WaWa has lived in my house for the past 6 years and knows my entire daily routine, yet I know so little about him… until now.
He is a really beautiful cat, and the interesting thing is that he knows it. Each time a guest comes to visit, he immediately lets out a small cry and jumps down to greet them downstairs. Everyone agrees that he is very handsome. I have friend who especially checked out a book of cats’ pedigree and found that he is from a breed called “ Norwegian Wood”—he is so lucky to be the same name as the novel by the Japanese author.
WaWa indeed lives in his own forest.
My former home was in the oldest part of the city, deep in the hutongs. Every household in Beijing is fond of growing plants and flowers, or raising fish and pigeons, or even cats. In the old city, the hutong roof-tops became an amusement park for cats.
On summer nights, I liked to lie out on balcony on the couch outside looking at the sky. The tall poplar trees stood in a row above the hutongs and seemed to hold up the sky. When the wind blew, the world above the hutong rooftops seemed like a singing forest…
The infinite moonlight created silhouettes of the trees against the profound sky, and in the depths of the hutongs music of an erhu echoed distantly in the night. On the ridge of this old courtyard walked a pair of cats, either male or female, one after the other, not too close and not too slow, --they disappeared deep into the darkness of right. On this stage of the night –their play vicariously carried my heart to a distant land…
Our WaWa is the same. His kind and generous temperament is very dignified typical of the feline kingdom. Every night, he goes to that forest in the heavenly stage to meet his large crowd of wives and concubines who seem like angels. When he hears their various voices calling to him, he disappears from my scope of vision at the speed of light.
The whole night, I have no idea where he goes, I always felt that he goes to paradise and only returns to this earthly world at about 4 or 5 o’clock the next morning. Mentally and physically exhausted WaWa returns home and silently slips through the cat-trap door. For the whole morning that next day, while working at home, I see him obediently sleeping on the little sofa next to my desk –as if nothing had ever happened. But from time to time he seems to talk in his sleep. I imagine that in his dreams he revels in his delights of the previous night.
So for me, the world above the hutongs is a stage for dreams. Each night I am only able to watch WaWa from a distance as he disappears into his pleasure-land and then inexplicably reappears again my side.
Where did he go last night? How do these female cats share their love with him? I will never know –WaWa’s life will forever be a mystery to me.

作者：ChenQingQing