It’s Monday evening and I’m tired from a semi longish day trying to persuade my students to engage in the learning process so I’m offering another instalment of Mops of Shanghai.
This first set of mops is from just at the entrance to our building. There are usually a few there, balanced atop one another, drying in the sunshine. They have a good life. They seem happy, by mop standards.
These ones are at the gate to our building (the entrance is round back), belonging to the massage parlor that occupies the bottom front portion of it. They don’t seem as rested or calm as the entrance ones. Dishevelled, a bit scraggly, with only a fire hydrant to perch on. They have each other.
Back at the entrance to our building, we find the weekend cat buffet. It seems to only come out at weekends and I’m guessing there is free flowing champagne as well in the guard house. During the week, the cats only get a small tray with a handful of kibble from a jar in the utility room.
And this is Captain Rainbow, the primary cat of our building, the cat with fabulously mismatched blue and green eyes. There are other cats that come and go, all related in their whiteness. Captain Rainbow is our constant though, and can be found in the bushes or, when available, parking spot #10. At our old flat, we had a family of ginger cats who were also well catered to. That whole mythology about Chinese people and cats and stir fries (probably based on famines/deprivation/great leap forward agrarian miscalculation) does not apply here. These cats are well tended to.
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