thirsty, nor did I mind the dirt on my body any longer. The mud, blood and sweat that clung to my flesh all gave me a delicious feeling, and I felt that I should be perfectly happy if I never took another bath as long as I lived.

  The forest appeared much greener than it had before and the grey atmosphere that surrounded me seemed just right, neither too hot nor too cold. There was even a general, poetic beauty in the green trees and grey atmosphere; and if one sniffed carefully, one could tell that it really wasn’t at all a foul odour that was wrapped in the dank air so much as it was a very rich and fragrant sweetness, something like that given off by a very ripe muskmelon. ‘Happiness’ is insufficient to describe my state of mind at the time. ‘Ecstasy on top of ecstasy’ would be more like it. Those two leaves had given my mind a muted kind of strength and had blended my whole being into the leaden atmosphere, making me one with it, like a fish thrown into water.

  I squatted down next to the tree. I had never liked to squat before, but now it was the only position I found relaxing. I began to take a closer inventory of my cat-friend, and didn’t find him nearly as revolting as I had previously; in fact, I began to feel that he was really quite likeable.

  By ‘Cat People’, I don’t mean to call to mind the image of a large feline walking upright and wearing clothes. My friend wore no clothes. I smiled and pulled off the few tattered remnants of shirt that still covered my own chest. Since it wasn’t cold anyway, what sense did it make to wear such a tattered shirt? However, I did keep my trousers on. This wasn’t out of prudishness, but out of the desire to keep a belt to hang my pistol on. Of course, I could have gone nude and still worn the belt, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with that box of matches. I’d have to keep my pants so that I’d have a watch pocket to keep that box in just in case they should ever put me in those flammable leg irons again. I took off my boots and threw them to one side too.

  To backtrack a bit, my cat-friend didn’t wear any clothes. His waist was long and narrow. His hands and feet were very short, and his fingers and toes were also quite stubby. (No wonder these Cat People ran so fast, but worked so slowly. I remembered how clumsy they had been in putting the leg irons on me.) His neck was so long that he was able to bend his head down against his back. Above two exceedingly round eyes set low on a very large face was a great forehead. It was covered with a fine fur that joined directly to the equally fine and delicate hair on the top of his head. The nose and mouth ran together much the same way that the nose and mouth of a pig do. The ears were set on top of the skull and were quite small. The entire body was covered with a glistening coat of fine fur. Close up, it looked grey, but at a distance there was a touch of green flashing in it that reminded one of a jaded peacock feather. His trunk was round and seemed made for rolling. On his chest he sported four pairs of small breasts forming eight little black dots. I have no way of knowing what his internal structure was like.

  His movements were the strangest thing about him. As I saw it, there was speed in his inertia and inertia in his speed – an odd combination that made it impossible for one to guess his intentions and merely gave the impression that he was unusually mistrustful. His hands and feet were never at rest and he was as dexterous with his feet as he was with his hands. In fact, he seemed to use his hands and feet more than any of his sense organs. He’d feel, first to one side, and then to the other. No, it wasn’t really feeling so much as probing, the way an ant uses his antennae.

  But what, after all, did my cat-friend have in mind by bringing me here and feeding me these leaves? Without thinking, I was just on the verge of asking him. But how could I ask? We didn’t speak the same language.

  FELINESE AND OTHER THINGS

  IN THE space of three or four months I had mastered Felinese. Malayan can be learned within half a year, but Felinese is much simpler. By manipulating four or five hundred words back and forth, you can express anything you want to. Of course there are some complicated things and some complex ideas that can not be expressed very clearly in this way, but the Cat People have a way around that: they simply don’t talk about such things. There aren’t many adjectives or adverbs, and nouns are not abundant either. Anything that vaguely resembles a reverie tree is a reverie tree: you have the big-reverie-tree, the little-reverie-tree, the round-reverie-tree, t
he pointed-reverie-tree, the foreign-reverie-tree, and the big-foreign-reverie-tree. As a matter of fact, none of these trees are actually related to each other, and it is only the treasured leaf of the true-reverie-tree that can inebriate a man. They don’t go in much for pronouns, and relative pronouns are non-existent. In sum, it is an exceedingly childish language. Actually, all you have to do is remember a few nouns and you know enough to carry on a conversation, for you can use gestures for most of the verbs anyway. They have written words too, funny things that look like tiny towers or pagodas that are extremely difficult to recognise; an ordinary Cat Person can only remember ten or so at the most.

  Scorpion – such was my cat-friend’s name – recognised quite a few of the words and could even compose poetry. You can write a cat-poem by piling up a number of nice-sounding nouns; you don’t have to throw in any content at all.

  Precious leaves,

  Precious flowers,

  Precious cats,

  Precious bellies.

  This is a fragment from Scorpion’s ‘Feelings I Had Upon Reading Our History’. And the Cat People did have history – twenty thousand years of it!

  Once I was able to talk, I began to understand my host. Scorpion was an important person in Cat Country. He was landlord, politician, poet and military officer all rolled into one. He was a landlord by virtue of owning a large stand of reverie trees. (Reverie leaves were the Cat People’s staple of staples, and the reason that he had taken me in was intimately related to this food.) He started talking and took out several volumes of history to corroborate what he was about to say. The books were all made of stone and each slab was two-feet square and half-an-inch thick; each of these ‘pages’ contained ten or so very complicated characters.