In the evening when the rest of the family was busy gulping beer, cracking sunflower seeds and playing long, loud games of cards, Nai Nai would sneak away to be with us. Nai Nai was the oldest Ren, in the Xu household, the human family who owned the siheyuan we lived in.

Look at how she has obeyed the one-child policy and produced you you Little Emperor cat you very pretty maomi.’

‘You are a model cat for the new China and your Ma a model citizen. ‘Maomi! Little kitten!’ Nai Nai would croon as she tickled me into wiggly delight. I knew this was very unusual for us cats because we tended to have large families. I simply couldn’t understand why anyone would waste their time sleeping. There was so much to do and see and explore. I never felt tired and Ma had given up trying to get me to take an afternoon nap. I was golden, like a tiger and full of energy and strength. The more I thought of the creamy milk I would soon be slurping down, the faster I ran until I was bounding at full speed, the warm spring wind rushing past. I began to trot back towards the corner of the covered corridor where Nai Nai had made a home of old cloth and cardboard for Ma and me. In the heat of the dragonfly chase I’d forgotten how late it was definitely time for lunch. I was still too young she said.īut I felt that even though I was small, I was quick and talented and fierce and dragonflies should beware of me. It was much harder than it sounded and no matter how silently I stalked or how quickly I jumped, I had always failed. I had been trying to catch a dragonfly from the time my eyes had opened. In a flash it had disappeared over the grey brick walls of the courtyard. I wanted to leap high, higher than I ever had before, up into the white sky and pluck it out of the air.īut just at the moment I was readying to launch, Ma’s penetrating meow called me back for a lunchtime feed and sent the dragonfly gliding away from my outstretched claws. I moved an inch closer and then another inch, until it was hovering directly above me, darting in and out of a bamboo thicket, totally unaware that I was so close. The buzzing of the dragonfly was deliciously exciting. But I forced myself to ignore the itch and focus on the prey in sight. A beam of hot sun leaked through the leaves of the tree I was crouching under.

Smoke And Mirrors by Pallavi Aiyar