The Cat's Misfortune

     My cousin's family has a female tabby cat. Unlike the pet cats adopted by city dwellers, she's used to catch mice. Because there are few cats in the village, and she's so good at catching mice, she's been borrowed by one family after another.

    Recently, several mice have gotten into their house, and every night they seem to be fighting, making a lot of noise. So, this tabby cat, who's been rumored to be incredibly powerful, was brought in to completely eradicate the mouse problem. The tabby cat arrived, but she seemed rather dull. At night, while the mice were making a huge racket behind her, she just curled up and snored. I couldn't bear to watch, so I woke her up and even carried her to the area where the mice were running rampant. She meowed a few times, and the mice immediately fell silent. When I got up in the middle of the night, I found the tabby cat curled up in the same spot again, snoring. What kind of cat is this? So lazy! How could she be something the mice fear? As for her supposed prowess, it's probably all just a rumor! In the morning, my wife asked me where the tabby cat was. Without thinking, I blurted out, "They were probably eaten by rats." My wife laughed and said, "What kind of logic is that? Even the weakest cat is still a cat. Even a sick cat is feared by rats."

    At noon, my cousin-in-law came over, and I asked her, "Your cat is so lazy. It should be able to find rats' hiding places by its sense of smell at night, but it sleeps in all night." My cousin-in-law told me that the cat had given birth to three kittens recently, but none of them survived, and the cat herself died too. I asked what happened. My cousin-in-law continued, "After giving birth, the cat went out to forage for food. But it ate a rat that had probably been poisoned and dried out. When it came back, it couldn't even walk, let alone care for its kittens. It was only thanks to my cousin's timely intervention that the cat survived. The three kittens, lacking their mother's milk, became increasingly weak and frail." My cousin tried to keep them alive with formula, but to no avail; all three died one after another. Hearing this, I felt sorrow for the tabby cat's plight. She had experienced a brush with death and the pain of losing her kittens. Perhaps because cats are said to have nine lives, she survived, but her kittens all died.

    Cats are living beings too; as for their emotions, we might only see a kind of gratitude for their owner's nurturing. As for the kinship, friendship, or even love between their species, it's probably not what we imagine, because we are speculating about their world from our own human emotional perspective. In the afternoon, the tabby cat lay quietly in the sun. She was no longer a young cat; I wondered how many kittens she had given birth to, and how many were still alive.

    Look at her, so haggard; it was probably due to exhaustion, the lingering energy from her brush with death, and the pain of losing her kittens. I didn't disturb her, but tried my best to preserve her peace. I don't know what she was thinking at that moment, but I could feel the desolation emanating from her. She was a tabby cat past her prime, an old, blind mother cat, a cat whose sole purpose was to catch mice. Unlike the pampered pet cats of the city, she was just an extremely real and ordinary cat. Her existence revealed the true spirit of a cat in her past bravery. However, she was unfortunate. Although mice continued to multiply, there were many ways to control them besides cats catching them—mouse traps, rat poison, and so on. In the city, cats were merely companions to lonely people, pampered and spoiled objects, having lost their essential nature. Rural cats, because farmers still held onto their natural instincts, could still be called cats. However, with the diversification of mouse control methods, they had no place to use their abilities, or perhaps they were a declining generation. Misfortune followed, becoming a natural consequence of being kicked while one is down, just like the tabby cat's misfortune!

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