My "people-hating" father's clumsy kindness: A cat revealed his true self

I feel that when people interact with animals, a "side of them" that they never show to other humans emerges. My father is the type who is bad at dealing with people. He is a misanthrope who uses rough language and says things like, "I don't need friends." Yet, he turns into a different person only when he is with cats. Seeing that side of him feels like touching the true nature of his kindness.

The "Atonement to his Beloved Dog" that my Brutal Father Carried

My father was originally a "dog person." Before I was born, our family lived with a dog. In old photo albums, there are pictures of my father smiling with his beloved dog.

Why did we stop living with a dog...? Wondering about this, I once asked my mother. According to her, the reason was that their dog died after choking on its favorite treat—chikuwa—which they had given it as a snack, as they always did.

Blaming himself while crying his eyes out, my father vowed, "I will never keep a dog again." That seemed to be his act of atonement.

So why did he start welcoming cats into our home later on? When I posed this question to my mother, she gave an unexpected answer: "Because someone from his company gave us a Siamese cat."

The Siamese cat, whom we named Mimi, was a mixed breed, and because she was not purebred, her original owner had let her go. My father, feeling sorry for her having nowhere to go, seemed to have taken her in.

When I heard that story, I learned about the depth of a human being. The father I knew had a harsh way of speaking; even when I was crying as a student, he would belittle my tears by saying, "Are you crying over something like that?"

Since that was the only side of my father I knew, I was surprised that he actually possessed the capacity to care for living things and feel sadness; at the same time, I thought, "People are truly multi-faceted creatures."

The Awkwardness of a Father Who Can't Say "I Want to Keep a Cat"

There was a strange rule in my parents' home: whenever a cat passed away, the next one would arrive. Thus, there was never a period when there wasn't a cat in the house.

Cats always arrived unexpectedly. I would hear a cat's voice at night, and the next day, one would be sitting in the garden. At such times, my father would sprinkle water in the garden, carefully avoiding the cat, and chase it away, saying, "We can't keep it."

Whenever I saw that scene, which you could call a recurring ritual, it was customary for me as a child to plead, "That's so sad! Let's keep it." My father would continue sprinkling water for about two days, but if the cat still wouldn't stop coming to the garden, he would suddenly ask me, "...Do you want to keep the cat?"

When I replied "Yeah!", he would bluntly say, "Go prepare some food for it," stop the watering, and instantly switch to "welcoming mode."

The fact that he would only take them in after asking me if I wanted to keep them was probably his own excuse. I think that because some emotion held him back and he couldn't bring himself to say "I want to keep one," he used the reason "the child wants to keep it, so it can't be helped..." to bring the cats into our home.

To my younger self, that awkwardness of my father was deeply mysterious. But now that I am an adult, I think I understand it a little. Carrying the guilt of letting his beloved dog die, perhaps my father believed he didn't have the right to keep an animal just for his own sake.

Perhaps my father isn't just a brutal person after all. Seeing my father through the filter of a cat reveals weaknesses and kindnesses I never knew existed, leaving me with a strange feeling.

The "True Face" My Father, Who I Thought Was Cold, Shows Only to Cats

Looking back, I feel it was my father who taught me the weight of an animal's life. Whenever I asked to keep a cat that came to the garden, or when I picked up a cat that had been abandoned in a shopping mall parking lot, he would say to me every time in a stern tone, "You know animals live for decades, right?"

His tone at those times was always so harsh that as a child, I would feel frustrated, thinking, "You don't have to talk like that!" But now that I'm an adult, I'm glad he taught me that way.

Because my father hammered it home every time we welcomed a cat, and because I thought—even vaguely as a child—about "the weight of a life that lives for decades," I didn't become the kind of person who takes in animals on a whim, nor did I become someone who treats animals like accessories.

Even now that I'm an adult, my father remains unsociable and sharp-tongued. But when he talks to the family cats or my own beloved cat, he uses a sweet, cooing voice he would never use otherwise.

In the past, when my cat was in a bind, my father immediately said, "I understand," accompanied me to the vet, and even waited with me for hours for the test results. I thought he was just a "cold person" when I was a child, but perhaps he is just an awkward man who doesn't know how to express his kindness.

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