Funny and I Am a Cat Should

¶ … Funny" and "I Am a Cat" should be considered together, birds and cats being as they are to each other. Still, one doesn't have to go too far to understand why Kamienska used a bird to ask what it's like to be human; Kamienska must have felt much like a caged bird herself throughout much of her life, living in a country where one must have spent a lot of time "filling up on hunger." Funny," of course, is anything but funny, another embedded irony.

The bird flew effortlessly up into the air upon hearing the distress of the human, not the least of which was distress at the time-bound nature of human life. More than that, however, the human knows she only has a limited time to be human, something the bird doesn't think about. The bird is merely curious, not particularly thoughtful. The bird's cavalier attitude makes it all the more ironic that the human begins -- at the simple question -- to ponder deep thoughts about the meaning of life.

And this, too, is ironic since it is obvious that the bird didn't really care. For the bird, asking was just something to pass the time, which seemed to the bird to stretch endlessly in front of it as it soared away. I am a Cat is, both in length and depth of investigation, a more complete ironic picture of human life. It opens in pathos, with the poor kitten being tortured by the Student.

It begins in a very human way, searching for food, comfort, shelter with the cat emotional about it, as a human would be. It ends in a very cat-like way, with the cat at a place of acceptance, but it is the acceptance of knowledge, not really of resignation as the cat itself contends. In this way, Soseki reveals that the human condition is, in fact, not much different than that of the cat. The cat, however, is luckier than the Schoolteacher with whom it lives.

In coming to live with human beings, I have had the chance to observe them and the more I do, the more I come to the conclusion that they are terribly spoiled, especially the children," the cat says. He complains about them holding him upside down, about neglecting his needs. Taking the cat as a metaphor for weaker humans, there is a fine irony in the cat's tales of human cruelty, including the drowning of four kittens, disposable living things.

Moreover, putting this scene in juxtaposition with the cat's information that a cat will protect its food, but won't fight for much else certainly casts humanity in a negative light. In this regard, at least, the cat is a nobler creature than the human. That humans are insensitive is further explored by the cat in the minutest details.

For example, when the Schoolteacher decides to paint the cat, and the cat needs a bathroom break, the human fails to understand that the cat was not being thoughtless of the human's need to paint, but simply needed to relieve himself. Still, he had interfered with the human's program and was cursed at for it. The Schoolteacher didn't know many curses; the Schoolteacher, it seems isn't really very good at much of anything, as is apparent from the cat's descriptions.

It is ironic, then, that this relatively passionless, talentless man should be the unwitting savior of the cat, simply because he has no particular enthusiasm to do otherwise. He passively allows the cat to stay, so much so that he fails to bestow on it a name. Through the cat, the reader learns that the Schoolteacher is the most ordinary, most colorless of humans and it is only through his total lack of active human attributes that we learn at base what a human life is.

It is shapeless and colorless, unless one applies the color and paint one's self. Still, the Schoolteacher explores many kinds of self-expression; the cat merely observes them, especially through the character Kuro, the rickshawman's cat. Kuro, like the Schoolteacher's trickster friend, engages his world and tries to best it through cunning and strength of a certain kind. With the Schoolteacher's friend, one is not quite sure when to believe him, and when not to. It is the same with Kuro. The cat is.