Cat Country by Lao She Read Free Book Online

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 there 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