"Cat" is about people around my age -- early middle age? -- as China and the world were on the verge of plunging into World War II. The story centers on Li Jianhou and his wife Aimo, both of whom are children of late Qing "relics," older men who have had to learn to sell their cultural capital to get by in Beiping, a city transformed by the loss of the emperor. We can see from an early dialogue about a cat named "Darkie" that all of the characters suffer from vanity, but Aimo's is featured first when she decides to use her honeymoon as an opportunity to travel to Japan for plastic surgery.
The story is called "Cat" because the couple's cat is the first thing mentioned in the first sentence:
“打狗要看主人面，那么，打貓要看主婦面了－－”頤谷這樣譬釋著，想把心上一團蓬勃的憤怒象梳理亂發似的平順下去。
"Beat a dog, watch for the master's face; well then, beat a cat, watch for the mistress's face..."
As we soon find out, Yigu is mad at the cat because it has messed up the copy of Jianhou's manuscript that Yigu, Jianhou's secretary, is supposed to take care of. The cat spilled ink all over the pages. From here, the story immediately digresses at length on how the cat got its name -- from 黑子, which seemed too coarse, to "Dark lady," which was suitably elegant, but too long for Aimo, to Darkie, which suited her, even though that translates 黑子 well, and so could be said to be just as course. In a final zinger, Darkie was transliterated into Chinese as 淘氣, which means naughty (but is perhaps better than 妲己, an evil empress of ancient times.) I want to break down, or rather, sum up, this digression.
Note the play from coarse and vulgar to elegant, which is revealed to be something coarse and vulgar again. This seems to be the basic gesture throughout the story -- we try to put on nice clothes, learn some foreign phrases and social mores, and so display elegance and refinement, but the short-shrift we give to the cultural context makes the gesture at refinement only an expression of vanity. And isn't that coarse again?
But that makes me wonder: how justify refinement, in any case? Why ever have cats, or stylish clothes, or sophisticated tastes in anything? Here I'm stuck for the moment. A few more raw notes:
一個愛慕李太太的詩人說“：在西洋文藝复興的時候，標准美人都要生得黑，我們讀莎士比亞和法國七星派詩人的十四行詩，就知道使他們顛倒的都是些黑美人。我個人也覺得黑比白來得神秘，富于含蓄和誘惑。
Character thinks of foreign social mores, and forms his own judgement; it's all a charade as he just wants to flirt with Aimo. Reminiscent of early Henry James?
她受過美國式的教育，養成一种逢人叫小名以表親昵的習气，就是見了莎士比亞的面，她也會叫他bill，何況貓呢？Americanized Aimo would call Shakespeare "Bill," if she met him.
它到李家不足兩年，在這兩年里，日本霸占了東三省，北平的行政机构改組了一次，非洲亡了一個國，興了一個帝國，國際聯盟暴露了真相，只算一個國際聯夢或者一群國際聯盲，但是李太太并沒有換丈夫，淘气還保持著主人的寵愛和自己的頑皮。
Political content erupts here.
假使我們在這些才具之外，更申明她住在戰前的北平，你馬上獲得結論：她是全世界文明頂古的國家里第一位高雅華貴的太太。
The setting, Beiping, combines the gesture of coarse to elegant, elegant is still coarse, with the political content. The major changes to the world put in motion Beiping's bizarre effort to seem refined.
這樣，本來不屑撿舊貨的人現在都來買古玩了，本來不得已而光顧舊貨攤的人現在也添了身分，算是收藏古董的雅士了。
Social change reflected here, again. What exactly is the satire here? The failure to actually deal with the problems, right?
因此當時報紙上鬧什么“京派”，知識分子們上溯到“北京人”為開派祖師，所以北京雖然改名北平，他們不自稱“平派”。
Artistic content -- Zhongshu takes aim at the artistic circles and debates of the 1920s, 30s.
幸而他有個門生，失節作了民國的大官，每月送筆孝敬給他。
A clip from the passage on the couple's fathers -- a fascinating caricature of the breeding of the main characters, though possibly tangential and juvenile in terms of structure.
先生的父親和他是同鄉，极早就講洋務，做候補道時上過“富國裕民”的條陳，奉憲委到上海向洋人定購机器，清朝亡得太早，沒領略到條陳的好處，他只富裕了自己。
The refined/vulgar tension again.
“吃中國菜，住西洋房子，娶日本老婆，人生無遺憾矣！”
The failure of the older generation breeds failure in the next.
我的臉也就是你的面子。
Aimo knows that she is an accoutrement to Jianhou, a key feature of his own appearance of refinement. The motif of "face," here in metaphorical and literal senses at once. (She is going to have plastic surgery.)
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