Can Cat Language Be Translated Too, Meow?

When I was little, there was a mother cat and her daughter that had settled into the barn at our house in the countryside. It happened to be school vacation, so I had plenty of time on my hands, and watching the cat family play while I sat in the shade became my daily routine. At first the cat family was extremely wary of me, but before long a curious relationship formed between us. The cats never approached me first, and I, for my part, never tossed them so much as a fish bone. Yet over the course of a day spent gazing into each other’s eyes and then pretending not to notice each other, over and over, I think we grew fairly used to one another. The mother cat would flick her tail this way and that to play with her kitten, but she would also often drift off to sleep, blinking her big eyes slowly shut, and I never disturbed those short naps, not even as a joke. Sometimes the mother cat would put the kitten to sleep and disappear, perhaps off to hunt. At times like that, I would watch from a distance, ready to come to the kitten’s rescue should anything happen. Fortunately, nothing ever did.

Time passed, the cat family left, and I too left the countryside house with its yard and moved to the city. The events of that time were forgotten entirely. A few years later, I had occasion to stay at the countryside house for a while. As I was walking across the yard, I spotted a cat on top of the jangdokdae over on the far side. It stood there perfectly still, looking at me, and even as I drew closer it didn’t run away but only kept meowing. We gazed at each other like that for a long while. And when the cat leaped lightly over the wall and vanished - it even turned to look back at me once, right before clearing the wall - only then did I finally realize that it had been that very kitten from back then.

At least, that’s what I believe.

Goyangimal Yeonguhoe (Cat Language Research Society). 2017. Can Cat Language Be Translated Too, Meow. Translated by Hyewon. Banni.