Leonard and the Chairman

“One cat, seriously babe, just one.”

“But I want Kitty…..zzzz!”

“We don’t even have one, so that gives us a good starting point” I said, knowing that she’d have to concede to that, at the very least.

“But’ he’ll be so lonely!”

And so it went, over and over again, the morning that I left with Alyssa Netter to find a cat. A week earlier Elizabeth and I had mentioned to a mutual Chinese friend, Trisha (the English-ized version of her Chinese name), that we wanted to pick up a feline for the apartment. Her response, as with every other Chinese individuals response on the matter was “why you no get dog!!??”

The Chinese it seems have a rather formidable distaste for cats. In actuality distaste may not be the most fitting word because you can find plenty of cats on skewers with sezechuan spices grilled to your liking, so they have their own acquired taste in a way. Generally speaking, most Chinese dislike housecats because of their laziness and self centered ego we learned.

When I met up with Trisha and Alyssa I asked again about operation kidnap a cat. “I found ad in paper. Old woman has too many cats, needs get rid of many. Maybe you take many?”
“No, however much Elizabeth may like it that I get many, I will only be getting one.” I clearly stated as we crammed into the backseat of a little green Xian Taxi service cab. The seats were wet and the windows were fogged, making it musty, and noxious smelling inside. It had been raining all morning and was one of those bitterly cold types that stings your nose and eyes a bit when you open a door. Of course when in China, and some of its wonderfully polluted cities, one occasionally asks oneself it is the cold that is stinging one’s eyes and nose.

The visibility, as we drove abnoxiously fast (as all cabs, cars, trucks, and anything else with four wheels and an engine with more than one cylinder does in China) and wove between the insanely packed fellow motorists who joined in the chaotic symphony of swerving cars, was horrible. At points I couldn’t see the third floor of the skyscraper just out the window because of the low, dreary clouds. Xian’s weather has been just that, dreary, for most of the time we’ve been here. Misty, grey, drizzly, smoggy. Nothing like brown fog in the morning to make you think “Wow, looks like a stellar day for a morning jog!”. Yet when we’ve asked about the horrible pollution the possibility of a direct link with the depressing weather, most Chinese simply state “well, its big city, of course it’s cloudy”. I now understand why Japan files regular complaints against China for pollution which drifts over the sea towards their tiny island chain.

We made our way thru the mist and under one of the archways that allows traffic to pass into the walled section of the ancient capital city. Around the year 1370 (+/- 2000 years for my horrible research on this matter) Xi’an was the capital city for the second time, the first being nearly a thousand years before that, and the Ming Dynasty then in power decided it was high time to build a wall nearly 40 feet tall and 60 feet thick to protect the city’s mayor, General Tso, and his army of imperial, spicy chickens.
About 5 minutes afterwards we finally made it to our destination. As we exited the taxi, two girls in raincoats rushed us, greeting us warmly and extremely graciously, as the Chinese always do. Behind them sat a huge, depressing, gutted office building that looked as if it were a relic of the Chernobyl disaster. “Where are we?” Alyssa and I asked.

“Welcome to the Xian headquarters of the Shaanxi National Newspaper!” one of the girls proudly announced.
“Trisha, why are we at the newspaper?” we asked. No response was given but a sheepish smile.

We were brought up the dank, lightless stairways that were wet with frigid, dripping water. I felt like I was being led to a Soviet era interrogation room. On the third floor they opened a door revealing a Spartan office with a few newspapers scattered about the few heavy wooden desks. We were given chairs and glasses of hot water (a Chinese thing that made E and I laugh for a while). After sitting for 25 minutes we picked Trisha’s brain for more answers as to why we were there. She finally spilled that in fact, this was a big event. She had seen a newspaper STORY –not an ad--about a woman who ran a shelter for cats and needed donations or for someone to adopt a few. Trisha had called the newspaper saying that she could provide both and some interesting foreigners, Americans at that, for the story. We went out for kittens and walked into a strange, uniquely Chinese, press event. The reason we waited in the office, it was revealed, was so a bus could be brought to take us, another 2 Chinese women, and an army of reporters to the shelter for this incredible headline story. We giggled, sighed, and then drank our hot water as we waited.

After an hour in the newsroom we were shuffled back downstairs and into a prehistoric Chinese bus. We drove back into the bedlam of bumper to bumper traffic which ground our progress to a slow crawl. The reporters decided to take advantage of this situation and began asking Alyssa and I some questions.

“Where are you from? Why do you like cats? Are you planning on adopting any today? How are cats treated in the United States? Do you eat cats in the USA? Do you like dogs in the USA? What is your favorite dog?...etc, etc...” I laughed at many of the questions finding them innocently absurd, and then as a joke, that I was prepared to rescind if they gave me a funny look, answered “Herman Bigglesworth” when they asked me for my name. However they never gave me the funny look, and instead had me spell it out on paper. Another hour later we found ourselves driving by our very own apartments that we had left hours earlier. About 2 blocks beyond our apartments the bus turned right, made a left and drove about a ¼ mile down a muddy alley. We had travelled and waited for nearly 3 hours to go about 1/3 a mile from our front doors. Then the bus stopped. One of the reporters sighed and slapped her forehead.

“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague forgot to bring the camera” she apologetically stated.
“Oh, that’s ok, we don’t need our pictures in the paper” Alyssa and I said, hoping it would convince them to put an end to the journey.

“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague, she wishes to wait for the camera so we may shoot pictures.”
And so, in a muddy alleyway with a quizzical, toothless old man peering in the bus , we sat, freezing our asses off for another hour before the camera arrived, all just 1/3 a mile from our warm apartments.

Finally, after the camera came, we were shown to the door of the shelter. From the outside you could smell the cat urine pungently flavoring the damp air around. It made me hold my breath as we opened the creaky iron door. Two flights up and we opened another door where instantaneously pandemonium broke loose. Cats flew off walls, and skidded across the wet tile floor. Cats dropped from the ceiling. Cats commit suicide and jumped out windows. The old woman screeched at the suicidal cats. Cats poured from under mattresses and out of desks. Cats seem to come from everywhere and ran back and forth, yowling for help. At one point a cat jumped thru a raggy curtain and hit a Chinese woman in the face, knocking her glasses to the floor, breaking them. I did what I could not to laugh at the chaos.

I spotted a small orange cat that strikingly resembled Harold Sparks, II, and lunged for him. Getting bitten and slashed by a sea of other cats I decided to plow my way thru the masses with my feet before reaching blindly again. After 5 minutes of chasing, I finally had the quivering ball of stinky fur, and I wasn’t going to let him go. “DONE!” I thought. I have my gato, now I can go home. Alyssa kept searching for the perfect feline for her family however, so I followed her around the cold, cat urine soaked, third floor apartment. It wasn’t too long before I noticed I wasn’t the only one following Alyssa. A small black and white, mangy looking cat followed her like a shadow and would bat at her whenever she’d bend down low enough. When I brought it to her attention she picked up the little guy and he immediately began to purr. Then he swatted her in the nose and purred some more.
“This cat has some serious issues!” she said as we both laughed. She tossed him down and kept looking for the perfect cat for her kids. Yet still, the black cat followed. After a few more amusing events in which the black cat demonstrated he was a comical genius, I couldn’t take it any longer. “Damn, damn, damn!! I’m so weak! I’ll take em both.”

Alyssa finally decided on a feline; we posed for some pictures and finally made our way to the awaiting dinosaur minibus. When we got home I let the cats out of the bag (yes, I had to keep them in a black zipper bag for the ride). The orange one ran for cover immediately while the black one stepped out casually, licked his crotch, looked around, and headed for the couch where he made himself at home, spread out. It was as if he had planned it from the moment he saw us.

The next day we got a call from Trisha saying she was very sorry. “About what Trisha?” we asked.

“I am so very sorry, but the newspaper seems to have made a mistake. Or maybe you made a mistake?”

On the front page of the Shaanxi National Newspaper is the story of 2 big hearted Americans who saved 3 cats and donated some money to help keep the others alive. The two Americans, Alyssa Netter and Herman Bigglesworth, both loved cats and were happy to help.
We laughed and finalized our name choices for the cats. Leonard Bigglesworth the 1st, and Chairman Meow are now part of the family.