Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai

Author:Mieko Kanai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press

He cradled her in his arms, supporting her back, and as he gently rocked the “mother,” whose reddish, swollen, fresh, mammalian nipples could be seen amidst her white fur, he kept repeating, “Good kitty, good kitty, my Tama’s a good kitty, my good little Tama” When he got tired of that, he put Tama into the closet where the cardboard box with her newborn kittens was. “Okay, now give your babies some milk! Cats and Godard—just the same,” Alex concluded.

“I sent the hospital in Kyoto a notice of absence due to illness this mornin’ by special delivery, and even if I am to take a kitten, it’s impossible until they’ve been weaned. Plus, none of my patients has serious symptoms, so there’s no harm done if I’m away for a while. And anyway, I’m in no condition to be treatin’ patients. Besides, I never did think I was meant to be in clinical practice. So, I think I’ll stay here for some time.” That was what this madman, totally lacking in common sense, had announced that very morning. He intended to settle right in.

“And what might you mean by that, Alex?” he asked with that prissy pronunciation intellectuals are given to.

Alexandre, for his part, informed us, “Yeah, right now I’m thinking of changing my name to Felix. Alex . . . Felix . . . Which sounds better?” On he went, in a nonchalant way: “Oh yeah, I saw on TV a little while ago this video on cat ecology. There’s this town on the seacoast, a really old town with, like, lots of narrow roads going up hills and stone steps and all—like a maze! ’Course there are people living there, but it’s just full of stray cats, including house cats. And there’s been this rule for centuries that you can’t raise dogs there. You know how in the Tokugawa period, there was a time when everybody had to be really polite to dogs—Master Dog, like . . . ‘Laws of Compassion,’ they called it: Kill a dog, and they’d cut off your head.

“So I figure in this town somebody must’ve killed a stray dog or something, and ever since, they’ve thought having dogs is bad luck. Or something like that, anyway. With no dogs around, it’s cat heaven! And lots of people come from all over to dump their cats in this town. Well, in the video the hero is this really big black-and-white male cat that belongs to some family. During mating season, he goes crazy for a calico female, but, even though she seems interested in him—like in the phrase ‘I’d fall at a single touch’—whenever black-and-white brings his nose close enough to sniff under her tail, she scratches him with one of her front paws—like, over and over!

“But black-and-white won’t give up and chases the calico up hills and stairways and on top of roofs all over town. It’s like a labyrinth, though, or the Kasbah, and he loses sight of her. Suddenly the calico’s nowhere to be seen.

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