Memoirs of a Shattered Soul — 11: Cat Fight

There are so many legends about cats in Japanese folklore. Sometimes magical powers are attributed to them. Yet these cats were a whirlwind of claws and fangs and fur...

June 9, 2013

Last night was a horrible night. I don’t think that I slept at all, but at the same time my mind was so numb and exhausted that I can’t say I was really awake either. I think of that famous line from Murasaki Shikibu, “Real things in the darkness seem no more real than dreams.”

The broken violin in my room is a stark reminder that the events I wrote about yesterday from my visit to Interlaken really happened. Unfortunately Mr. Abelard Hauser is in the hospital, still recovering from the heart attack.

For the rest of the night, I’m not sure exactly what to think. I look out my window and see the sunshine over the Alps, just as always. There’s not a single sign that anything I remember actually took place. I asked my father if he heard something and he said no. So for all I know, I may finally be turning into one of those weird characters from a Satoshi Kon film who cannot distinguish their dreams from reality.

Here is what I remember: I was sitting in bed, unable to sleep because I was so upset about what happened to Mr. Hauser. It was past midnight, so my father was already asleep. I decided to listen to some music. I put the Mika Nakashima CD that I got from my Aunt Hanami into the CD player and listened to it with headphones, so as not to disturb my father.

I have great admiration for Mika Nakashima. Unlike my mother, who gave up her singing career willingly, Mika was almost forced to give hers up because of a physical condition that threatened to leave her deaf. However, she recovered and just the fact that she has recorded another album makes me feel happy… as though it’s a sign that perhaps the universe is not as cruel a place as we think it is, or at least not always.

So I was listening to the song “Kioku” when I noticed movement outside my window. It was very strange. At first, I couldn’t imagine what exactly it was.

I took off the headphones and walked to the window. There were two cats on our balcony and they were fighting with each other. They were hissing and screeching like demented yōkai. I thought my father would rush into my room at any moment to see what was causing the noise. To me, it seemed as if they could wake the dead.

Although it was hard to tell from the lighting, I thought that the cats were both black and white. Perhaps they were brothers, like Hoshi and Jo. And also like Hoshi and Jo, they were battling with each other mercilessly, a private war that shut out everything else in the world. They would stop for a moment, sizing each other up, then launch their bodies back into the fray fearlessly, while continuing to make those unearthly noises like no other cat I’d ever heard in my life. It was violent and scary and beautiful all at the same time.

There are so many legends about cats in Japanese folklore. Sometimes magical powers are attributed to them, including shapeshifting and the ability to speak in human language. Although I have never had one as a pet, I’ve always thought they were beautiful creatures and I guess I was also attracted to their mysterious nature.

Yet seeing the whirlwind of claws and fangs and fur in front of me in the moonlight, my heart was beating as if it would burst from my chest and for several seconds I felt paralysed.

Then I did something really stupid. I opened the window and started speaking to the cats as if they could actually understand me. “Please,” I pleaded with them, “No more fighting. No more violence. Are you trying to kill each other? Why?!”

The cats looked at me and did, in fact, stop fighting for a moment. They just stared at me suspiciously with alert, shining eyes.

“Wait,” I said, “I have something for you.”

I went to my backpack and pulled out some onigiri that I had brought with me to Interlaken but hadn’t eaten. There were some that had tuna or salmon inside. I put the onigiri just outside the window and waited to see how the cats would react.

Slowly, still suspiciously, the cats approached the onigiri. Then both began to nibble at the rice balls, no doubt attracted by the scent of fish. Once they were closer, I could see their markings clearly: as I had thought, they were indeed black and white, like little sumi-e paintings with only the green of their eyes to show that they existed in a world of colours.

When they had finished eating, they did not go back to fighting. They simply vanished into the night. About a minute later, I closed the window and went to bed. Even before I was under the covers, I wondered if anything I had just experienced was real. It seemed so strange and unconnected to anything that had ever happened to me before.

As I said, it was a horrible night. And yet… as I was writing about it, I couldn’t stop smiling. Strange…