Lao She’s prophetic novella describes a planet that is backwards and unaccommodating, but in truth, cats are more apathetic and lazy creatures. The black and white patterned calico that I spotted on my way to morning classes barely moved from the top of the stairs to the bottom as I returned from a very comprehensive, jargon-heavy review of the Asian Financial Crisis. But of course, such worldly affairs are completely irrelevant to the cats of the Lingnan campus, whose main concern is the quality of their upcoming meal. The girl on feeding duty tells me that they must alternate between dry and wet food so that the cats do not become too spoiled.
I still have not figured out how many cats exactly live on this campus. There is the black one who constantly meows at me, and the orange one who habitually ignores me. For all I know, they may have their own economy set up, complete with a linked exchange rate system backed up with foreign reserves with cats outside of campus. But this is just idle speculation.