Kitty, a cat can not be forgoten / Kitty， 记忆中无法抹去的小猫。
Kitty was a white female cat with only a few black points on her head and tail. She was so small in my hand when I just got her. Kitty was found in the place where Song worked. Her mother was a wild cat. In fact Kitty was a gift to me, in a wish to drive away my loneliness when I shut up myself in studio for painting, thus she could be a small companion. I like small animals, and therefore she was accepted. Feeding her on time, teasing her in leisure time and watching her playing had brought me some joy and life seemed to have more fun.
Kitty was quite stubborn and had a strong temper. She was also good at playing with people. Whenever I sat in front of my laptop, she would jump up to the keyboard and then looked at the pictures on the screen naively. But I couldn’t type, so I took her down. And then she would jump up again to the same place. Sometimes we had to repeat the same actions several times as I could not do anything with my computer. Oh, it was really a headache! The most reticules thing was that she often secretly lick the pigments on my painting palette. Perhaps she felt that the soft pigments tasted like ice cream. From time to time I could see her running in the room with either a red or a blue face. To the most extent, once in her small house for excretion, I even found some stools in sky-blue colors … It is lucky that the pigments are made of minerals, otherwise she might probably be poisoned.
In those years, I didn’t know why but just had a sense of urgency in mind. I think many people over 30 years old might have the same feeling. At that time I often thought about the things that I had done before in my homeland, the things that I had lost and the things that I had acquired. And even more I felt that with the changes in the environment, those of my future planning and academic programs had become more and more unworkable. Facing a new start in everything, I felt at a loss. The only clear thing in mind was to keep on reminding myself not to give up. I told myself I must go on with my painting no matter what the future is… Perhaps I had locked myself in the room too long, facing canvas and pigments all day along, and sometimes even talked with nobody for weeks , that little white cat had become my close friend to some extent. She did not only bring me joy, but also became the object that I could talk to everyday. I knew she couldn’t understand what I was talking about, but all I needed was to talk.
In 2005, my son Mukdembu was born, and we moved to the city where we are living now. That year Kitty also got four babies. I guess their father should be the wild cat with a fat head that often came to our back garden, we called it as "foolish brother ". Kittens were very lovely and cute, but they grew very fast and ate more and more. So I took a picture for them and put it on the advertising board in a supermarket, hoping someone could adopt them. Finally these four little guys were sent away. Later my neighbor, a Dutch lady suggested me to send Kitty for a sterilization operation. I accepted the suggestion and spent 60 Euros in an animal hospital. Since then Kitty seemed to lose her vitality, just lazily strolling day after day or just lying in the shade in the garden. One day in a late Spring, a neighbor knocked at my door and told me that a white cat had just been struck to death by a car. I rushed out and found that was my Kitty…
Oh, a big man like me, writing here sadly, just like a soft-hearted lady. You may feel it a bit ridiculous. But that white cat did accompany me during that period of hard time. And she shared with me the loneliness and the feelings of lose for those days. It was her who faithfully listened to those words which I could speak to no one but to myself only.
Up to now the little white cat is still with us, buried in the backyard of my home. My son Mukdembu might not remember her, but he knows there buried a kitten, called Kitty.
