The Dustbin
I was born into a world made orange with grit. Flecks of sand snuck into my mouth as I sucked and pulled on Mama’s teat but I was so hungry I didn’t much mind. Beijing, in April, could be a hostile city with screaming winds carrying in hundreds of tons of hot-cold earth from far away deserts.
But the rusted walls of the garbage can we lived in provided some shelter and it was easy to forget about the dust and wind when snuggled against Mama’s always-warm belly.
There were five of us siblings. Mama named us according to the order in which we were born. So I was Number Three, the only girl in the litter.
Number One was the boss, our Da Ge or big brother. He was the largest amongst us and the tawny streaks in his otherwise black fur shone especially bright. He always got first pick of Mama’s teats and belched the loudest after a feed. Number Two was envious of Da Ge’s burps but try as he did to match them he never did manage, neither in strength nor smell.
I was twenty days old before I managed to pluck up the courage to clamber out of the garbage can and into the open World. My brothers had already been out the day before and had spent the night meowing excitedly about the colours, scents and shapes of what they had seen until Mama swatted them into silence.
The garbage can smelt of damp fur, mould and Mama. I liked the smell. The main colours I had seen were the black and brown of my family. I liked these colours. Although interested in the new shapes and sights the others were so enchanted by, I couldn’t help being nervous at the prospect of so much newness.
‘I don’t mind staying behind,’ I said. But Da Ge was insistent that I see for myself.
The next day we woke early and he wetly nosed me from behind, nudging me all the way out of the garbage can and onto the cracked earth of the college campus on which our dustbin-home was located. I was terrified at the limitlessness of the World. I looked up into the grey morning sky and blinked.
Number Two and Number Five were tumbling around besides us, blurs of energy. Number Four was off mewling somewhere but I could barely hear him, my ears too full with the big sounds of the outside.
There were whirrs and whistles, roars and ringing. Mama had told me a little about the things the sounds belonged to: machines called cars and bicycles, lawn mowers and mobile phones. And the machines in turn belonged to Ren.
Ren was a complex category and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. From what Mama told me, Ren could be wise and ignorant, cruel and tolerant. They could love us cats, scratching us behind the ears for long purr-filled minutes.
But some Ren were dangerous. I felt a spasm of fear as I recalled the tightness in Mama’s voice when she told us that there were even Ren who liked to eat us.
‘We are dustbin cats,’ Mama had said flatly almost as soon as we were born. ‘And the World is not an easy place for us. We must spend our lives swallowing wind and eating bitterness. Find food where we can. Forage in dustbins and other dark, smelly places where Ren discard what they no longer want, yet seem to resent our taking it.’
The sourness on her breath when she spoke of such matters chilled my tummy no matter how close I snuggled against the warmth of my brothers. I couldn’t bear the hardness of her expression sometimes but there was nothing I could do to soften it.
Mama wasn’t always like that. In the mornings she was gentle and her eyes would shine as she watched us slurp up her milk. But then she would leave to look for food and when she returned many hours later, her eyes were tired and faded. Sometimes she tried to ignore us as we rushed to her, but our exuberance was impossible to fight and she would eventually lie down on her side in surrender so we could feed.
She rarely spoke about her daily outings scrounging for scraps although she often cautioned us about trusting Ren and I knew there were things in her past that she hid from us. The secrets were stamped on her body.
Places where her fur was burnt off and never grew back; the missing tip of an ear; the slight limp with which she walked. She didn’t offer explanations for these things and somehow we knew not to ask. Mama might have been a dustbin cat but she was very proud.
A few nights before my first visit to the World, Mama had returned to the garbage can earlier than usual. Her normally strained expression was absent and she looked almost happy. She played with us, ruffling our fur softly with her paws and tickling our faces with her whiskers as we skidded around trying to latch on to her nipples.
After we had eaten our tummies into tight drums, she allowed us to press up close to her. She gazed at us with a tight look and I wasn’t sure if it was love or pain that I saw in it.
‘Soon you will grow up and leave me,’ she sighed, a declaration that prompted many squeaks of protest to the contrary.
‘No! Listen to me children,’ she said with an urgency that shushed us into stillness.
‘Wherever life takes you, you must always remember that while you might have been born in a dustbin, you are not of dustbin stock.’
Sensing a story we settled ourselves to listen, our newly-opened eyes wide with curiosity, but Mama suddenly changed the topic.
‘Old Man Zhao is one of the good Ren. He fed me a juicy piece of liver today,’ she said.
Mama often spoke of Old Man Zhao, a Ren who was kind to her and had allowed her to make her home in the garbage can in the yard behind his apartment.
We were usually quite interested in hearing stories about Old Man Zhao, but not on that evening. Mama’s mention of the fact that we were not of dustbin stock sounded far more exciting and we pressed her to return to that tale.
Old Man Zhao’s piece of liver obviously had her in an indulgent mood that night and instead of reminding us that it was past our bedtime, she relented and began to speak.
‘It might be difficult for you to believe children, but your great-great-great-grandfather, the fabulously fat Fei Fei, used to have his supper served to him on silver plates. On occasion he’d be offered upto seventy courses in a single evening, great steaming dishes of fatty pork and lightly-spiced beef, succulent rabbit ears and nutritious bullfrog’s ovaries.’
My mouth had begun to overflow just listening to this description and by the wet feel of drool descending down my head I knew that Number Four who was resting his chin on it, was feeling much the same.
‘You see Fei Fei was the favourite pet of a very wealthy and powerful Ren, a Manchu nobleman who ordered that the cat be fed with ivory chopsticks by a servant whose sole duty was to ensure that his porcelain bowl and jade water cup were never empty,’ said Mama.
I felt my eyes grow so big that they felt like bursting. Jade! Ivory! Such strange and beautiful words!
Over the next few days we pestered Mama every chance we got to tell us more about Fei Fei. I liked to hear about him mostly because it seemed to put Mama in a good mood. Her usually tired eyes sparkled when talking about our fancy, well-fed ancestor.
One thing puzzled me though. How was it that if our ancestor was rich and pampered, we ourselves had fallen on such hard times. When I asked Mama, she shook her head.
‘It’s very complicated, little Number Three,’ she said. ‘Fortunes change in China faster than even the fastest cat can run. History has left so many in this country bereft.’
‘What’s “bereft”?’ I whispered to Da Ge who was nearby.
He seemed not to hear me but I thought he was only pretending because he didn’t like to admit there were things even he didn’t know.
Meanwhile, Mama continued to talk.
‘My Nai Nai, your great-grandmother had, a master who was a rich merchant trading silks and tea. But then there was a communist revolution and suddenly the World became a bad place for wealthy Ren. The merchant had everything taken away from him by the new government and soon afterwards he disappeared with his family. But my Nai Nai was left behind with nowhere to go to except the dustbins.
‘And so children,’ Mama meowed sadly, ‘our family finds itself in this poor situation today.’ She paused and looked at us in silence before giving me a quick lick on the head.
‘But don’t have heavy hearts. If ever life gets you down remember that we are of noble stock and conduct yourself with pride and dignity.’
Mama’s words were ringing in my ears that first day that I ventured out into the World. It was a big day for me and I desperately wanted to do her proud by being dignified. This wasn’t very easy because my fur was coarse and patchy. I had scratched bits of it off when the fleas became really unbearable.
And I also felt so small compared to the bigness of everything out there in the open. I had never been outside the dustbin before and I missed the smell of Mama already. But I was trying my best, holding my head high and my back straight with a confidence I didn’t really feel.
I was especially keen to make a good impression on Old Man Zhao when we met because he had been so caring towards Mama. I wanted him to like me and to know I was grateful to him. At the same time though, I couldn’t help being a little scared at the thought of actually meeting a Ren. Mama had so often said they were unpredictable.
Could any Ren really be trusted? Even a kind one? Da Ge and my other brothers had already seen Old Man Zhao the day before when I had stayed behind in the dustbin.
‘He’s very handsome,’ Number Two told me that night.
I wondered how he could tell. After all, Old Man Zhao was the very first Ren he had ever seen.
Now as I tottered around behind Da Ge, Number Two came bounding up to us. ‘Come and see Old Man Zhao,’ he meowed breathlessly. ‘The Ren is out at the front.’
Our dustbin sat on the hard, neglected earth to the back of Old Man Zhao’s ground-floor apartment. But the front of the house had a tidy little garden. As we followed Number Two around to it, I felt my heartbeat quicken.
We turned the corner and all of a sudden there he was; the most curious, most wonderful creature I had ever seen.
Old Man Zhao!
Chinese Whiskers
He had shiny, white hair on his head but his body was hairless; his brown skin covered in something I later discovered was called ‘clothes’. I drank it all in. No paws, no whiskers, no tail. This was definitely not a cat. It was in fact a real Ren!
My teeth chattered with excitement and my tail brushed the floor in wide, sweeping motions.
Old Man Zhao’s eyes were half closed as though he was looking at something inside himself. And he was moving his body in a peculiar way, so quietly it was like he wasn’t moving at all. He slowly extended his arms and bent his knees, turning this way and that. That evening Mama told me that what I had seen was called Tai Chi. It was a kind of exercise that Ren liked.
I was fascinated. There was so much about Ren I still had to learn. I wondered if there was some way to learn about Ren without actually being with them. That would really be perfect I thought, because although I was interested in them, Ren were so different from cats, they frightened me a little.
Not Old Man Zhao, though.
That first day when his Tai Chi exercise was over and he opened his eyes up fully, Old Man Zhao saw all five of us siblings sitting in a row staring up at him. I suddenly felt very shy and tried to retreat to escape his gaze.
But there was nowhere immediate to hide and I knew Mama liked him. So although ready to run if necessary, I stayed put.
Old Man Zhao looked at us for a long, still moment. Then he turned around and went into his house. My brothers and I were at a loss. But before we could decide on our next move, the Ren was coming back out of the apartment. He walked up to a spot near us and set down two bowls of milk.
Da Ge and Number Two immediately leapt forward towards the bowls, but I held back.
Was it a trap? Would this Ren lure us in with milk and then hurt us? These were the questions racing in my mind. But then Old Man Zhao turned around and returned to his home. I saw my older bothers lapping away at the milk and when even Number Four and Number Five joined them, I finally threw caution to the wind and went running up to get my share.
We ate so much that our tummies touched the ground
and we could barely move. We must have looked comical as we flopped around the garden trying to play but too sleepy to have much energy. Later, I noticed Old Man Zhao peering out at us from behind a curtain, a half-smile on his lips.
He was like that, Old Man Zhao. We never saw much of him but he was always so nice, leaving out little treats for us to eat and also toys to play with. On some days we would find a ball of wool waiting for us at his apartment’s doorstep; on others, a plastic mouse or a piece of old cloth.
As we tore around the garden, tumbling over each other to get at these treasures, Old Man Zhao would watch from a distance, his eyes creased up in amusement.
The Old Man was almost always alone. The neighbours who lived in the apartments above his rarely spoke to him. At most they gave him a small nod as they brushed past him on their way up the stairs.
Most evenings he would sit on his doorstep reading a book. But sometimes he would put on music, throw open the windows and come out into the garden to dance. It was a slow, elegant dance that Mama told me was called a Waltz. She said the Waltz was normally danced with two Ren holding each other. But Old Man Zhao’s wife had died many years ago and so he danced empty-armed.
Mama said there had been a time when the Old Man had been a very famous professor at the college. But then a book he wrote made some powerful Ren angry and for a long time he wasn’t allowed to teach any classes at all. Now he was too old to teach in any case and it seemed as if everyone had forgotten about him.
I asked Mama about what was in the book he’d written that had made the others so upset, but she didn’t know. ‘Ren are as the wind. Who can say why they blow this way or that?’ she shrugged.
As far as I could tell there was only one Ren who regularly came to visit Old Man Zhao. Her name was Madam Wang and whenever I saw her walking briskly up to his apartment, I scrambled to find something to hide behind. She had never been unkind to any of us but I had heard enough about her to make me quite terrified.
Madam Wang was in fact very famous amongst the cats on the university campus. We knew she ran what she called a ‘cat protection society,’ but from what I could make out she didn’t do much protection at all. Instead she was known for taking away little kittens from their mothers and poking them with needles and putting stinging drops of liquid in their eyes.
Sometimes she returned the kittens to their families but sometimes they were never seen again.
Our litter had avoided these horrors so far, but I could see her eyes weighing us up every time she came to visit Old Man Zhao.
One morning we were out playing in the garden scuttling in and out of Old Man Zhao’s legs making it as difficult as possible for him to focus on his Tai Chi exercises.
‘Chi fan le ma? Have you eaten?’ called out Madam Wang announcing her presence with the traditional greeting.
‘Yes, I’ve eaten,’ replied Old Man Zhao in the correct manner, straightening up his knees from their bent, Tai Chi position. ‘What can I do for you?’
Madam Wang turned her slanting, black eyes at us. ‘How are the cats?’ she asked.
‘Well, they’re kittens. They play. They’re no bother,’ said the Old Man cautiously.
‘No bother, yet,’ Madam Wang corrected him sharply. ‘Soon, they’ll grow bigger and hungrier and you won’t be able to afford to feed them. Not on your pension. And what will you do when they start having babies?’
Old Man Zhao stared back at her in silence.
‘We have to find them homes,’ said Madam Wang decisively.
I began to feel quite peculiar. What did she mean?
We already had a home.
Old Man Zhao and Madam Wang disappeared into the
apartment leaving us kittens to ourselves. I turned my head this way and that trying to see if any of my brothers could explain what Madam Wang had said. But they all looked equally unsure.
That day none of us were in the mood to play much. I just wanted the time to pass as quickly as possible so that I could see Mama again and cuddle up to her and have her tell me that everything would be well. Finally, it was evening and Mama returned home to the dustbin. We surrounded her, all meowing at the same time so that she couldn’t understand anything. When we quietened down, she asked Da Ge to explain what we were going on about. He recounted the day’s events and what Madam Wang had said to Old Man Zhao that morning.
‘What did she mean Mama?’ I asked urgently, my voice squeaky with anxiety.
Mama just looked at all of us with tired eyes. ‘Go to sleep children,’ she finally said and turned her back. I spent the next week trying to fight off a feeling of dread that refused to go away. Something was horribly wrong. Mama seemed to be becoming more and more cold towards us. There were no bedtime stories anymore and she wouldn’t let us spend more than a minute or two on her teats. She acted almost as though she were in pain but there was no hurt on her body.
Then late one afternoon, just as the day was turning cooler, we saw Madam Wang again. This time she had two other Ren, a man and a woman, with her and what amazing Ren they were. I had never even imagined anything like them was possible.
The man was tall, with skin so white it hurt to look at him. His eyes were yellow-green like a cat’s. But the woman was short and dark with round black eyes and a big, curvy nose.
‘Run! Hide!’ growled Da Ge. ‘Now!’
I ran so fast I could hardly breathe. My brothers were besides me. We made our way to the back and clambered into the dustbin, panting. We tried to be as silent as possible and when after a few minutes nothing had happened, a wild hope surged up in me.
Perhaps it wasn’t us that Madam Wang and the two strangers had come for. Or perhaps Old Man Zhao wouldn’t tell them where to find us.
But then the darkening sky above our dustbin was blotted out as the faces of Old Man Zhao, Madam Wang and both strangers peered in, their eyes searching us out. I curled up into a tight little ball against my brother’s panting bodies. I wanted so much to just disappear.
‘Which one is the mu mao, the she-cat?’ the dark Ren asked, turning to Old Man Zhao.
The next thing I knew hands were reaching inside the dustbin and plucking me up, away from my brothers. Da Ge bared his fangs and growled as threateningly as he could, but he was only a kitten and his teeth were small and his growl not very frightening at all.
The dark Ren was holding me away from her body and looking directly at my face. I twisted and struggled against her but she held on.
‘Hello, little cat!’ she said, smiling. ‘What a pretty one you are. I’m going to call you Tofu.’
Madam Wang clapped her hands in excitement. ‘Tofu! That’s a great name. Maomi,’ she said, ‘your yunqi is very good.’
I knew that yunqi meant luck but how could she think I was lucky? As the two strange Ren carried me away, I felt I was the unluckiest cat in the world.
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