Kuze feels that cats are too obsessed with the definition of "cat" recently. Not just the conversation about "cats" and "people" two days ago. Afterwards, at the cat's strong request, Kuze even dressed it.
Kuze's tailoring skills were limited to mending buttons, and he couldn't even patch work clothes, let alone tailor clothes for cats. Fortunately, cats don't mind wearing ill-fitting old clothes. Oversized shirt sleeves and pant legs can be rolled up, and baggy collars are another trend. The cat was only a little over half of Kuze's weight, and it looked funny and cute in Kuze's old clothes that were four or five sizes too big.
In fact, Kuze's aesthetics seem to be kidnapped by the cat: he even thinks the cat's horns are cute. But temporary entanglement is cute, and long-term entanglement may become a psychological problem. Seeing the cat look so sullen and lifeless every day, Kuze felt uncomfortable. He wanted to persuade the cat.
Kuze knew that cats had high self-esteem and strong self-esteem, and it was not easy to reason with them. Once, he seized the opportunity to chat with the cat while eating, and took the initiative to ask why the cat was unhappy recently. As a result, the cat rolled his eyes at Kuze and replied, "Because I've lost my love."
— Sounds reasonable. But if this cat wants to fall in love, it has to fall in love first, right? To be in love, at least find another cat? As far as Kuze knew, there were no other domestic cats within a dozen miles of his house.
In short, the conventional method can only get the cat's eyes and unreasonable perfunctory answers, Kuze had to find another way. He decided to try something more stealthy. He prepared a lot for this.
On a snowy night, the interior is warm and bright. The cat nestled on the bay window of the study as usual, absently flipping through a book. Everything is normal, except for the sullen look between the cat's eyebrows. Kuze decided this was a good time. He sat on the ground in front of the bay window, lined up the props prepared in advance, and then clapped his hands to attract the cat's attention.
The cat looked up at him wistfully.
"Knowledge quiz!" Kuze announced.
The cat was sluggish for a moment, and his expression gradually twisted into inconceivable: "… Huh?"
Kuze didn't care at all. He continued: "Do you know how 'left' and 'right' are defined?"
The cat seemed to be surprised that Kuze took the initiative to mention the word "definition", and was confused about the topic of "left" and "right". It tilted its head and stared at Kuze for a while, then chose to greet him politely. The cat stretches out its left forelimb: "Left," then right, "Right."
"That's right!" Kuze praised, and he followed suit. "If someone can't see your movements, how do you explain 'left and right' to him?"
The cat seemed to understand Kuze a little bit. It thought for a while, jumped off the bay window, leaned over and patted its paw on the chest on the side of Kuze's heart: "Left."
Kuze laughed. Most of the organs in the human body are asymmetrically distributed, and cats can grasp this, which is a pretty good start. He had some concerns before about whether cats were familiar enough with the human body, but his cats never disappointed him in this regard. Kuze asked the next question: "You know, I'm left-handed. There are people in the world with right-handed hearts. It's like there are left-handed people. Maybe there are fewer right-handed people, but they are still there. . What are they going to do?"
It was a difficult question, and the cat had no immediate answer. It muttered to itself thoughtfully: "Then it can't be defined from a human...part? Definition."
Kuze knew that "parts" in cats' mouths meant organs. He nodded in agreement, "Yes."
The cat was lost in thought. Kuze waited patiently without urging.
After a long while, the cat's eyes suddenly lit up: "It's the direction!" The cat said, turned its body to the north, and raised its left hand, "Facing north, the left side is west. There is no problem with this definition."
The way the cat showed off to Kuze after overcoming the problem was so cute, he admired it for a while before continuing. "Using east, west, north and south to define left and right, it also involves the definition of east, west, north and south." Kuze further asked, "How are they defined?"
Surprisingly, the cat was not stumped. It gestured with difficulty, obviously understanding the reasoning, but the language ability was not enough: "East is the direction in which the sun rises and sets, and north and south are that-that-"
"Magnetic poles? Or Polaris?" Kuze said.
The cat hesitated for a second, then nodded to both.
"Then let's talk about the magnetic poles first. Geomagnetism is reversed, have you heard of it?" Kuze asked.
The word was more difficult for the cat, who stared blankly at Kuze, waiting for him to explain. Kuze took out a map of the earth from the materials prepared in advance.
"South Pole, North Pole - North Pole, South Pole. Like this, the complete flip of the earth's magnetic poles has happened many times in the earth's history. The most recent one was about 780,000 years ago, which corresponds to—" Kusei got stuck, he clearly I checked in advance, but I forgot the geological age again. Is it called the Pleistocene or the Cenozoic? He vaguely skipped this point and continued, "In short, there were humans who walked upright on the earth at that time. For those Homo erectus, because the geomagnetic direction is opposite, according to the corresponding relationship between north-south, east-west and left-right, their 'Left and right' will also be the opposite of us."
Cats obviously don't know this. From the moment it saw the schematic diagram of the inverted magnetic pole, it showed a surprised expression, and looked at Kuze with considerable admiration. Kuze was very pleased with this. In order to convince this horny cat, he did a lot of homework.
"...What about the stars?" the cat asked a new question, "the stars won't change, right?"
"Considering the precession, it's not that it won't change... Forget it, let's assume that the North Star will not change. Even so, there is no guarantee that the direction of the sun's setting will always be in the west when it faces the North Star." Kuze said, in the The paper draws a diagram of the positions of the four terrestrial planets closest to the sun in the solar system, "For example, Venus, it is the only planet in the solar system that rotates clockwise from the direction of the North Star. In this way, Venus People - if anything, they also define the opposite 'left and right'."
At first Kuze was worried about whether the cat and him were struggling with the topic of "Venus", but in fact, the cat's ability to accept abstract topics was higher than he expected. After the cat raised its hand and gestured a few times about its rotation and revolution, it nodded in agreement with Kuze's statement.
"It's interesting, I never thought about it that way," commented the cat. It smiled at Kuze, showed its thumb, and then asked, "But why did you suddenly mention this?"
Of course it's because of you - Kuze thought to himself. He is a tightrope walker, life is like a balloon, and he has only recently put the focus on cats. The cat may never know how much it affected Kuze. Kuze won't tell it.
"What I want to say is that the definition changes with the level of cognition, and it only makes sense for a specific object within a specific time frame." Kuze said, and stood up. He leaned over to the cat, pinched the cat's chin, lifted its face, bent over and kissed it on the forehead, "Don't worry about that. Don't worry, don't worry. You're my cat."
The cat looked up at Kuze, its eyes were confused and soft, which was very different from usual.
"But I'm not a cat," the cat whispered. "I don't know why you think I'm a cat. I'm not. Sometimes I'd rather be your cat. But I'm not a real cat. I hope you clear."
Kuze fell silent. He doesn't understand. He stared into the cat's blue tourmaline eyes, not knowing what it was thinking or why it was thinking that way. Of course a cat is a cat. It can talk, which is different from ordinary cats. Other than that, its appearance, its body, its ability to move and the way it behaves, is completely a cat.
To be honest, Kuze didn't care if the cat thought it was a cat. It can talk - which means it's no ordinary cat. Kuze believes that he has been treating the cat in a reciprocal manner, listening to its opinions and communicating with it. He has given in enough, how could anyone else keep a cat like this
If, like "a white horse is not a horse", the "talking cat" is a specific race that is not a cat, and has a name other than "cat", Kuze can still accept it. If not, the cat can only be a cat. Even if Kuze didn't care, he couldn't go against his own cognition and see cats as something else that wasn't a cat.
"...If you're not a cat," Kuze asked, "what are you? A talking cat? "Puss in Boots"? "Cat's Repayment"?"
Kuze's intention was to add the names of the two cartoons to make the conversation a little easier. But the cat didn't appreciate it.
"I'm not a cat," said the cat, his voice almost sighing.
The cat pushed Kuze away, stood up, stretched out his arms, and presented himself to Kuze in a rather elegant and calm way. He looked Kuze in the eyes: "Kushi, look at me. I'm 5'7" and weigh a hundred pounds. I walk on my feet and can keep my hands and fingers apart. No tail, no ears that can turn freely. .I even learned Japanese."
"We talked about this," Kuze said. He stared directly at the cat's body without dodging, trying to show his appreciation and affection, "That doesn't matter. There are cats bigger than you, and there are smaller cats. Some are good at climbing trees, some are good at swimming. Tail and tailless, two-legged and four-legged. It doesn't matter. You're my favorite cat."
"Really?" The cat looked up at him, and Kuze somehow read a melancholy from those blue tourmaline eyes, "But I want more than 'favorite cat'."
The cat stopped talking at this point, as if waiting for Kuze's statement. But Kuze didn't know what to say. Don't want to be "favorite cat", so what does it want to do
"Do you know Cat Island?" Kuze tried to suggest, "In Miyagi Prefecture, it's an island full of cats. There are more cats on the island than people. On that island, cats can claim to be the Mainly inhabitants. There are places like this nearby. There are a lot of cats in town. After spring, if you like—"
He wanted to say maybe he could take the cat to town, he didn't like the town, but maybe the cat would. If cats feel lost, they can learn new ways to get along together. Kuze was so happy when he was with the cat that he even started to have faith in the future. He's willing to explore a new balance between cats and people—he wants to make his cats happy.
But the cat just stared at Kuze silently. It has no objection and no agreement. It looks tired.
Its disappointed expression immediately pierced Kuze's heart.