Natsume Sōseki

“ Miss Blanche, the white cat who lives opposite and whom I much admire, tells me whenever I see her that there is no living creature quite so heartless as a human. The other day, she gave birth to four beautiful kittens. But three days later, the shosei of her house removed all four and tossed them away into the backyard pond. Miss Blanche, having given through her tears a complete account of this event, assured me that, to maintain our own parental love and to enjoy our beautiful family life, we, the cat-race, must engage in total war upon all humans. We have no choice but to exterminate them. ”

“ O-san, with a vacant look on her face, as though she had been roughly wakened from some peculiarly delicious dream, took a firm grip on the rice-cake and yanked it out of my mouth. I am not quite as feeble-fanged as Coldmoon, but I really did think my entire front toothwork was about to break off. The pain was indescribable. The teeth embedded in the rice-cake are being pitilessly wrenched. You can’t imagine what it was like. It was then that the fourth enlightenment burst upon me: that all comfort is achieved through hardship. ”

“ To be unable to eat dango one is so fond of eating, is tragic. But to have one’s betrothed change her love to another, would be more tragic. When I think of Hubbard Squash, I believe that I should not complain if I cannot eat dango or anything else for three days. Really there is nothing so unreliable a creature as man. As far as her face goes, she appears the least likely to commit so stony-hearted an act as this. But the beautiful person is cold-blooded and Koga-san who is swollen like a pumpkin soaked in water, is a gentleman to the core,–that’s where we have to be on the look-out. ”

“ But not caring whether I am a cat or not, I scratch away like mad at my whole face in frenzied determination to keep on scratching until the fiend in the rice-cake has been driven out. Since the movements of my front paws are so vigorous I am in danger of losing my balance and falling down. To keep my equilibrium I find myself marking time with my hind legs. I begin to tittup from one spot to another, and I finish up prancing madly all over the kitchen. ”

“ The wintry sun along the ten-foot length of the southwards-facing veranda goes down daily earlier than yesterday. Seldom a day goes by but a cold wind blows. So my snoozes have been painfully curtailed.
The master goes to school every day and, as soon as he returns, shuts himself up in the study. He tells all visitors that he’s tired of being a teacher. He seldom paints. ”

“ Judging by these facts, I began to wonder if the wrong-doer might be not Porcupine, but Red Shirt the crooked one. He instilled into my head some flimsy hearsay plausibly and in a roundabout-way. At this juncture I saw Red Shirt taking a walk with the Madonna on the levy of the Nozeri river, and I decided that Red Shirt may be a scoundrel. I am not sure of his being really scoundrel at heart, but at any rate he is not a good fellow. He is a fellow with a double face. A man deserves no confidence unless he is as straight as the bamboo. One may fight a straight fellow, and feel satisfied. ”

“ I had been quietly listening to the successive stories of these three precious humans, but I was neither amused nor saddened by what I’d heard. I merely concluded that human beings were good for nothing, except for the strenuous employment of their mouths for the purpose of whiling away their time in laughter at things which are not funny, and in the enjoyment of amusements which are not amusing. I have long known of my master’s selfishness and narrow mindedness, but, because he usually has little to say, there was always something about him which I could not understand. ”

“ The Italian Master, Andrea del Sarto, remarked that if you want to paint a picture, always depict nature as she is. In the sky, there are stars. On earth, there are sparkling dews. Birds are flying. Animals are running. In a pond there are goldfish. On an old tree one sees winter crows. Nature herself is one vast living picture. D’you understand? If you want to paint a picturesque picture, why not try some preliminary sketching? ”

“ One who shines in argument is not necessarily a good fellow, while the other who is out-talked is not necessarily a bad fellow, either. Red Shirt is very, very reasonable as far as his reasoning goes, but however graceful he may appear, he cannot win my respect. If money, authority or reasoning can command admiration, loansharks, police officers or college professors should be liked best by all. I cannot be moved in the least by the logic by so insignificant a fellow as the head teacher of a middle school. Man works by preference, not by logic. ”

“ My wife, with a most reproachful look, enquires whether it really is impossible for me to go out. ‘I’ll go; certainly I’ll go. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be all right by four. Wash your face, get ready to go out and wait for me.’ Though I uttered all these reassurance, my mind was shaken with profound emotions. The shivering strengthens and accelerates, and my giddiness grows worse and worse. Unless I do get well by four o’clock and implement my promise, one can never tell what such a pusillanimous woman might do. ”

“ But human beings do not seem to understand the rights of property. Every time we come on something good to eat, invariably they descend and take it from us. Relying on their naked strength, they coolly rob us of things which are rightly ours to eat. Miss Blanche lives in the house of a military man, and the tomcat’s master is a lawyer. But since I live in a teacher’s house, I take matters of this sort rather more lightly than they. I feel that life is not unreasonable so long as one can scrape along from day to day. For surely even human beings will not flourish forever. ”

“ He does not even understand that love can never grow unless there is at least a complete and mutual understanding. Like an ill-natured oyster, he secretes himself in his study and has never once opened his mouth to the outside world. And to see him there, looking as though he alone has truly attained enlightenment, is enough to make a cat laugh. ”

“ When I left the teachers’ room, chalk in hand, for the second hour class, I felt as if I was invading the enemy’s territory. On entering the room, I found the students for this hour were all big fellows. I am a Tokyo kid, delicately built and small, and did not appear very impressive even in my elevated position. If it comes to a scraping, I can hold my own even with wrestlers, but I had no means of appearing aweinspiring, merely by the aid of my tongue, to so many as forty such big chaps before me. ”

“ There are times when even I, a mere cat, can put two thoughts together. “Teachers have it easy. If you are born a human, it’s best to become a teacher. For if it’s possible to sleep this much and still to be a teacher, why, even a cat could teach.” However, according to the master, there’s nothing harder than a teacher’s life and every time his friends come round to see him, he grumbles on and on. ”

“ When I entered the class-room and stepped upon the platform for the first time, I felt somewhat strange. While lecturing, I wondered if a fellow like me could keep up the profession of public instructor. The students were noisy. Once in a while, they would holler “Teacher!” “Teacher,”–it was “going some.” I had been calling others “teacher” every day so far, in the school of physics, but in calling others “teacher” and being called one, there is a wide gap of difference. It made me feel as if some one was tickling my soles. I am not a sneakish fellow, nor a coward ”

“ O-san, with a face that shows no change between year end and the spring, is playing battledore and shuttlecock. The children in the inner room are singing something about a rabbit and a tortoise. If I am to eat this New Year speciality, now’s the moment. If I miss this chance I shall have to spend a whole, long year not knowing how a rice-cake tastes. At this point, though a mere cat, I perceived a truth: that golden opportunity makes all animals venture to do even those things they do not want to do. To tell the truth, I do not particularly want to eat the rice-cake. ”

“ Why, only the other day, my master beat my backside black and blue with a wooden ruler.
Living as I do with human beings, the more that I observe them, the more I am forced to conclude that they are selfish. Especially those children. I find my bedmates utterly unspeakable. When the fancy takes them, they hang me upside-down, they stuff my face into a paper-bag, they fling me about, they ram me into the kitchen range. Furthermore, if I do commit so much as the smallest mischief, the entire household unites to chase me around and persecute me. ”

“ No dog. No moon. Nothing. At this very second I experienced a sudden urge to immerse myself in that total darkness from which the voice had summoned me. And, once again, the voice of Miss O pierced my ears painfully, appealingly, as if begging for help. This time I cried, ‘I’m coming now,’ and, leaning well out over the parapet, I looked down into the somber depths. For, it seemed to me that the summoning voice was surging powerfully up from beneath the waves. Thinking that the source of the pleading must lie in the water directly below me, I at last managed to clamber onto the parapet. ”

“ And there he was, fairly killing himself at being Andrea del Sarto. I could not help but laugh. He’s starting to sketch me just because he’s had his leg pulled by a friend. I have already slept enough, and I’m itching to yawn. But seeing my master sketching away so earnestly, I hadn’t the heart to move: so I bore it all with resignation. Having drawn my outline, he’s started painting the face. I confess that, considering cats as works of art, I’m far from being a collector’s piece. I certainly do not think that my figure, my fur, or my features are superior to those of other cats. ”

“ There was no telling how far the “good-naturedness” of Hubbard Squash might go. He had respectfully thanked the principal and the head teacher who had been fooling him. And it was not a formal, cut-and-dried reply he made, either; by his manner, tone and face, he appeared to have been really grateful from his heart. Badger and Red Shirt should have blushed when they were addressed so seriously by so good a man as Hubbard Squash, but they only listened with long faces. ”

“ Since that day I have not ventured near the mistress of the two-stringed harp. No doubt by now she herself is having texts of inadequate gravity read on her behalf by the priest from the Gekkei Temple.
Nowadays I haven’t even energy to go out. Somehow life seems weary. I have become as indolent a cat as my master is an indolent human. I have come to understand that it is only natural that people should so often explain my master’s self-immurement in his study as the result of a love affair gone wrong. ”