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)