The tabby cat I raised when I was a child was definitely better than any other cat (2).
At this time, the tabby cat no longer bothered to show off the small mice it caught to us. It would usually only bring out a large mouse for us to see. It was from the tabby cat that I learned that there were large black mice that were even bigger than my dad’s shoes (size 42). Usually, the tabby cat would not eat such mice. It would just bite them to death and throw them in front of us or in the yard. It would not care about them. It might be because it thought they were not tasty (large mice have a strong smell).
It might also be because the mice had eaten enough (or it might be because the mice were afraid of moving away). Anyway, during that period, there were basically no mice, and even the mice in the neighbor’s house were less. The tabby cat was also keen on eating birds from the sky. When it saw a pigeon on a branch, it would quickly climb up the tree and bite it in the air, then fall heavily, holding the pigeon tightly in its mouth and quickly running to a corner. In the summer nights, it would eat all kinds of insects and gnaw them all night long. In the winter nights, it would run out to catch rabbits. Every spring when it cleaned up the barn, it would clean out forty or fifty rabbit heads.
What I admire most is Hua Mi’s ability to steal food. The pickled meat, snacks, steamed buns and leftovers made by my mother are all placed in a room behind the kitchen. Hua Mi would jump onto the door handle when we were not there, and then use the weight of her body to push the handle down and push the door open. Later, my mother would lock the doors and windows with keys after putting anything in, but she still found that many things were stolen by it. Later, after tracking, it turned out that it entered from the chimney on the roof, came out from the kang hole, and returned to the original route after eating.
When I was in the sixth grade, I had to go to evening self-study. When I got home from class at 8 o’clock in the evening, it was basically dark. It would wait for me at the intersection I had to pass, but it would hide in the grass or on the branches so that I would not find it. When I walked over and did not find it, it would call a meow to remind me. It would wait for me to find that I was looking at it, and then it would run away. Then I would walk a few hundred meters and find its tail deliberately exposed in the grass or on the branches.
Later, I went to junior high school in the county town, which was quite far from my home. My mother also had to go to the county town to take care of my brother’s children, and my father also found a job in the county town. One day, a relative came to my house, so my parents decided to give Wangcai and Huami to the relative to raise. Although I was very reluctant at the time, I could not take them away without giving them to the relative. They would definitely starve to death if they were left in their hometown. In the evening, the relative tied Wangcai to the agricultural tricycle, put Huami in the fertilizer bag, tied the bag mouth and went back. I was afraid that Huami would be suffocated, so I pierced several holes in the bag. The next morning, my mother got up early and opened the door, and found Huami lying on the dustpan next to the yard and taking a nap. My mother exclaimed a few times and hurriedly called the relative. The relative told me that when he returned home last night, he untied the bag and the cat ran away, and he didn’t catch up. I was very shocked at the time. It was more than 30 kilometers of road, and it was a mountain road. If it was me, I would have lost it early in the evening, but this person came back intact and his stomach was full.
So, I had to bring it to the rental house in the county town. It accompanied me for three happy years after school. After graduating from junior high school, my parents returned to the countryside and took it back with them. But my parents were often away from home for work, and Hua Mi was left alone to look after such a big house. I only came back occasionally to feed it. At this time, it was basically old, and it didn’t love to run and make noise as before. Most of the time, it just found a warm place to sleep. Occasionally, I would tease it and want to play with it for a while, but it would just meow and lie down in another place and continue to squint.
As I was writing, I found that I had turned it into a narrative essay. Alas, my skills are getting worse and worse.
Let’s continue with the narrative essay. Later, when I went back from school and called Hua Mi in the yard, there was no more cat running from a distance. Thinking about its age, it might feel that it is about to die, so it quietly ran to a corner far away from the owner’s house…
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