Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

When having my current house built, I made a special request to the contractor: please ensure mice couldn’t get into the ceiling.
He had assured me he would take full precautions, but I continued to emphasize this point during construction to ensure it wasn’t overlooked.
I had even repeatedly reminded the carpenter directly, but I ultimately lacked the courage to inspect the ceiling space myself.

For several months after moving in, all remained peaceful.
I rejoiced, declaring that my persistent complaints had finally paid off.
Having grown accustomed to long cohabitation with mice, I found it somewhat strange to sleep beneath a ceiling devoid of their noises.
To call it unsatisfying would be overstating matters, but for one truly lonely like myself, it didn’t seem entirely impossible that I might feel an odd fondness for such rodent companions.

Before long, mice began infiltrating the house as stealthily as water seeping through cracks.
Once a pathway was established, that was the end of it.

When working late into the night, I could tolerate the stealthy footsteps overhead or the modest gnawing sounds somewhere about—but being startled by violent noises just as I drifted off, or finding the spines of newly purchased books mercilessly devoured—that began to irritate me.

I couldn't determine whether to blame the contractor and carpenter or whether traditional construction methods themselves were inherently flawed. When I considered it logically, if merely instructing contractors and carpenters could completely prevent mice, then most homes should be free of rodents. Yet in reality, houses without mice are rare—so rare that superstition holds a mouse's disappearance foretells household misfortune. This makes me think perhaps we Japanese must accept ceiling-dwelling mice as inevitable. To believe I alone could arbitrarily reject this might have been an arrogant Westernized notion. Someone once theorized mice would never gnaw tools or clothes if given fixed daily rations. An economist claims even harmful, useless humans possess uniform "survival rights." By that logic, denying mice equivalent rights seems unjust—yet whether such rights truly exist even for humans eludes my understanding. Even supposing they did, when conflicting rights collide, nature dictates stronger animals brutalize weaker ones—a reality no scholar's protest can alter.

In this age where the application of science was respected, I thought there should be any number of methods to prevent mice from entering ceilings and closets.
I had heard that a certain scholar kept electric lights burning year-round in his ceiling space, but however effective this method might be, it struck me as somewhat too extravagant.
There had to be a simpler method available.
If there were a dedicated residential architecture researcher who would observe mouse traffic in the ceiling space for two or three days, it seemed reasonable to think they would quickly devise an appropriate method.
Such methods might have been known to scholars long ago—whether we remained unaware of them, or even knowing them perhaps lacked faith in their implementation.
I couldn’t imagine residential architecture textbooks lacking a chapter on mice.

Not only did I find it troublesome to call the carpenter to inspect mouse holes—the effectiveness itself seemed doubtful.
In the end，I had no choice but to resort to extermination through conventional means.

I had heard rodenticides were most effective，but with so many children at home，we’d avoided them out of fear of accidents.
Yet thinking my children old enough now，I decided to try.
Soon maggots began raining from our entryway ceiling.
The ordeal required enduring days of disgust until I could hire sanitation workers to clear them from above.
From then on，I abandoned Cat-Killer altogether.
They say those who ingest Cat-Killer spew white smoke—mice might too.
Mere imagination of phosphorescent fumes billowing from rodent mouths in attic shadows proved unsettling enough.

I also bought several mousetraps with iron springs attached to wooden boards and set them up.
At first, small young mice were often caught.
Because their construction was extremely shoddy, they quickly became faulty with even a little use.
Meticulously adjusting them to maintain their mechanical sensitivity was ultimately a task beyond the capabilities of such unthinking housemaids.
I found myself wanting to complain both to those who manufactured such makeshift devices and to those who used them without a second thought.

We often used rectangular box-shaped traps made of wire mesh, but even those became ineffective after catching one mouse—perhaps because residual odors remained, making subsequent catches difficult.
Even when they were rarely caught, they were mostly small young mice lacking caution, but once they became cunning parent mice, they wouldn't easily be fooled by any trap.
It occurred to me that perhaps the problem lay in stubbornly trying to catch even mice—creatures growing wiser with each generation—using the same outdated traps forever.

What troubled me more was that throughout the entire household, aside from myself, not a single person showed any enthusiasm for exterminating the mice.
It left me feeling profoundly disheartened and utterly helpless—finding how the entrances of carefully set mousetraps had been pushed into positions where even the most eager mice couldn’t enter, or discovering lids that had fallen off left lying for days in kitchen corners.
When faced with this situation, I could not help but think there was nothing better than a cat—a creature instinctively made to catch mice.

The mice's rampant activity only grew more intense by the day. Even in daylight hours, they would dart into the family parlor to show their faces. One evening while working upstairs, I suddenly heard violent crashes and clamoring voices from below. Going to investigate, I found two housemaids brandishing brooms in the entranceway's three-mat room where they had cornered a pair of mice. After finally pinning one rodent with a broom, I dragged it out slightly with fire tongs and bound its neck tightly with hemp twine. The ligature proved too constricting, killing it instantly. As I observed the periodic convulsions marking its final agonies, there suddenly rose in my mind the image of a condemned prisoner's last moments I had recently read about.

The other mouse vanished, having hidden itself somewhere.
Since it was the bare entranceway with nothing stored there, there were no holes through which it could escape.
I carefully checked behind the decorative wall rail with a candle, poking around with fire tongs just to be thorough, but found no trace of it.
In one chipped corner of the wall, I glimpsed something resembling a hole, though the faint light prevented clear confirmation.
Even if it were a hole, its potential exit route remained unclear.
Suspecting it might have crawled into someone's sleeve, I ordered an inspection of clothing folds, but of course it wasn't there.
A peculiar sensation came over me.
I felt like some great human had been outwitted by this tiny creature.
Had someone applied rigorous scientific methodology here, this trivial mystery would have dissolved instantly—but as absurdity mounted, I papered over this apparent violation of physical laws with my makeshift theory about a "hole behind the wall rail."
Not that science itself lacks such expediencies.
How often do we shove contradictions into shadowy cavities and call it resolution?
Were this stratagem forbidden, legions of scholars would lie awake nights.
Among those who cannot ignore life's conundrums, demand for rodenticide's false solace may only swell.

About ten or twenty minutes after this commotion had finally subsided, a second disturbance began in the kitchen.
An eerie scream—unrecognizable as either human shriek or animal howl—could be heard mingling with the children’s clamor.
When I went to see what was happening, there stood a young housemaid in the center of the tearoom, her mouth gaping wide as she emitted strange noises while contorting her body in every conceivable manner.
They had formed a loose circle around her from all sides and were all talking at once.

When I asked what was happening, they said a mouse had crawled down her back.
Even when I asked whether it was between her kimono layers, under her haori, or somewhere else, they only made meaningless noises without giving a clear answer.
Every time the mouse moved about, she would let out strange cries and shake her body.
I gently grasped the hem of the haori and quietly lifted it to look, finding an adorable young mouse with limbs outstretched clinging to the garment's lining as though nailed in place.
When I gave the haori one vigorous flap, it fell onto the tatami with a thud.
I quickly pinned down its attempt to escape with a floor cushion, then proceeded to dispose of it using the same method as with the first mouse.
As I watched this adorable life's final throes, I still didn't feel quite right.
The "life" that had been so firmly present there until now vanished like a breath.
It occurred to me that perhaps contemplating this utterly mundane yet utterly inexplicable phenomenon of death with any degree of purity was most appropriately done through such small creatures as these.
In human deaths and livestock deaths, there are far too many preludes.
A postscript without its main text is something unimaginable.

The children too were staring intently without moving a muscle.
What would happen, I wonder, were we to ask educators about imprinting such matters upon young minds?
They would likely deem it unwise.
Though naturally this would depend on each child's disposition and circumstances, practically speaking, it seemed safer to establish that all acts ending animal life were cruel and forbidden.
Yet what of forcibly shielding them from confronting such essential phenomena, even while not letting them pass by unfeeling?

I was somewhat taken aback when later informed that my face during the mouse strangling had looked quite different from usual. Some came forward sketching with pencils while declaring things like “This was the face he made!”

Later inquiries revealed that after the entranceway commotion subsided, the housemaid had returned to her room and—while sitting there—felt an odd spreading warmth along her spine. As she puzzled over this sensation, she detected something heavy shifting about there. Only then realizing what was happening, she abruptly dashed into the tearoom and began emitting strange cries—or so I subsequently learned.

A cornered bird may seek refuge in one’s bosom, and a cornered mouse might bite a cat—but I had never before heard of a chased mouse clinging to the lining of its pursuer’s haori.
Yet upon later reflection, there had been no logical reason for a mouse to vanish from the sealed three-tatami space.
I never did verify whether that hypothetical hole in the decorative wall rail actually existed—it likely wasn’t a real hole to begin with. Even if it had been one, a moment’s consideration of the house’s structure would have made clear it didn’t lead anywhere beyond.
Therefore, that it had been hiding in someone’s garment was self-evident from the very beginning.

Even so, it was one of those things I couldn’t comprehend—the state of mind of that mouse clinging to the haori lining and hanging back-to-back with a human for over ten minutes without moving an inch.
Was it that extreme fear had paralyzed part of its nerves, putting it in a death-feigning state, or was it acting out of instinctive wisdom? Perhaps the latter and the former were not two separate things but one and the same.

Even after such commotion, the mouse tribe’s mischief showed no signs of abating.
The terrifyingly large brown parent mouse indulged in unrestrained, outrageous behavior as if mocking humans lacking in wisdom.

II

I thought it was around when spring was turning to summer.

One day, it was reported by a child who discovered it that a stray cat was giving birth to kittens under the veranda of the tatami room.
The large black cat that had been menacing nearby kitchens was raising two kittens deep under the veranda where bamboo and lumber had been crammed.
One was calico and the other pheasant-colored.

In the monotonous lives of our household’s children, this seemed to be a rather significant event.
Various reports concerning the mother cat and her kittens’ activities and whereabouts frequently reached my ears.

In my household, we had never kept a cat since the time I first became aware of the world around me.
To begin with, my mother had conceptually despised every last cat.
In relatives’ homes as well, while there might be dogs, no pet cats were ever seen.
They felt compelled to hurl whatever was at hand whenever they spotted a cat.
On one occasion, a manservant who had once worked for us meticulously crafted traps from rope scraps and set them in escape holes through the hedge, strangling several stray cats.
There was even an instance where a certain nephew claimed he would skewer cats with our ancestral spear while crouching in the dark.
Though truth be told, he would throw down the spear upon hearing a cat’s cry and flee into the inner room.

For such reasons, being someone who had far too little interest in cats, I never even bothered to peek under the veranda.

As time passed, the kittens gradually grew and began occasionally appearing on the garden lawn.
There were times when two kittens could be seen frolicking around their mother cat as she lay stretched out on lawn sprouting blue shoots beneath azalea shadows; yet upon hearing footsteps approaching along the corridor, she would hastily retreat under the veranda—whereupon her kittens too vanished almost simultaneously.
The kittens of thieving cats were indeed being educated to become thieving cats themselves.

One day, my wife somehow managed to catch a pheasant-colored kitten and brought it into the sitting room.
She had completely wrapped its body in a white apron with only its head sticking out, placed it on her lap, and was scratching under its chin.
The kitten had given up and barely struggled anymore, but when she let its front paws out, it immediately began twisting its neck around trying to escape.
The small children wanted to keep this kitten, but I half-heartedly made sure to let it escape.
At that time, I could only perceive the idea of keeping a cat in our household as something utterly inconceivable.

After two or three days had passed, my wife caught the Calico Cat again and brought her back.
However, compared to the previous pheasant-colored one, this kitten was terrifyingly brave and fiercely headstrong.
Even while bundled tightly in an apron, it resisted fiercely; at the slightest exposure of a paw, it would immediately attempt to scratch and bite.
Even when playing in the garden, this one proved far more agile and lively than the pheasant-colored one.
Even among kittens, I found it strangely fascinating how siblings could exhibit such varied individual traits.
I had vaguely assumed that with cats, even if ten out of ten had different coat colors, there would be no differences in their personalities.
I felt that cats' status among animals had risen slightly.

Not only the children, but this time even my wife spoke up, hoping to tame and keep this Calico Cat, but I still couldn’t bring myself to feel that way.
However, toward this fiercely headstrong and brave kitten, I felt a certain light familiarity or affection that I had never experienced before.
It seemed that cats—though only to a very slight degree—had begun to take on personified forms within my mind.

From that time onward, this mother cat and her kitten grew more fearful of human presence.
In proportion to this, the children’s interest steadily grew.
After dinner, they would hide like ambushes all over the garden, trying to chase down any kitten careless enough to emerge, but by now even adults couldn’t have caught it.
Whether driven by fear of escalating persecution or because the kitten had now come of age, the mother cat permanently abandoned her birthing place under the veranda and moved elsewhere.
Even so, there were times when we would catch sight of mother and kitten on the eaves of the neighboring outbuilding.
The kitten seemed to be growing bigger every time we saw it.
And it already displayed the caution and agility befitting a full-fledged thieving cat.

The mice's mischief continued unabated all the while.
They finally gnawed through the sliding door of the second-floor closet, and we discovered they had chewed a large hole in the finest bedding we kept for guests.
The mousetraps that no longer caught even young mice had been tossed onto the kitchen cupboard with their lids fallen off, while the fried fish cakes hung on hooks curled up like dried-out rice crackers.

III

It was mid-June.
One day while I was working, a child came to call me.
They had gotten a cat and were telling me to come see it.
When I went to see, it was already a considerably grown Calico Cat.
A crowd had formed a circle and were gazing in fascination at every movement of this new cohabitant, filled with curiosity.
To someone like me, utterly lacking in common knowledge about cats, every single thing was a novel wonder.
When my wife picked it up and scratched under its chin and around its ears, it made a sound like something boiling in its chest area.
I had known through books and others’ accounts about cats trilling their throats or purring, but putting this to the test for the first time now at over forty years of age.
That this was a sign of expressing joy didn’t immediately make sense to me, experiencing it for the first time.
“Could this cat have lung problems?” I said, only to be laughed at uproariously.
Even now, I still cannot determine whether the sound originates from its throat or deep within its lungs.
A vibration accompanying the sound clearly spread throughout the entire thoracic cavity, as could be perceived through touch.
In the abdominal cavity, however, it had already subsided to a much weaker degree.
I thought that perhaps this vibration was transmitted through the hard ribs and perceived externally.
Even so, numerous questions arose that I wished to understand—the mechanism by which this sound was produced, as well as the physiological significance of such vocalization.
Although I had been taught zoology in middle school, and had read about the calls of birds and insects in magazines and books, I had still never had the opportunity to learn about a cat’s purring.
This was not a defect of modern education, but rather due to my own lack of common sense.
I’d heard there was an elementary school teacher who mistook “Democracy” for a nerve tonic and “Rennin” for the name of a poison, but my own misunderstanding might be even worse than that.
However, those who truly understood Rennin, Democracy, or a cat’s purring might be fewer in number than one would expect.
In any case, this purring seemed fundamentally different in nature from the sort of throat noises humans make in anticipation of satisfying their appetites.

This sound evoked various other sounds for me.
I recalled the grinding of pebbles at the water's edge when diving underwater, and the roiling noise resembling a boiling pot that emanates from deep within volcanic craters.
Were even lions or tigers to produce similar sounds, I thought this noise would likely become all the more mysterious.
I found myself wanting to hear that too.

When we set it down on the tatami mat, it would immediately begin playfully batting at any nearby paper scraps.
Its movements appeared both nimble and graceful.
Human children could never hope to have their own bodies handled with such elegance.
Though I couldn't speak for British aristocracy.

And yet every movement and action was thoroughly childlike.
There was a striking resemblance between the childlikeness of human children and something that was clearly hard to pinpoint.

What a striking contrast this one presented compared to stray kittens!
He was fated to regard humanity as an enemy from birth, yet this one had placed absolute trust in human goodwill from the very beginning.
Having been taken into an unfamiliar house, it already regarded that place as its own home without a trace of doubt or fear.
No matter how harshly treated, it seemed to interpret everything only in a positive light.

That being said, I did not recall having given approval to keep a cat in our household.
I had apparently been consulted frequently about adopting a kitten, but I had yet to give active consent.
However, as I now placed this beautiful and childlike small creature before my eyes and observed it, such concerns naturally vanished.

It seems that in the process of conveying the majority of the family’s wish for a kitten from the housemaid to the greengrocer who frequented our house, it had transformed into an assertive demand.
Suddenly, the greengrocer had brought it over together with the owner’s housemaid, or so I heard.
When they took it to the inner room after it came to the kitchen, it immediately dashed back to the kitchen and followed after those who had brought it, so they considered tying it up with a string for a while, but the people who had brought it said that would be pitiful and pleaded not to bind it, so they apparently refrained.
They also reportedly requested that at night, we let it sleep nestled against us.
By the time I came to see it, a considerable amount of time had apparently passed, and it seemed to have grown quite accustomed.

In its original owner’s home, it had apparently been raised with considerable care.
When it came to food, it hardly ever ate just any ordinary fare.
It would only have milk or fish meat—and even then, just the good parts, never touching the hard head bones.
Some called it a dreadfully spoiled cat, while others praised it as refined.
It never attempted to go after food on dining trays either.

The children’s attachment to the cat seemed to grow stronger by the day.
When they returned from school, before even slipping their bags off their shoulders, they would ask, “Where’s the cat?”
“Where’s Calico?” they would ask.
I somehow began to feel that a vein of new emotional warmth had started flowing through the lonely lives of the children.
Frequent struggles over the cat would arise between the two young sisters.
Things like “Can’t you let me hold her a little?” and “You never let me hold her at all!”—their squabbles would sometimes reach my distant study.
In the end, one of them would end up crying.
I could not help but fear that the children were becoming overly sentimental because of this.

The cat too was pitiable.
The only time she could rest peacefully was while the children were away at school.
Once vacation began soon after, even that slight respite vanished.
The older children would see the younger ones treating Calico Cat as a plaything and say things like “That’s cruel—let her go!” only to start teasing her themselves moments later.
I thought it would be better if she escaped under the veranda, but seeing her remain so obedient—albeit reluctantly—and unresistingly subjected to their whims began striking me as somewhat cruel.
In truth, she seemed to grow slender in a way unrecognizable from her gradual thinning.
When walking, she tottered unsteadily; even when sitting, her body swayed slightly.
And she would doze off just like humans do.
That cats could doze was something new to me.
I felt I had made some great discovery, but when I told others, those who knew would laugh, and even strangers showed no interest in this fact.
Yet as I intently observed the human postures mirrored in this feline behavior, I found myself harboring a peculiar sentiment—a curious blend of absurdity and pathos.

At this rate, I felt the kitten would soon die.
There were even times when it would vomit up what it had eaten and soil the floor coverings.
At night, utterly exhausted, it would fall effortlessly into a deep sleep and showed no sign of waking at any noise.
Yet strangely enough, the mice’s rampant activity had ceased before I knew it.
Even when the occasional clatter of dishes echoed from the kitchen, Calico remained fast asleep, unaware.
It was likely that her instinct, having never yet seen a mouse, remained dormant—or so I supposed.

Threatening words—that if they bullied her too much, she would run away somewhere or be sent back to her original home—were being repeated before the children.

In the end, we consulted with the owner’s household and decided to let her recuperate there for a day or two.

When the cat was gone, I felt as though the entire house had suddenly grown lonely.
The children, unable to go out into the garden due to the rain that had been falling continuously, were quieter than usual.

Usually, after the children had fallen asleep at night, she would sometimes come to my study without making a sound, sneak under the desk to playfully paw at my legs. When I picked her up and set her on my lap, she would immediately start purring as usual. But since she wasn’t there that night, of course she didn’t come.
When my work was done, as I smoked a cigarette leisurely and listened to the quiet sound of rain, a strange thought arose.
The image of Calico Cat being truly abandoned somewhere, wandering soaked through in this rain, took shape in my mind.
Trembling from hunger and cold, she prowled restlessly around some garbage cans.
And I felt that she let out pitiful cries, yearning for the lamplight leaking through the shutters of strangers' houses.

When we went to pick her up the following evening and brought her back, she had grown remarkably plump in just two days. Her pointed face rounded out, and her eyes suddenly appeared narrower. The frantic wrinkles that had been around her eyes vanished, transforming into a gentle expression. The question arose as to what kind of favorable treatment she had received. There was also a theory that she had perhaps suckled her mother’s milk again.

When summer reached its peak, everyone would go out to the garden in the evening.
Calico Cat surely followed along as well.
The hollowed area beneath the azalea roots—once a stray cat’s former playground—seemed to hold particular appeal for every feline after all. During their dashes about while chasing balls, they would always dart into that spot.
Assuming the posture of a beast stalking its prey, they would stealthily creep out, and just before finally pouncing, swing their hips from side to side.
At times they would hide in the bamboo grass and remain perfectly still for ages, only to suddenly leap out as high as a carp springing from water, then sit there with a blank look on their faces.
At times they would splay all four legs out to either side, pressing their bellies flush against the lawn, striking poses exactly like a mythical winged creature soaring through the air.
It seemed they might have been trying to cool their bellies.

While I was mowing the lawn, she would inevitably sneak up unnoticed and suddenly pounce at the shears' tips—a dangerously frequent occurrence.
While mowing cautiously,I would occasionally hear the children's shouts warning that she lay in wait.
This peculiar curiosity toward the lawn shears persisted long afterward.
Even after abandoning play with string scraps or balls,the moment she saw me heading gardenward with shears in hand,following became immediate.
Sometimes she would slip beneath my crouching form to thrust her face between my knees.
After briefly touching the shears with apparent satisfaction,she'd shuffle off toward shrubs,beneath fatsia leaves targeting butterflies or teasing toads.

It seemed she had failed in her first attempt with the toads.
She appeared to have suffered some mishap while attempting to bite—white, saliva-like substance streaming from her mouth as she writhed about, clawing at her own muzzle with both front paws as though trying to tear it off.
She was behaving in a manner strikingly similar to that of a frog who had licked tobacco.
From then on, she no longer used her mouth, but would only try gently pressing down on a toad’s head with her front paws or softly prodding its flank, then tilt her head and watch.
The stubborn toad would puff up rigidly each time it was touched.
Its earth-toned, ugly body appeared as a solid mass of resentment.
The kitten, absolutely convinced of her own superiority, would occasionally glance distractedly elsewhere while darting out a paw now and then to tease.

The problem was that he had somehow developed a habit of catching and eating lizards.
At first, he would always bring what he caught onto the tatami mats and toy with it before eating.
Sometimes he brought only the tail of a large one.
The severed tail would twitch as if possessing an independent life.
Whenever I found them, I would immediately grab the cat, forcibly snatch them from his mouth, and dispose of them where he couldn’t find them again.
The cat, whose hard-earned prey had been taken away, for a while walked around scratching the tatami mats.
There was no way for the cat to understand why catching and eating lizards was wrong.
I myself cannot explain why it is wrong.
So in the end, he seemed to abandon the effort of deliberately bringing them up to the tatami mats and instead invented the method of devouring his catches immediately at the scene of capture.
Whenever I saw the cat licking his lips while coming up to the veranda, I somehow felt uncomfortable.
Perhaps it was that I felt this cat—who shares part of our meals and ought to be a member of our family—defiled the entirety of the other family members’ meals by eating things like lizards.
It seems this four-legged creature had become personified to such an extent within our minds.

When I worked alone late into the night, I would hear light footsteps approaching along the long veranda. Then when she slipped beneath my chair and gently brushed against my legs, words like "What's the matter?" or "Need something?" would unconsciously escape my lips. This was never mere soliloquy, but rather words spoken earnestly to a second being I felt could properly comprehend them. My companion never answered verbally, but when lifted into my lap would immediately commence that familiar rumbling purr. Gradually I came to grasp the sentiments of childless loners and elders bereft of pliant affection in human society—how they might devote themselves wholeheartedly spoiling felines in that peculiarly indulgent manner dubbed "cat-pampering". I even gained some understanding of that Western farmer who kept a crow as his agrarian companion. For solitary egoists like us, such creatures likely make far steadier life partners than bothersome humans ever could.

The strange thing was that Mother, who had so detested cats, not only didn’t shoo away the kitten that sometimes climbed onto her lap, but also didn’t seem particularly bothered even when the retired room’s shoji screens were torn.

IV

Since arriving at our home, what had most piqued the cats' curiosity was likely the mosquito net.
For some reason, whenever they saw the mosquito net, they would grow strangely excited.
This was especially pronounced when someone was inside while I remained outside.
They would arch their backs high, flatten their ears, and assume fearsome expressions.
Then they would come lunging as if their very lives depended on it.
The cats would hurl their entire bodies against this mystifyingly soft yet tough resistance of the mosquito net.
Dragged along by their momentum, the hem would form a pouch that enveloped each cat's body.
This must have been utterly perplexing to them.
In any case, it differed completely from ordinary playfulness.
There were moments when their intensity struck me as almost terrifying.
Their docile traits vanished entirely, revealing their beastly nature with startling clarity.

Perhaps to the cats, the mosquito net itself—or perhaps the human figures visible through it—appeared as something terrifying.
Or maybe the bluish-tinged light within the mosquito net was awakening some ancestral instinct—that of distant forebears who once prowled beneath forest moonlight seeking prey.
If there had been mosquito nets of various colors, I felt an urge to conduct some experiments.

Among their playthings, the most amusing was the paulownia wood stick wrapped in obi fabric.
Rolling it with their front paws was nothing remarkable, but they would deftly grab one end with both front paws and rise splendidly on their hind legs.
When the stick fell over, they would leap across it without a glance, shuffle three or four feet away with an air of nonchalance, then plop down.
They repeated this routine countless times.
I had absolutely no idea what state of mind they were in.

On the second floor stood a single rattan chair.
The cross-shaped brace connecting the lower parts of its four legs formed a sort of small shelf at its center.
This spot became one of the Calico Cat’s favorite play areas.
She would drop something like a paper scrap below, then extend her front paws through the crisscrossed rattan gaps to try catching it.
When she tumbled down, she would roll onto her back and alternately poke her legs into the gaps from beneath.

What these playful antics signified was something we could not comprehend.
Perhaps they were unconsciously practicing to acclimate themselves to some future mission they had not yet become aware of.

The body that had recovered during its two-day return home had unwittingly become emaciated again, its shoulder bones protruding, its profile sharpened, and its eyes grown larger.
Feeling this was too pitiful, someone proposed keeping another cat to share Calico's overly heavy burden, and many agreed.

One evening when I was out in the garden, the kitchen became lively.
Amidst the laughter of women and children, an unfamiliar man’s laughter could also be heard.
“An Ee-cat, isn’t it?” I could clearly hear my wife’s voice emphasizing the “Ee” with a peculiar accent.

It turned out that the regular milkman had obtained a small tiger-striped kitten from somewhere and brought it over.

It was still truly small—a kitten that could fit in the palm of one’s hand.
A patch of long, lusterless downy fur stood bristling along its back.
Its face was also quite strange.
Its face was short, as if its entire forehead had been flattened.
And the disproportionately large, erect ears gave this face an even more peculiar expression.
For some reason, on either side of its eerily swollen belly, legs about the size of our little fingers were propped like struts.
It somehow reminded one of an owl crafted from pampas grass plumes.

Calico Cat stared intently at this new companion, revealing clear surprise, doubt, and anxiety. Perhaps mistaking Calico Cat for its parent, the kitten scampered closer affectionately, lifting one small front paw to touch her. Calico Cat recoiled in shock as if brushed by a venomous insect. Undeterred, the kitten pursued her and raised its paw once more. This spectacle proved so comical that, caught up in everyone’s uproarious laughter, I found myself laughing from the pit of my belly more deeply than I had in recent memory.

When things had settled somewhat, Calico Cat instead took the offensive and began launching attacks.
She would suddenly pounce, pinning down his neck with her front legs before biting at his head or legs and scratching with her hind paws.
It was truly a struggle akin to that between a hawk and a sparrow.
Just when it seemed Chibi—driven to his wit's end—would flee, he stubbornly refused.
Even while emitting birdlike peeps, he kept resisting fiercely with bites and scratches.
The moment Calico Cat released him, he would pivot around and—still seated—use his short tail tip to trace figure eights midair while bracing for her next assault.
At times Chibi would slip into the gap between chest and sliding door. Unable to follow, Calico Cat grew frantic—jabbing her front paws into the space while making a racket.
Meanwhile, the kitten emerged on the opposite side with unruffled composure.
There he sat again, wielding his stubby tail like an awkward conductor’s baton to sketch endless figure eights.

There had been a proposal to name him Chibi, but another argument arose that such names for livestock should be avoided out of delicacy, and thus it was abandoned.
In the end, they settled on calling him Tama.
Some argued that "Tama" sounded odd for a male cat, so it was settled they would use either Tamakichi or Tamasuke instead.

The striking differences in temperament between the two cats became increasingly apparent as days passed.
Whereas Calico Cat remained abstemious, refined, and aristocratic in her approach to food, Tama proved unmistakably plebeian and bolshevik, harboring a fierce appetite disproportionate to his small frame.
Even fish bones and heads that Calico Cat wouldn’t so much as glance at, he would pounce upon and devour.
And if someone so much as touched him, the fur on his back would bristle, and he would let out a fearsome growl.
He would emit a low, rumbling growl—a truly fearsome sound that seemed unimaginable coming from such a tiny kitten.
In order to claim as much of the surrounding food as possible, he would spread the fingers of both front paws wide and press down firmly.
In this regard, he was a capitalist.
Pushed aside, Calico Cat watched from a slight distance with an air of astonishment.
If you gave him even a scrap of mackerel’s dark flesh, no sooner would he clamp his jaws around it than—though no one made a move to touch him—he’d start emitting that characteristic growl while trying to bolt from the spot.
He seemed to possess something that could only be described as the nature of a thieving cat.
On top of that, this cat had what you might call poor bathroom manners.
Night after night, he would soil the zabuton cushions and the hems of bedding.
Among the kitchen staff who had to deal with this cleanup, voices calling for Tama’s expulsion soon grew loud.
Even those outside the kitchen staff found Tama’s mealtime behavior disgustingly unpleasant.
To see the gentle Calico Cat having her food snatched away by him made it all the more unbearable.

A responsibility issue had arisen with the milkman who brought Tama.
It seemed everyone hoped that by returning Tama to the milkman, they might obtain a better cat.
Not only that—they had even found a replacement candidate and were seeking my approval.

Yet even if we dutifully returned this cat to his original home through the milkman, or even if he passed into some new owner’s hands—given that his ultimate fate seemed unimaginable beyond becoming a stray—it felt cruel to cast him out.
I thought his poor bathroom habits could likely be corrected through careful training.
First I prepared a bed for him by lining a cardboard box with old flannel scraps.
I placed this alongside a confectionery box filled with soil and set them on the wooden bathroom floor.
Each night before retiring, I would search for Tama sleeping along the mosquito net’s hemline, catch him, and settle him into this bathroom bed.
The oblivious kitten still purred in proper feline fashion.
When I let him sniff the earthen scent, he would relieve himself every other time.
Though I never knew how he spent those long hours in darkness after I shut the bathroom door and switched off the light—how he occupied himself until dawn—when morning paled the glass windowpanes, I would hear him rattling the door while emitting those birdlike cries pleading for release.
Upon letting him out, he would dart forth only to immediately dash back inside before circling my feet like an eager puppy.
After repeating this routine for over ten days, I experimentally moved both bed box and soil box near Calico Cat’s entry hole, repeatedly bringing him there to sniff the earth.
The next morning’s inspection revealed no soiled futons or tatami mats.
He had likely learned to exit through the hole under Calico Cat’s guidance.
Afterward I occasionally glimpsed Tama clambering out through that aperture at daybreak.

Tama’s abnormally voracious appetite diminished somewhat and was no longer quite so ravenous.
As his once disgustingly swollen belly became less conspicuous, his emaciated waist and hind legs began to appear oddly scrawny, yet despite this, he gradually took on what could at last be called an ordinary feline form.
And indeed, he began to display a certain housecat-like magnanimity and a young master-esque refined charm.

When summer vacation ended and school began, the cats' bodies finally found some respite.
In the mornings, Calico Cat and Tama would stretch out all four legs to their heart's content on the well-ventilated floor mat and take their midday naps.
There were times when one would be sleeping while the other would be diligently licking its companion.
When evening came, the two would go out into the garden and often wrestle on the grass.
After becoming able to sleep through the day, they began frequently making commotions on the veranda at night.
This caused me some inconvenience, but I didn't get angry.
When I heard the clinking of pottery in the kitchen and went to investigate, two of them were peeking out with blank expressions from the upper and lower shelves of the tea cabinet whose door had been left unlatched.

Although I had never actually witnessed them catching a mouse, the rodents' mischief ceased entirely, and the ceiling became perfectly quiet.

Calico Cat, born as a stray kitten under the veranda, still sometimes appeared on the neighbor’s eaves. She was a beautiful cat, yet somehow—perhaps it was my imagination—there lingered a fierce look about her. The timid Calico Cat would come scurrying back into the house whenever she saw stray cats, but Tama remained completely unfazed. There was even a report that he had been seen playing with strays once. “Don’t go turning into some juvenile delinquent now,” they would say while tapping his head, though of course the cat could never understand why he was being tapped.

The history of our cats was just beginning.
I intend to record the future lives of these cats as faithfully as possible.

On these autumn nights of late, when the moon shone clear and winds lay still, Calico Cat and Tama sat properly side by side on the tree stump serving as a veranda stepstool, their backs rounded into posture. Hushed into perfect stillness, they gazed out at the garden bathed in moonlight. As I watched them intently through this ritual night after night, an indescribable sense of profound solitude seeped into my heart—a feeling that these creatures differed from ordinary cats altogether; that they seemed visitors from some realm beyond human measure or comprehension. Such feelings likely never arise toward other domestic animals.

(Taishō 10 November, Thoughts)