decided to do a separate thread for this so here we go: how Song dynasty poet Lu You poem-liveblogged his descent from cat owner to cat slave 800 years ago
The year is 1183. Down On His Luck scholar-official Lu You gets a cat because rats keep munching on his books. 1/?
the effects are GREAT!! Lu You is delighted!!
THIS IS LITERALLY THE TITLE HE GAVE THE POEM I AM NOT MAKING SHIT UP
(also feel free to correct my translations because my classical chinese is not that good LOOOL) 2/?
several years later, Lu You gets ANOTHER CAT!! he calls it Snowy!! (probably had white fur then)
he loves it so much he suspects it was a child of his reincarnated from a past life 3/?
and then cat #3, Pink-Nose!!!
it seems that Lu You's cats have fish to eat now, but Pink-Nose seems to be slacking on its mice-eradicating duties...? 4/?
the power dynamics in the Lu household now seem to be experiencing some shifts. who is the master and who is the servant now?? 5/?
it finally hits Lu You, what has happened. he has made a terrible mistake, spoiling his cats so much. they're not working anymore. there is no going back. this is his life now. a life full of rats and birds his cats refuse to kill. 6/?
does this mean Lu You hates his cats now? naaah, son, he has accepted his fate and cuddles with them on stormy nights like the full-fledged cat slave he is 7/?
(RELATABLE STRUGGLES AS IM TRYING TO DO THIS THREAD)
anyway if you noticed there's no Poem For My Cat 2, it's because it's technically this one that I translated for my post yesterday, but I can't quite place its timing in relation to the others
and there's one final poem but i'm so bad at translating it that I gave up loool. just know that Lu You was in a position where he'd be sad and lonely but he wasn't because he had his FAT CAT with him
Filing this under How People Lived in Ancient China twitter.com/i/events/12917…
Hope you enjoyed these 800-year-old cat liveblogs😂
More Chinese history tweets: linktr.ee/xiranjayzhao
OH and I gotta add that in modern China, cat owners really are called Cat Slaves 猫奴 or Poop Shoveling Officers 铲屎官 (which implies that the cat is the emperor) 🥴
this thread is going around again so bringing this back
ALSO for those who missed it, there's another poet around this era who also wrote cat poems!!
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