The White-Nosed Cat (Taiwan)

A long time ago, somewhere in the south of Taiwan, a wealthy couple were blessed with the birth of a son, their only child. However, this boy, called Ah Fu, grew up to be a lazy good-for-nothing, for his parents spoiled him shamelessly. He became more and more indolent as his mother and father refused to discipline him and turned their eyes away from his shortcomings, which were many. By the time he was a young adult, he was unable to master even the most basic of chores, such as survival skills like simple bookkeeping or cooking, all because he couldn't be bothered staying out of bed long enough to learn them.

Ah Fu remained lazy and generally worthless, and his doting parents persisted in not seeing just how lazy their only son was.

Then came the day when he was all alone in the house his ancestors had built. His mother and father were now gone, but life went on much the way it always had--days and nights of sleeping, eating, and more sleeping. However, money doesn't generate more money unless one plans for it, and so one day Ah Fu found himself in a small brick house furnished with only a grass mat and a blanket. The big house had been sold to pay debts, the servants had all been dismissed, and the family fortune was now but a memory.

Under these circumstances anybody with a bit of sense would go out into the world to make a living, but not Ah Fu. He preferred, as he always had, to lie on his mat and sleep. As expected, the longer he slept, the weaker he became because he no longer had money to buy food.

He had lain on his mat for three days now. He knew that he was dying; an inner voice had told him so. He summoned up every ounce of strength left to him, stood up and staggered out of his brick hut, leaving the door ajar. He headed for the local temple of the God of Wealth.

He made it to the temple altar and collapsed upon the flagstone floor. Again, he managed to summon some strength to prop himself up on his elbows.

"Please," he prayed to the god, "grant me a string of gold coins so that I may live and not starve. I don't want to die of hunger; I don't want to turn into a wretched, wandering hungry ghost . . . "

Immediately he found himself in the spectral realm of the God of Wealth. Before him was seated the god himself. Above Ah Fu was standing a giant of a man with muscles rippling in all directions. The man held an iron whip in his right hand. He cracked the whip right before Ah Fu's eyes.

"Ah Fu!" snarled the giant. "You useless, miserable bag of bones! You deserve to become a hungry ghost, the most wretched one there is! You dare ask for money without doing any kind of honest labor?"

"Have mercy . . . have mercy . . . " Ah Fu said, almost inaudibly.

"Have mercy?" The giant's voice boomed into Ah Fu's ears. "Why do you of all people deserve any mercy?"

Ah Fu, too afraid to look up, managed to say, "I don't want to die a despised pauper! I'm not such a bad man, a little lazy perhaps . . ."

"Silence!" roared the giant. "The God of Wealth wishes to speak!"

The giant then stepped over to the throne of the God of Wealth and spoke to his master. After a minute or so, the giant returned to where Ah Fu lay helpless upon the floor.

"Ah Fu! The God of Wealth is truly merciful. He has agreed to spare your unworthy life by giving you a string of gold coins. You shall receive them provided that you agree to mend your greedy, slothful ways. You must use the money wisely to feed yourself so that you may have the energy to seek employment! Do you agree to the terms?"

Ah Fu nodded weakly. The giant then cracked his whip on Ah Fu's head. Excruciating pain split his skull, and for several seconds brilliant bolts of lightning pierced his eyeballs.

"Aiioh!" he cried. "I'm dead!"

He opened his eyes slowly. He was lying on his back on his own straw bed. He was back in the small brick hut and he was alive. The trip to the temple and the journey to the court of the God of Wealth had all been a dream. But had it? Was it not true that the gods often communicated with mortals through dreams?

Ah Fu began thinking. The bizarre experience had been too real for a mere dream. He lay very still and thought about it.

Yes, he thought, I've been rescued. I will get a string of gold coins from the God of Wealth!

He then went to sleep while planning what he would do with the money, the money that would be in the palm of his hand when he awoke. He fell asleep with a smile on his face.

Ah Fu died in his sleep three days later.

The next time he awoke, he found himself in the Land of the Dead, the domain of King Yanluo. This was a far different place than the court of the God of Wealth.

"What's this? I've been tricked!" cried Ah Fu.

"Yes, that's what many say," said King Yanluo's keeper of the Book of Life, that huge volume which lists the names, life spans, and fates of all those born into the world of mortals.

"No! You don't understand!" insisted Ah Fu. "I've really been tricked! The God of Wealth promised me gold, and he never delivered it!"

"The God of Wealth? Hmm," said the keeper of the Book, "that's a pretty serious charge."

Ah Fu protested so much that his complaint was relayed to King Yanluo, who, in turn, reported it to the God of Wealth. Soon, Ah Fu was summoned to King Yanluo's throne room to appear before both gods.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Ah Fu?" roared stern King Yanluo. "The Book of Life clearly states you were to starve to death. "

"But the God of Wealth promised me a string of gold coins so that I might live and turn my life around!" Ah Fu replied.

The God of Wealth would not stand idly by. "Ah Fu!" he said. "Four or five times did one of my messengers knock on your door. Each time he received no answer. Had you bothered to get up to open your own door, you would have gotten your gold!"

Ah Fu looked down at his feet. "I . . . fell . . . asleep . . . " he said.

King Yanluo looked at Ah Fu and chuckled, "It's hard to dislike you, Ah Fu, because you are not really a bad person. Your laziness has been your downfall, but I can see how you might have thought your gold was to come to you in a different manner and why you were not ready for it when it finally did arrive.

"Because of all this and owing to the fact that an ancestor of yours had performed a meritorious deed, I am giving you another chance. I will allow you to be reborn as a human in any future occupation you desire. Now tell me, Ah Fu, what would you like to be in your next life? A merchant perhaps? How about an imperial chamberlain?"

Ah Fu thought a moment and then said, "I would like to be reborn as a white-nosed cat."

King Yanluo couldn't believe his ears. "What!" he roared. "Are you trying to be funny now?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Then explain yourself. Why do you wish to be reborn as a white-nosed cat?"

"Well, Your Majesty," said Ah Fu, "such a cat wouldn't have to work for food as hard as a man does or even search for mice as hard as an alley cat. Mice would mistake its white nose for grains of rice. Such a cat could then feed itself without moving practically a muscle. Mice would just leap into its jaws!"

"So you'd really rather be reborn as a white-nosed cat instead of a person?" asked the astonished King of the Dead. "Did I hear you correctly?"

"Oh, yes. People have to work much too hard to stay alive!"

"So be it!" said King Yanluo. "Ah Fu, you are hereby destined to be reborn as a white-nosed cat in your next life!"

And with those words, a white-nosed kitten was instantly born into a litter of kittens somewhere in our world. It was a very lazy kitten and eventually grew into an even lazier cat. It could afford to be lazy, for it always had its fill of mice just by lying still and allowing all the mice around to crawl up to its white nose and waiting jaws!

Notes

from Qiu Jie, pp. 6-9.

Cats have a rather sinister reputation in China. It is said that if a cat jumps over a corpse or coffin, the dead will soon become reanimated and terrorize the living, a tradition known also to other cultures (Ong Hean-Tatt, 228). In southeastern China, including Taiwan, dead cats have often not been buried but hung from trees to prevent their spirits from becoming malevolent after death (Wolfram Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, 58-59). Cats are also regarded as lazy, a notion that befits the cat in this story. Thus, it may not be a total surprise that the cat did not make it into the Chinese zodiac, though the tiger is represented. 

Motifs: D142, "Man transformed to cat"; E722.2.10, "Soul taken away by a god"; M201.0.1, "Bargain with a god."