[Reading Notes] The Guest Cat
I enjoyed it so much reading The Guest Cat, written by Takashi Hiraide. Hiraide’s style of writing is very subtle and has a somewhat calming and touching effect. He is such a wonderful story teller, who persuaded me to be patient, and to read slowly and really enjoy the process as the story unfolded itself.
--------------Digress from the topic: Getting the Book--------------
I am so glad that I got this book (a bit randomly) in the first place. In late August, before grad school started, I was walking around in the Harvard bookstore. I didn’t get any souvenirs. But on my way out, the cute kitty on the book’s cover and the title of the book, The Guest Cat, caught my eyes! Immediately, I was attracted by it, and decided to follow my impulse and purchase it.😊
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Guest Cat tells a moving story of a cat that Hiraide and his wife encountered, while they were living in a rented house in rural Japan. The small white cat, Chibi, showed up in their neighborhood suddenly one day, and was later adopted as a family pet by Hiraide’s neighbor. Chibi was an adventurous, curious and playful cat. One day she managed to get through the wall in between Hiraide’s place and his neighbor’s, and since then started to visit Hiraide’s garden regularly. As time went by, Chibi visited their garden more and more frequently, even multiple times a day. Although Hiraide was not fond of cats before, he started to appreciate the cuteness, wildness, mysteriousness and elegance that Chibi carried with herself. Hiraide’s wife would run out of the house and play with Chibi whenever Chibi came, and she would prepare a bowl of cat food for Chibi every day and night. The couple had formed a strong bond with Chibi and was looking forward to her visits every day. However, one day Chibi stopped coming… If you want to know what happened… You should read this wonderful book! I actually cried after knowing what happened. :’(
There are many things I like about this book. To name a few:
1. Unlike the other books I read/am reading, The Guest Cat is very light and relaxing to read.
-----------Digress from the topic: Feelings reading other books-----------
For example, The Lucifer Effect, Homo Sapiens and Thinking: Fast and Slow all include some technical knowledge of a subject and some complex and critical analysis, that I feel like I need to “use my brain” a lot to follow and reflect critically with the authors. 1984 and We are also very heavy novels. They focus on deep political and humane issues, and the stories and writings are indirect, sarcastic, and sharp. I had to think quite a bit when reading the authors’ thoughts presented in the book to follow their profound criticism and insights. Also, those two books made me feel quite heavy and sad afterwards…
---------------------------------------------------------------------
On the contrary, The Guest Cat tells a very personal-level story of the author himself, his thoughts and emotions during that period of time, and therefore, The Guest Cat is more emotional and much less technical. The story itself has a healing effect, and when combined with Hiraide’s writing style, which is poetically subtle, calming and comforting, reading The Guest Cat is the perfect relaxation I need in my study break!
2. I really like animals.
------------Digress from the topic: Personal stories with cats-------------
Personally, I had formed close relationship with two strayed cats back in the community I lived in China. The first one was a beautiful gray cat with some darker stripes on his/her body. I called him/her “Miaomiao 喵喵”, a simple name mimicking cat’s sound. I met Miaomiao during either Grade 5 or 6 in my primary school, during which time a lot of things were happening in my life. I really appreciated Miaomiao’s accompany at that time, and I could feel the trust and fondness he/she had in me. I felt warm when being with Miaomiao. There are a lot of details that I still remember. For example, I would go look for Miaomiao after dinner. Miaomiao would show up after I called his/her name a couple times. And then we would walk to a sitting area in the community together. I would sit down, and Miaomiao would jump onto my laps and lay down there. I would then hug Miaomiao, in the cold winter night. I liked to spend a long time just hugging and petting Miaomiao like this, and I think Miaomiao liked it too, as he/she would fall asleep a lot of times. I met the second cat when I was older, in the last year of high school. This time I was old enough to identify the cat’s gender LOL. I called him “YiKa”. Yika is a white cat with some light brown spots and stripes. I would go find YiKa every day after dinner too, sometimes bringing some food with me to him. YiKa also likes to lay on my laps and let me hug and pet him. After a while of playing with him, YiKa followed me home. Unfortunately, my parents don’t like animals as much as I do, and they don’t allow YiKa to enter our home. However, after some “negotiation”, they allowed YiKa to come into our balcony eventually (we live on the second floor). YiKa would then climb up to our balcony whenever he wanted, and he would “meow” in the balcony to notify me that he was there. YiKa came every day and night as well, and I prepared food for him every day in the balcony. Although I was not able to keep him as a pet and provide him a home, I was so grateful that my parents allow YiKa to stay in the balcony. I worried about the strayed cats in my community when it rained heavily outside, so I found some comforts that at least YiKa was able to stay away from the rain in the balcony and not get wet/sick. However, I eventually had to say goodbye to both cats. Maybe one day I will write up the stories.
-------------------------------------------------------
I think I was too distracted and lost in my memories… NOW going back to The Guest Cat! The book just reminded me so much of my personal friendship with the two cats. I resonated so much with the fun moments that Hiraide experienced and detailed in his book. Therefore, I found the book especially fun as I could vividly imagine the scenes described in my head, based on my memory of the past. At the same time, I was quite emotional while reading the book. I read the book slowly, as I decided to give myself time to refresh my memories, think about Miaomiao and Yika, as I read about Chibi.
3. Another thing that touched me is that, The Guest Cat is not only about the story of Chibi. It entails much more. It is also a personal account by Hiraide of what was going on in his life back then. In another word, it is also about his life, his troubles and happiness, the people he interacted with (his wife, his landlord, his friends, his neighbors), the thoughts and reflections he had, and the events occurred. The story of Chibi is not just Chibi, but much broader and more complex, inevitably intertwined with everything else in Hiraide’s life. In this sense, Chibi was an important eyewitness of Hiraide’s life at that time, and Chibi’s presence in the garden inevitably influenced the evolution of Hiraide’s life and thoughts as a whole. (I also resonate with this as when I think of Miaomiao and Yika, the memories are inseparable from my life events/status at the time.)
4. I also like that the book touched upon some deep and heavy topics like life and death from an indirect angle. In another word, Hiraide focused on the story. He told the stories of what happened, along with brief personal reflections on the events with poetic languages and moved on back to the stories. He left me with a lot of space to reflect and think on the events and the heavy topics by myself, and to experience the feelings he might had at the time. At the same time, his writing is so calming that even when I was thinking about life and death, I was able to think calmly, and not stressed or overwhelmed.
---------------------------Quotes--------------------------
Since I really love the poetic languages of the book, I collected some beautiful quotes from the book (The English version I read is translated by Eric Selland – such beautiful translation!):
1. Living beings, in turning a corner, or in producing the movements required to enter the crack in a certain partially opened door, are endowed with certain properties, something which produces its own little river. These daily movements are repeated, and a certain tendency- a certain current if you will- is generated. Then this minor current, because it is a current, must at some point flow into a larger river.
2. What’s interesting about animals, my wife explained, is that even though a cat may be a cat, in the end, each individual has its own character.
“For me, Chibi is a friend with whom I share an understanding, and who just happens to have taken on the form of a cat.”
Then she told me about a philosopher who said that observation is at its core an expression of love which doesn’t get caught up in sentiment.
3. The conventional assumption is that a painter extracts colors and images from nature, fixing these elements on a surface to produce a completed work. But in this case, the painter refuses to fix the images, these being no more than the constant change and movement of matter and air. In other words, the artist steps directly into nature and attempts to capture the actual flow of color and image. In a certain way this makes him akin to Leonardo da Vinci.
4. …, this cat was as quick as lightning, and at the same time was doing her best to catch the lightning.
5. Below the zelkova tree time had stopped. At the foot of a little pine tree in its shadow, the most important of gems lay sleeping.
6. … burst into something between a scream and insane laughter. (LOL!)
7. Finding a new cat would be the quickest and most effective means of soothing the sadness. This was the accepted wisdom.
… No matter how cure and lovable the cats might be it just wasn’t the same.
8. One box remained untouched in a corner of the tatami room, its cover left open. A towel was laid at the bottom of the box and a dish, smelling of horse mackerel, was set down there along with it.
9. Entering the property I looked up at the dense foliage and the green of the zelkova trees, leaves rustling in the light breeze.
10. The garden was smothered in tall weeds and the pond was all dried up. There was no sign of its former charm or of all the animal life which used to fill it.
11. Just before leaving for the exhibit I saw Chibi, her back turned to me. It was the last time I would see her.
