Flower Lounge (10) -- Black Bean and Tiger

Urban household cats are prisoners serving life sentences.

All day long, all life long, apartment cats stalk their own shadows cast by indoor lights. Most will never get the chance to confront a real mouse. The only nocturnal fun is to curl up against stinky human feet, purring for favour. Cats of my childhood got to enjoy a rich variety of leftovers and fishbones. Nowadays, their descendants eat exactly the same measured portions of desiccated tablets with an artificial hint of one or two industrial flavours, for as long as they live.

Dogs, too dumb for toilet-training, get to take daily pee-breaks outdoors at public lamp posts. Human jailbirds, unfit for society, get to chase balls in a playground for an hour most days. But cats, smart and cute and all that, have to do their business indoors in a plastic box, then kick the turds out vigorously with a cloud of litter to vent frustration. No wonder many house cats appear emotionally unstable, dashing between sofas for no reason, or attempting self-suffocation in shoe boxes, or lying down to stare at their bowls incredulously for hours, cynically wondering what’s for dinner, again. Their owners adore these obvious symptoms of derangement — aw! Laughing at mentally broken house pets is somehow not considered mean.

Tong Fuk cats are lucky exceptions. They are free, freer than the inmates, freer than the guards.

When my incarcerated colleagues and I filed between bungalows and playground to fulfil our duties of sleeping, eating, sewing and ball kicking, the most watchful stares did not come from the guards. Scores of feral cats monitored us from vantage points. Most were fixed, asexuality identified by a clipped ear. But neutering was evidently no more effective than the one child policy in population control. There were reportedly more than seventy plus spoiled felines which had marked Tong Fuk their territory.

‘That’s Black Bean. This is Nightmare,’ a friendly See Hing pointed them out to me at the playground with parental pride. He spent his playground time purring at cats rather than chasing a football.

‘See that stripy one? That’s Tiger.’ Anyone could have guessed that. He then picked up a creamy specimen rubbing against his ankle. ‘This cutie pie is Pancake. Hello sweetie.’ He never swore in front of cats.

As he picked a booger from Pancake’s face, Long Hair crouched atop a garbage bin a few meters away, studying human behaviour. ‘He’s very naughty,’ said the Cat Slave, throwing a loving glance at Long Hair who evidently didn’t care a whit about his opinion. If it could roll its eyes contemptuously, it would have.

Naughty? What a stupid word from a thug. Naughty humans like you get locked up. Naughty cats like me get admired. Go cry about it. Meow.

In Lai Chi Kok, their phantom existence was creepily announced through caterwauling. I had not spotted a single cat there, not even the shadow of one, but their wailing punctured my smothered dreams night after night. Here at Tong Fuk, they were high profile and ubiquitous. Some were the most beautiful cats I had ever seen. The genetic superiority of wild procreation over fussy breeding was all too evident.

Many inmates shamelessly begged for their attention. They doted on the furry critters like lonely old ladies. Out of earshot of the cats, the Cat Slave once told me that he had chopped off someone’s leg in broad daylight on a busy street in Mongkok for a handsome fee. I had said wow, wondering if he had exaggerated. How much does it take to chop off a human leg without the assistance of a chainsaw? Listening to his high-pitched come kitty kitty, I couldn’t believe he would hurt a fly. Perhaps his story was pure fantasy. Perhaps like most prisoners, he lived in low-cost housing, and was burdened by a risky unsteady job with odd hours. He probably never had the opportunity to be a pet parent, until now.

Some American prisons had pet adoption programmes which reportedly helped reduce violence and anti-social behaviours. The maximum-security Indiana State Prison, for example, worked with animal shelter agencies and kept seventy-five cats. In fine American style, each cat was given an ID badge with adorable names such as Ziggy and Buffy. There was an application and approval process, of course, including panel interviews. The adopted cats lived in the inmates’ cells for the duration of their stay, and were attached to their owners with a leash during yard time. Naturally, there were strict rules to follow, with stipulated punishments for breaking them. Failing to clean the litter box was one of them. It sounds like another layer of stress to me, one more tool to put the cons over a barrel. Look, want me to take your cat away? But the experimental project was famously successful, with a long waiting list.

By comparison, Tong Fuk was socialistically laissez-faire. Unofficial cats shared the inmates according to a scheme unbeknownst to the relevant authority. Everyone was free to give them names. Call them what you like. They won’t respond anyway. To the free-roaming kitties, badges and leashes were totally out of the question.

In the dining hall, they shifted under the tables during mealtime. Inmates fought to ingratiate themselves. Choice inmates who offered the best morsels in a prompt and dignifying manner, without fatuous enticement rituals, might receive a laptop purr if they also gave a good massage.

Ming Suk was a diminutive old Triad with mousey eyes flickering between cunningness and melancholy. He was one of a few older inmates who ignored me. On chicken wing days, he would go around the tables to collect bones for his cat masters. Due to seniority, he had an unfair advantage over my Cat Slave See Hing in their competition for feline favour. He carried with his person a bag of cat biscuits. Cat food was not an official item. I had no idea where and how he got it. I supposed a small and innocuous prerogative for the elders of a largely ‘self-disciplined team’ was not unreasonable.

Lo and behold! None of the cats would touch the minnows we prisoners were fed five nights per week. When tossed a piece, inexperienced kittens would sniff, shudder and walk away. Older and wiser ones looked away. Had the officer in charge of meal planning investigated this highly unusual animal behaviour, he might have learned something about the fish the human inmates were fed.

It’s late evening at the dormitory. The main lights have just been turned off.

A silhouette appears in the moonlight at one of the elevated windows. It slides effortlessly through the bars, followed by a companion, then another. They perch silently at the sill for a moment, looking down onto lumps of humans underfoot. Some are snoring. Some listening to the news on the radio, as if it has relevance to their isolated existence. Some are repeating the same stories to each other — the one about breaking a beer bottle over someone’s head at Prat Avenue.

Some are waiting, anticipating, yearning for their arrival.

Having assessed the harem, the hairy princes jump down and proceed to sniff out the lucky ones whom they plan to spend the night with. There are never more than a few royal visitors. Their Hairy Highnesses know how to ration. Giving too much in one go would spoil these thugs. Three per night. Maybe five on a full moon. No more. They have a strategic duty roster to keep these feeding hands hopeful and eager.

Hello Darlings… Meow meow! Kitty kitty kitty. Me me me!

The humans crawl and fawn over the visitors with hard-earned junk food. The princes sample a little from each before settling down with a chosen few who massage just right. Rejected suiters sigh and pull prickly blankets over long faces.

The night is long. Time’s precious even with nine lives.

Before dawn broke, they would leave simultaneously. They saunter to the windows, hop and float up the sill silently, then glance back to give a perfunctory parting meow. Watching them gliding insouciantly through unyielding steel bars, returning to the dark side, is tormenting to those yearning for freedom underneath. As usual, admiration turns into slavish adoration.

One torrential evening, a young Triad rescued a newborn kitten from a makeshift nursery constructed by him inside a rubbish bin in the courtyard. The mother must have been stuck in the rain somewhere. Where are its brothers and sisters? I wondered as the young man dried the smuggled kitten with his face towel. He then fed it milk equivalent to a day’s wages.

Next morning, the rain had stopped. He returned it to the mother. The four-legged mum was so stirred that she tripped over the gutter while hurrying away, kitty dangling from her mouth. It would have made a touching video clip, the kind which attracted millions of likes.

Cats kept the place relatively rat free, a small miracle considering the amount of freely strewn junk food and consumable garbage. I had only witnessed one rat during my stay at Tong Fuk — a super giant the size of a small cat. It misjudged its own size, and got itself wedged between two bars in the workshop gate while escaping. Ming Suk put it inside a transparent plastic bag and left it outside for the cats to toy with. Only a professional crook could dream of such an entertainment. Unfortunately, the rest of us had to work, so missed the sadistic spectacle. The noise was wild. It would have made another viral clip unless the amount of blood exceeded community standards.

With this portfolio, I no longer need to lug a garbage bag along all day

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Next Episode Routine and Cuisine

will be uploaded around 24/8/2025