When the white cat arrived beneath the Cat Fruit Tree, the black cat was squinting as it listened to the symphony of the night.
The evening breeze brushed over the treetops and slipped through the neatly trimmed bushes below, making a soft rustling sound that formed the symphony's underlying score.
Frogs croaked in the distance from Linzhong Lakefront. Having only just crawled from their muddy burrows after the long winter, they lacked some vigor, yet their voices brimmed with the joy of new life. Nearby came the low chirping of insects amid the grass and beneath the shrubs. Honestly, the black cat could not tell the calls of katydids, bell crickets, grasshoppers, and tree crickets apart. It only felt that amid that tangled clamor flowed an unexpectedly soothing harmony.
Birds also sang sweetly beneath the moonlight.
The lake water rippled quietly.
The occasional human voice drifted past.
Even the twinkling stars on the horizon, the bright moon overhead, and the damp, hazy mist—these silent sights seemed to have found their voices, gathering around the black cat and making even the tip of its tail curl contentedly.
Dozens of cats, large and small, hung from the branches and swayed with the wind. Their meows rose and fell, utterly unlike the usual quiet. The black cat did not mind. It probably knew that, with winter ending and spring beginning, the season when the cat group gradually grew restless had arrived once again.
Several newly arrived young female cats perched on thin branches not far from the black cat. Curled up, they gazed at it with big, innocent, glittering eyes and meowed softly.
The black cat remained unmoved.
Only when the He Shou Wu at its feet nearly slipped off the "throne" on its slender root-legs did it lift an eyelid and use