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The Vietnamese neighbour keeps the cat on a leash, forcing him to stand still tied to the door. The cat meows every night. From my door I peek through the underworld and he slowly increases his meow, which becomes very loud, like a scream of desperation. He is the only one in this building I communicate with, because he understands me and I understand him. To communicate with the tiger cat, I don't need Google Translator, as I have to do with almost every human here. The cat is serving a sort of long term sentence, like a small life sentence made of loud TV, screams from the landing, first the children and then the nocturnal ones of jerked orgasms and then strong of all the closed doors that surround this building. The average age of the population in Vietnam is about thirty years old and therefore statistically the frequency of children and sex life is much higher than my ears and those cats can hear normally in Europe. In the same way the cat is a European family cat, and is as foreign as I am right now. The cat would love to go out and gnaw the leftovers from the chicken legs and pigeons that all other humans throw down here. They call it a market. In the morning I watch them, with these straw top hats, sometimes wider and sometimes narrower. The women stand with their backs straight and carry a stick with a string and two baskets that usually contain many objects including dragon fruit. But this the cat on the landing does not know. Not enough are all the scratches given at first discreetly and then insistently on the door. His scratching technique is very elaborate, I dare say strategic. Meow and then fingernail for fingertip for fingertip lashes a blow, the pressure of the nails is first discreet, then decisive and finally desperate. But to the cat the more it moves and the more it is tightened the leash (that for the conventionalities of socialism is purple red.) it is still a cat of a certain type. it has an honour to respect. I don't sleep because I'm changing my skin, like dragons scale me. If I go to bed, I'm under attack. Some say fleas, some say mattress bugs. I hear the cat and I think I'll hold a paw and teach it to evaporate.