It was after 10pm at night. I’d been drinking cheap Vietnamese $3.50 brandy and cheap Vietnamese $1 wine this evening and chatting on irc. I’d eaten most of my snacks and I wanted something else. I didn’t want to go to CauXuang and get ostrich and I’d already been to my other favourite place once today for Singapore noodles and vegetables and I was bored of my regular pho cafe so I wanted something different.
I didn’t really care what, but I wanted it to be different. I went walking down Pham Hung. Lots of things were closed but lots of things were open too. It was a lively night but not the most lively. Some people said hello as I past and motorbike guys would try and get my attention. One guy saw me and recognised me and said “Hey. Pham Ngu Lao ?” and I laughed and looked at him and said “Toi. Quan Tam !” to try and get across that I lived in District 8 and just because I sometime visited Pham Ngu Lao doesn’t mean I lived there or wanted to go there every night.
I walked past a tiny cafe. Something caught my eye about it. It was that they had wicker chairs. Everyone else has plastic or aluminium chairs but this place had nice wicker chairs and even after I walked past it, something in my mind said “Hey, that place looked ok. Go back and have another look”. So I did. I turned around and walked back and peered in under the awning. There was noone there eating, but they had these nice wicker chairs around the tables which caught my eye and somehow elevated it in my mind beyond the average pho cafe.
I walked in and sat down. The main waiter came up and he looked at me with this wry grin on his face thinking “This is going to be interesting. No westener ever drops into my place”.
I said “Saigon Do” and he nodded and called to a young girl who rushed off to bring me a beer. I looked back at the guy and said “Pho, bo ?” and he shook his head. Awww, they don’t serve noodles ? I asked “Com tam ?” asking for broken rice. Maybe I didn’t pronounce it right or something but he shook his head. I didn’t really care what I ate. I was brave and I was willing to eat anything as long as it was cheap, which this place would obviously be.
I said “Bo ? Ga ?” and shrugged my shoulders in order to try and convey that I didn’t give a shit what I ate. Give me beef or chicken, I don’t fucking care. He pulled half a chicken off a hook and threw it on a plate and held it out to me. I shook my head. No, I don’t want half a chicken. I want some rice or some fucking noodles or SOMETHING with some variation. Not half a fucking chicken. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he was going to serve it to me cooked. He just thrust half an uncooked chicken in my face because the only word I said that he recognised was “ga” which means chicken.
I shook my head and made an eating motion and said “Com ?” and he turned to the girl and said something. The hilarious thing was that she was wearing a shirt that said “I (HEART) GEEKS” and I thought to myself “You have absolutely NO fucking idea what that says, do you ?”
Anyway she ran off and came back and stuck a bowl of soup in my face. It apparently had no meat and no veges, it was just some sort of rice in some kind of flavoured soup. Ok. That was basically what I ordered. I asked for rice, and I got it. At least in some sort of weird soup form. I nodded and said “Ok” and accepted it.
It was fucking good. I mean it was really, really tasty. It’s not that I was starving or really hungry. It’s just that this particular rice soup was bloody nice. I ate all of it. Right down to the last spoonful. I turned to the girl and said “Em oi ? Tinh Tien”. I learnt that off Viet. I have heard it before, but I wasn’t positive about how to say it, but he said it slowly for me. It means “bill”. It’s just how you say “Ok, enough eating and drinking. Tell me how much I owe”
She nodded and grinned and ran off to the cash register or calculator and came back with a handwritten receipt that said that I owed 8,000 dong for the single beer and and 7,000 dong for the meal. I was thinking “Wow. Fuck me. I just paid 68 cents for a beer AND a meal and I’m now happy and full and willing to go home. That is hella fucking cool”.
Anyway, the dude was packing up and I had finished my meal and my beer so I paid my bill and I went home. Simple as. Good night though, right ? I don’t even know what the name is for what I ate. I could guess and say “Com Sup” but I’m not sure if they’d know what I was asking for if I asked for that. Anyway, it was good.
Ultimately I spent 68 fucking cents for a very tasty meal and a beer. Do I look unhappy with that ? No. I do not. It was very good and precisely what I wanted. I wanted a cheap meal from somewhere nearby where I’d never been that would satisfy me and be different from what I’d eaten elsewhere. I got exactly that, for a bargain price. I was happy.
Oh. I forgot one detail. There was a con meo there. “A what ?” I hear you ask. A cat, stupid. It was a little kitten no more than a year old and it walked up nearby to me and flopped on the ground beside me. I leaned over and put my hand out and said “Meo Meo Meo Meo Meo” thinking that it wouldn’t possibly get up and approach me, but it did. It walked over and rubbed against me. It was still a bit scaredy and at some loud noises from outside it would jump backwards and lift its ears and look around. But for the most part, it was very relaxed.
It sorta figured that anyone within its territory must be an OK person and it came up and rubbed against my hand and I scritched it and patted it on the head and it was supremely happy and it flopped down within arm’s reach of me so that I could scritch it more and when I went to do so it gnawed my hand and kicked at my hand with its back feet as a cat will do when it’s playing with someone.
Ahhhhh. Even if nothing else was worthwhile and if the food sucked and I didn’t want to eat it, I would have paid 68 cents just to play with this cat. I miss my cats back home. I’m going to see them next week though. I know Darwin’s going to ignore me and go “Fuck you. You left me. How dare you come back so many months later and expect me to care about you”, but Maccy is going to go “Oh Pawz. I’ve been with you for 11 fucking years and you have NEVER left me so for so long. I was so worried you were never coming back to me. I am so glad you came home. Please… scritch me behind my ears…. slap me on the rump and pick me up and cuddle me because I miss you so much because you have been there for me my whole life”.
Well. Maybe I’m putting too much into their heads but I don’t think it’s too much to believe. Amy Winehouse was recently talking on Triple J about animal rights and saying that there was once a man who owned a pig, and when he died, that pig went and collected all his favourite things in the entire world and piled them up and then slept on them because it knew that its favourite person in the world was gone and it missed him and wanted to reexperience that love.
Which is why I direct you towards an anime. A short story to be precise. And not only that, but I will direct you to a shortened version of that short story.
It is the very first public work of my most famous Japanese anime director, Makoto Shinkai. It is a short work called “She and her Cat” of less than five minutes. It is about a lonely Japanese woman who got a cat and the story is told from the cat’s perspective.
I cannot embed it because the uploader has, presumably on the author’s request, refused to allowed it to be embedded in external websites, so even though I could get around it, I won’t out of respect to the author. Here is the link. Open it and watch it now.
She and Her Cat. A short story.
Are you back now ? Have you watched it ? It’s pretty emotional, right ? Not everyone interprets it the same way. I have talked to people who have not gotten this meaning out of it at all, but I know that when my wife Joanna and I watched it for the first time we both got an odd meaning out of the story, and I am not afraid to tell you right now because I want to talk about it because I have never done so so publicly before.
I don’t know why I got this meaning. I’ve watched it again many times and I cannot tell what makes me feel this way. But for some reason we get the interpretation that the girl kills herself or that she goes away. You don’t see it. We know she is devastated and that she is upset and lonely. And the story ends without a conclusion, and for some reason I have always interpreted this to mean that the woman ends her life or goes away and leaves the cat, but there is really no evidence to suggest this.
The cat is so sad. The cat loves this woman. She is his whole life. His universe. He puts all his relationships with other cats on hold because he says “No, there is already someone who I love”. But the girl is too caught up in her own misery and sees the cat just as a pet, and while she loves him, he does not fulfill her life as she does his although he is still very important to her. And when her life goes downhill and bad things happen, it’s possible she ends it. And the cat is left alone.
It’s a bitter, sad story even though it should really be a simple story about an owner and her pet, but it makes me cry like a baby. My wife Joanna could not handle it and she cried so much. She said “I will never EVER watch that again. That is the saddest story I have ever seen in my entire life”. One time I tried to jokingly trick her into watching it by telling her it was something else, but one minute into it she said “This is ‘She and her Cat’ isn’t it ? You bastard ! I TOLD YOU I WOULD NEVER WATCH THIS AGAIN !!!”
If there’s one thing I once loved about Joanna, it wasn’t not her love of Asian music, because I got her into that, or her love of Japanmese horror movies because I got her into that too, or her love of Apple computers, because I was responsible for that also. (She was a copycat and would just borrow other people’s interests due to a lack of any of her own) But it’s the few things that she had her own opinion about, and “She and Her Cat” was one of them. She saw that short film and instantly understood what Makoto was saying and what the story he was trying to convey. She cried and was miserable and I comforted her that first time we watched it together and it was special.
Anyone can be into something and copy another’s interests, but that particular anime moved Joanna in a way that nothing else ever did in the 8 years I was with her. And that’s why it’s a special anime to me for many reasons. Personally, I love it on my own, but I think maybe I don’t love it as much as that first time that Joanna and I watched it together and we both cried and said “Oh my god. That poor cat”
So to the cute little black and white “con mèo” I met tonight. This story is for you. It’s about your brethren. It might not be real and it might not be about a specific cat, but it’s also about every cat and the way they feel about their owner.
So Maccy and Darwin. I know you’re mad at me for leaving you for so long but I’m going to be home soon I promise, and I’m going to give you big hugs and lots of kisses and fresh seafood. Don’t worry my boys. I love you and I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve just been busy. I’ll be home real soon. Promise.
