By Vicky Chong
Mimi appeared three weeks ago, on the day I was contemplating about death while sitting in my garden at Harvey Crescent Estate in the east of Singapore. At fifty-nine, death seemed premature especially when fifties was considered the new forties and people lived to their nineties nowadays. Like a dark omen, the black cat sauntered into my house as I was staring blankly at my plants, my eyes not focussing on anything except the thoughts in my mind. It slipped easily through the square grid of my metal gate. I watched, amazed at its audacity to just walk in nonchalantly. Hadn’t this cat seen me, the owner of this territory, sitting here? The cat’s body was so black it reminded me of how as children at my grandfather’s wake, my cousin and I were told to chase away any black cats.
‘Why?’ we asked.
‘If a black cat were to jump over Ah Gong’s coffin,’ whispered the older teenage cousin, ‘Ah Gong would wake up and haunt us,’ he said as he jumped at us with his hands in claws above his head, causing us all to scream and receive a scolding from the elders for being disrespectful.
Three days before Mimi came into my life, I was diagnosed with bone cancer. Cancer had already emptied part of my body. My breasts were removed seven years ago. Three years after that operation, the doctors decided my womb and ovaries had to go too. The doctor said the prognosis this time should be good and advised me to be optimistic. I had been optimistic when I had breast cancer, braving radiation, and then chemotherapy. When the cancer spread to my womb and ovaries, I lost all desire to live. I didn’t think I could survive another round of chemotherapy. Yet I did, losing my hair again after having grown it all back. Since I was a child, my hair had never been my crowning glory. The wiry locks lacked shine and started greying in my teens. My hair only became manageable when I discovered keratin rebonding and hair dyes, an expensive monthly extravagance on my teacher’s salary. Someone told me my cancer could be because of all the toxic chemicals ingested through my scalp. Since my cancer, my hair is now pixie short and white. Not exactly my style for I was often mistaken as an ‘Uncle’ but I preferred this to being bald anytime.
So, there I was at my garden on a hot Thursday afternoon, wondering who I should will the house to when I die, or if I should just donate my biggest asset to a charity and leave behind my name as a legacy. The thirty-year-old two-storey terrace house was worth over two million dollars and many charity organizations would appreciate this, and might name a trust fund after me. Perhaps if I were to will it to the secondary school I was teaching in, they might name the library after me. I pushed away the idea at once. The school was loaded and wouldn’t appreciate that two million dollars when Indonesian parents donated one to two millions annually without a blink of the eye just to get their sons enrolled.
My gaze shifted to my small garden. Would anyone want my pots of orchids? They were not prize winners but some were pretty rare. I had smuggled a few cuttings from Taiwan and Chiangmai during my travel. I knew a few people in the neighbourhood had been eyeing them. Seven pots had been stolen before. There was one occasion when a precious rare vanda hybrid bloom, the flowers which I had never seen and was eagerly anticipating, got cut away when it was just about to bloom. I was hopping mad when I discovered the theft. I suspected the culprit to be that woman from house number 28, who I believed had cut away my other blooms on other occasions, because I’d often seen her loitering in front of my orchids which I had planted in the public plot outside my gate. She only stopped cutting away my blooms when, as I saw her approaching one day, I quickly ran outside with a bowl of water and a stick of lemongrass, pretended to go into a trance and started dancing, sprinkling water from the bowl at the orchids while chanting, ‘O holy water, bless my orchids with your power, and may no one ever touch your bloom again or they end up tragically.’ Miraculously, the ploy worked and my orchids had been safe so far, although I had to repeat my holy water dance a few times when I saw other people walking past my house, just in case she wasn’t the thief.
From my orchids, my thoughts drifted to my books and the amount of clutter I accumulated and how I should really start decluttering, when, at the corner of my eyes, I saw a black object moving towards me. The cat eyed me wearily but continued walking into my garden, and then promptly plonked itself down at my feet and rested there, as if that was where it belonged.
‘Shoo…,’ I said, unconvincingly.
It lifted its gaze and our eyes met. The hazel eyes narrowed. Then the cat yawned, the lips stretched so wide the fangs protruded. Darting me another lazy look, the cat closed its eyes and fell asleep.
I should not hold my funeral wake in this house, I thought, or this cat would jump over my coffin and my ghost would wander about like a lost soul and haunt the neighbours.
The cat continued to sleep at my feet while I watched it. It was well-fed and obviously belonged to someone. The black fur shimmered in the late afternoon light. Its chest lifted gently with every breath. I never liked animals and most animals sensed that. Dogs would growl at me, cats avoided me and babies cried hysterically when I go near them… oh wait, babies are not animals but I read babies preserve the same animal instinct at birth and only lose them gradually as they grow.
Why would this cat behave so differently?
I might have fallen asleep for I was awakened by a man’s voice.
‘Mimi, come here, Mimi!’
A man was outside my gate calling the cat, who ignored him.
I walked out to the man. He was tanned, looked a youngish forty but had a mop of grey hair.
‘Is that your cat? She’s been sleeping here all afternoon,’ I said.
‘Hello. I am sorry if Mimi disturbed you…’
‘No, she’s been very good, just sleeping there.’
‘Mimi is a boy,’ said the man. I noticed he had a Japanese accent. ‘Do you think I can leave his dinner here? I will clear the bowl in an hour.’
‘Mimi is a boy? I mean, he’s a boy?’ I pointed to the direction of my chair. ‘And his name is Mimi?’ This man certainly had a perverted sense of humour naming a tomcat after a Hong Kong actress.
The man laughed. ‘Yes, Mimi is a boy.’
He put the bowl of food down. I peered at the bowl. There was some kind of mashed meat.
‘Premium canned salmon meat, with supplements and vitamins added,’ said the man.
‘Is Mimi your cat?’ I asked. ‘Why doesn’t he come to you when you call him?’
‘He is angry with me. You see, he has a tumour, and I have been taking him to the vet. They give him injections. Now he is angry with me for putting him through all the pain.’
‘That cat has cancer? You can’t tell from the nice fur he has.’
The man laughed again. ‘Pardon my rudeness. My name is Tatara. I lived in the other street at house number 12.’
‘You’re Japanese?’
‘Yes, but my wife is a local Malay. We love cats. Unfortunately, my other cat Google and Mimi don’t get along and now Mimi decides to run away.’
‘Tatara-san, my name is Swee Fong.’
‘Ah… Swee Fong san, Mimi likes you.’
‘I wonder why?’ I said.
‘He can tell you are a kind woman. Cats have that special power. They know who will take care of them.’
‘They do?’
‘I must go now. I will come back to clear the bowl.’
‘Don’t bother. I will make sure she… I mean he eats up everything and I will clear up after. You need not come again.’
After Tatara-san left, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and decided to fill a bowl for Mimi as well. He came over when he saw my bowl and slurped noisily as if he was thirsty.
‘You should eat. You need the nutrition to cure your cancer,’ I said, feeling stupid for talking to a cat.
He looked up as I spoke and I wondered if he understood Japanese instead of English but then I remembered Tatara-san had called to him in English. I went over to where the bowl of food was, squatted down and knocked on the bowl.
‘Come, eat.’
He sauntered over lazily, sniffed at the food, and ate a few mouthfuls. Then he promptly walked away before disappearing round the bend to another street.
‘Hey, you’re not finished…’ I shouted after him but he was gone.
I left the food there but he hadn’t come back to finish when I went to check on the bowl before I went to bed.
I was sure that would be the last time I saw Mimi but I was wrong. He appeared the next day when I was on my PC in the dining room, checking my emails from the secondary school where I taught English. He meowed a few times, hesitated at the opened sliding door and then invited himself in.
‘Shoo…,’ I said, waving my arms.
He came under the table and twirled around my legs before resting in between them. His body was warm, the fur so soft against my foot I couldn’t help but rubbed my toes gently along his spine. He turned around onto his back. I gingerly lifted my foot and ran my toes up and down the length of his abdomen. Then I felt a low vibration emitting from Mimi and heard for the first time, a cat’s purr.
At dusk, I heard Tatara-san’s faint voice calling for him and went outside.
‘Tatara-san, he is inside my house,’ I called out to the man and waved.
He ran over with the bowl of food.
‘I am so sorry.’ He bowed. ‘Mimi, Mimi!’
Mimi didn’t bother to come out from my house.
‘If he is bothering you, just chase him out. You have to be loud and fierce. He is a house cat, and he sleeps with us on the bed. He thinks he can do this with everyone.’
‘Sleeps on your bed?’ There was a tinge of disgust in my voice which I failed to mask.
‘He is clean, toilet trained.’
‘But all that hair…’
‘Not a problem if you are not allergic. I have a sticky roller to pick up the hairs.’
I made a face, and he laughed.
‘That’s why you need to be fierce to Mimi if you do not want him inside your house.’
He gestured towards the bowl.
‘Oh, just leave it with me. He didn’t finish last night.’
Tatara-san sighed. ‘His appetite is not so good nowadays. I leave him snacks in the house throughout the day but he doesn’t come home.’
‘Bring me his snacks,’ I blurted and immediately regretted.
‘Are you sure? I really appreciate this.’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I put a bowl of water there for him yesterday. He was thirsty.’
‘Thank you so much for doing this for our Mimi.’
I smiled at the mention of our Mimi.
Looking at our Mimi now, you would not have suspected him of being the son of a stray cat. I never liked cats but I suddenly noticed how beautiful he was. His snout was sharp, his hazel eyes seductive. He had a long body with shiny dark blue-black hair of medium length, a bushy tail and was larger than an average cat. Tatara-san suspected he had Persian blood. I might have fallen for that bit of pedigree in him, being unashamedly elitist. I subscribed to Royalty and had been following the gossip pages about the UK royal family since Prince Charles wedded Princess Diana, and I was still following up on William and Henry. The fact that Mimi was not an ordinary stray intrigued me. Perhaps his ancestors were from Persia, his blood as blue as the Shah of Iran, before they met with the same downfall as the Shah.
One night, Mimi decided to move in when I found him slumped on my garden chair the next morning. Both his food and drink bowls were empty, and I topped them up with snacks Tatara-san provided and water. He ate and drank while I sipped my morning tea. That night, I placed a cushion on the chair together with a bath towel, just in case he returned for the night. At dawn, I found him cocooned inside the towel, and he’s been there every night since.
One evening when I returned from the doctor, I found Tatara-san with a carton of canned food outside my gate at the precise time which he appeared daily.
‘Swee-san,’ he called out and I giggled at my shortened name, which sounded like beauty in Hokkien.
‘Tatara-san, what gift have you brought me?’ I teased.
‘I promise I will bring you gifts from Japan when I return in a week, but this carton is for Mimi. My family and I are returning to Japan tomorrow, so would you mind feeding our Mimi while I am gone?’
‘Yes, I will feed our Mimi. He seems to have disappeared today but I’m sure he’ll be back,’ I said.
‘Arigato Gozaimasu,’ said Tatara-san as he left.
I watched him go, secretly worried if indeed Mimi would return. You see, Mimi and I had an episode this morning when I found him sleeping on my bed. He had crept upstairs into my bedroom without my knowledge. If he had settled onto any of the guest beds in the spare bedroom, I wouldn’t have been so angry. But there he was, on my pillow with my quilt wrapped around him on my queen-size bed. I had just changed my bedsheet the day before. I shouted at him as I picked up my quilt with him in it and threw him off my bed. He didn’t know what hit him and ran downstairs in a flash. I cursed and swore as I stripped my bed and changed my sheet. I regretted my action when my temper cooled.
Now, as I looked up and down Harvey Crescent. There was no cat in sight.
‘Mimi, Mimi.’ I waited for half an hour and decided to place his dinner at the spot where Tatara-san had been doing.
By ten pm, there was still no sign of Mimi when I shut my sliding door and retired upstairs.
‘It’s not my fault. He’s not my cat. I am just doing a favour.’ I told myself as I tried to sleep but I tossed and turned the whole night.
At 3am, I went downstairs to the garden. The chair was empty and I sat on it, hugging Mimi’s cushion and towel. A beautiful crescent moon hung against dark velvet sky and my garden was ghostly lit by the remnant street lights, the plants a shadowy silhouette moving with the night breeze.
What if Mimi didn’t come back again? What would I tell Tatara-san? I was quite sure he wouldn’t blame me for Mimi’s disappearance. That cat probably adopted another house in Harvey Crescent. He had no sense of loyalty. See how he treated Tatara-san, who had raised him for the past eight years. Yet, my stomach churned with jealousy at the idea of him sleeping on another chair in another house.
‘Mimi, come to Mama,’ I whispered, as a tear rolled down my cheek.
What had I done? I let another living creature affect my emotion, which I swore I would never, after I shed buckets when that bastard jilted me on my wedding day and ran off with his student. I had been living a stoic life since, I did not cry when both my parents died, nor each time I was diagnosed with cancer. So why was I feeling sorry for myself over an unfaithful cat?
Seow ah! That old crazy woman is senile. I could hear the sniggering from people around me, as if calling me eccentric behind my back wasn’t bad enough. With a huff, I wiped away the tears roughly and stomped back upstairs to bed.
The next morning, I decided to clean all the surfaces of cat’s hair once and for all. Good riddance, I exclaimed as I mopped, dragging the pail of water with me as I reached under the sofa. Just as I straightened up, I saw Mimi sitting beside the pail, a dead longkang rat on my damp floor, his paw making cute prints across the parquet floor.
I almost screamed at the sight of the rat, but caught myself.
Meow, said Mimi as he nudged the carcass towards me.
My tears fell again when I realised Mimi was offering me the rat as an olive branch. The rat was half his size, and he probably had a hard time wrestling with it.
‘Oh, Mimi, come here.’ I sat on the sofa and patted my lap, not expecting him to come, but he did. He jumped onto my lap, circled a few times trying to find the best position, and then he half-sprawled on me and laid his head against my abdomen. I hugged him close and gave him a good tummy rub.
When Tatara-san next came over upon his return from Japan, Mimi was waiting at the gate and ran over to him as soon as he saw him.
‘He misses you, Tatara-san. He waits here every night for you,’ I said.
Tatara-san laughed as he passed me a bag, ‘As promised, gifts from Japan.’
I pushed his gift away. ‘I was joking lah.’
‘I insist. You have been so kind to take care of Mimi while I am gone. For the first time, I could travel in peace.’
I accepted his gifts and invited him into the house, with Mimi leading the way. I pointed out Mimi’s chair and told him about the rat, leaving out the details of Mimi’s disappearance.
‘Oh my goodness!’ said Tatara-san. ‘How did you get rid of the rat?’
‘I paid that sweeper outside to get rid of it.’
‘Good thinking,’ he said. ‘By the way, Mimi needs to see the vet again tomorrow for his tumour.’
‘Is he going to die soon?’ I blurted out.
‘I don’t think so. The tumour is not cancerous and has stopped growing with the injections. The vet wants to operate on him to remove it.’
I nodded. ‘I have bone cancer,’ I told Tatara-san.
His eyes widened and he gasped. ‘Are you undergoing treatment?’
‘I have decided to forgo chemotherapy. Chances are not very good too.’
‘But what other choices do you have?’
‘Palliative care.’
There was a momentary silence as the news sunk in for Tatara-san. I reached across and passed him an envelope. He opened it curiously and read.
‘I, Lee Swee Fong, certified to be of sound mind, hereby will the estate of 33, Harvey Crescent to the Trust of my cat, Mimi, upon my death, to be executed by Trustee Ishimura Tatara.’ Tatara-san looked up at this point. ‘You are willing the house to Mimi?’
‘You might think I am crazy but I am not. I want him to continue coming here after I am gone, perhaps in a year or two.’
As I said the words aloud, I imagined Mimi licking her paws in my sitting room, next to my casket here at my wake, which I hoped he would jump over.