decided to do a separate thread for this so here we go: how Song dynasty poet Lu You poem-liveblogged his descent from cat owner to cat slave 800 years ago

The year is 1183. Down On His Luck scholar-official Lu You gets a cat because rats keep munching on his books. 1/?

the effects are GREAT!! Lu You is delighted!!

THIS IS LITERALLY THE TITLE HE GAVE THE POEM I AM NOT MAKING SHIT UP

(also feel free to correct my translations because my classical chinese is not that good LOOOL) 2/?

several years later, Lu You gets ANOTHER CAT!! he calls it Snowy!! (probably had white fur then)

he loves it so much he suspects it was a child of his reincarnated from a past life 3/?

and then cat #3, Pink-Nose!!!

it seems that Lu You's cats have fish to eat now, but Pink-Nose seems to be slacking on its mice-eradicating duties...? 4/?

the power dynamics in the Lu household now seem to be experiencing some shifts. who is the master and who is the servant now?? 5/?

it finally hits Lu You, what has happened. he has made a terrible mistake, spoiling his cats so much. they're not working anymore. there is no going back. this is his life now. a life full of rats and birds his cats refuse to kill. 6/?

does this mean Lu You hates his cats now? naaah, son, he has accepted his fate and cuddles with them on stormy nights like the full-fledged cat slave he is 7/? https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1298727921201197056?s=20

(RELATABLE STRUGGLES AS IM TRYING TO DO THIS THREAD)

anyway if you noticed there's no Poem For My Cat 2, it's because it's technically this one that I translated for my post yesterday, but I can't quite place its timing in relation to the others

and there's one final poem but i'm so bad at translating it that I gave up loool. just know that Lu You was in a position where he'd be sad and lonely but he wasn't because he had his FAT CAT with him

Filing this under How People Lived in Ancient China https://twitter.com/i/events/1291769858258919424

Hope you enjoyed these 800-year-old cat liveblogs

More Chinese history tweets: http://linktr.ee/xiranjayzhao 

OH and I gotta add that in modern China, cat owners really are called Cat Slaves 猫奴 or Poop Shoveling Officers 铲屎官 (which implies that the cat is the emperor)

this thread is going around again so bringing this back

ALSO for those who missed it, there's another poet around this era who also wrote cat poems!! https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1305252079498272772?s=20