tifanjo

04:08 pm: Бапа мысық
if you have the right fonts installed, which i'm sure few if any of my readers do, the subject of this entry should read "baby cat" in kazakh. it's the title of a children's story i read last semester, and now i have my own Бапа мысық story to tell.

on my way back from my afternoon class today, i saw a kitten hanging out in an alley. it was the second time i saw the little guy - the first time i was rushing to a 7:30am class, so had no time to investigate. at a glance, though, it looked dirty and uncared for. the image wasn't helped by the fact that it was sitting in a pile of trash.

that morning, sitting in class pondering this little creature, i resolved that if i saw it again and made sure it didn't have a home, i'd adopt it and find a way to take care of it till i leave urumqi. i seriously considered getting a cat recently, and then ended up dropping the idea. however, if one needed rescuing, i couldn't not help it.

today he was sitting in the same alley. he did look dirty and uncared for, and he was disarmingly friendly. i also noticed his two back legs were no good - he had to drag them along the ground behind him to get anywhere, so mostly just sat in one place. that one place this time was on top of a sewer grate.

classes had also just let out at the elementary school next to my house, and a few of those kids came down the alley, getting the kitten a lot more attention and, to my surprise, concern. one little uyghur boy (probably about 10) hung around the longest, talking about how he wanted to take it home and take care of it.

some other kids came and went, and then another pair of little boys hung around for a bit. i mentioned something about it being too thin, and they disappeared, reappearing a few minutes later with a processed sausage thing for it to eat. i had the uyghur kid translate for me, and by asking another kid who obviously lived there, figured out that the cat does have someone "taking care" of it, and they do want to keep him.

this is such a pleasant surprise for me, and i'm devoting so much energy to writing about this because caring for animals has not been something i've seen expressed by most chinese people. the city residents that have little dogs generally take good care of them, but most people don't seem to have that kind of feeling for random strays on the street.

going to the zoo is a horrible experience. the animals are cooped up in filthy, cramped concrete quarters surrounded by adults jeering and throwing things at them. no one seems to see much wrong with this, at least not the people who patronize the place. expressing real feeling for a random animal is generally met with bemused smiles and silence.

but here, in this little back alley, i found that not a single kid was taking advantage of the kitten's immobility and utter helplessness; on the other hand, they all wanted to help it.

i'm sure it's not a statistically representative cross-section of chinese elementary school children, and in the countryside where most people don't have enough for themselves and their family, it's probably a different story.

accurate or not, i feel better about this country knowing that the next generation has a bunch of boys growing up that can be so compassionate to a scroungy, crippled, dirty little cat.