"Uh-Huh! That cat!"

“Uh-huh! That cat!” This was my helper, commenting on my first attempts at Chinese calligraphy. My work was simply a mimicking of what she’d just written on a scrap of brown paper bag. The whole improbable episode was prompted by a young friend passing along the market’s avenue, sporting a cap that bore the symbol of his college. Their mascot was a cat, but the Chinese writing on the young man’s cap represented a lion. My helper was quick to point this out.
“That LION, not CAT!” she said.
“Well, it’s supposed to be a cat,” he said.
“Not cat! Lion! Different!” She was pretty adamant about this, and I had to trust her, since this was after all her language the school was putting into play.
We were idling away the afternoon, with the market patrons paying little heed to my offerings, so I asked to see her rendering of the word “cat” in Chinese. Actually, the day’s customers had mostly bought up what I’d brought, and seemed unimpressed with the remaining items in the wooden cases, so it seemed a good time to digress from the regular market activities. She took a marker and produced some impressive lines on the scrap of bag she’d torn off, pointed out that she’d written the words for three animals: ‘Cat,’ ‘Dog,’ and ‘Lion.’
I took a thin and cheap pen, copied the lines for ‘cat’ as best I could, showed them to her.
“Uh-huh! That cat!”