大胃王小猫
The Kitten That Eats Like a Pig

当主人与狗轰轰烈烈演绎这出“尿不湿”二人转的同时，小黄在哪儿？在忙什么呢？While that one-man-and-his-dog show was going on, ‘overflowing’with boisterous, pee-jerking melodrama, where was Gingerlet? And what was he up to? 答案是：他也没闲着，他在捉鱼，而且是徒手捉鱼！The answer: He was busy too, catching fish. And doing so with bare paws!

“小黄”这个名字里的“小”字，有点误导。刚来我家时，他确实挺小的，巴掌大小。The name Gingerlet is something of a misnomer. Yes, he was indeed quite small, the size of a palm, when he first came to our house. 记得那天到了吃午饭的时间，一家三口从不同的地方回家吃饭，父亲回来得稍晚，他到家时饭菜已经摆上桌了。It was lunchtime. I came home from school and my parents, from their respective work ‘units’. Father was late. By the time he got home, food was already on the table. 他进来时，没什么异常，只是表情似笑非笑，神秘兮兮的。As he stepped through the door, he had a mysterious look on his face, like a suppressed smile. Everything else about him seemed normal. 他一言不发，径直走到桌边，一只手漫不经心地搁在桌上——我和母亲不约而同地惊呼一声，一只“袖珍”猫，从他的衣袖里慢悠悠地爬了出来。Without a word, he walked up to the table and casually placed one hand on it... Mother and I gasped at the same time: A pocket-sized（or ‘sleeve-sized’）baby kitten slowly crawled out of his sleeve. 从那天起，每次吃饭，小黄都趴在父亲的脖子上，探着小脑袋，父亲自己吃一筷子，喂他一筷子。他成了父亲的天然毛围脖儿。From that day on, whenever we ate, Gingerlet would drape himself on the back of my father's neck, in the fashion of a fur scarf, his tiny head reaching down. Father would alternate between chopsticking food into his own mouth and letting Gingerlet eat from his chopsticks. 对这样的“吃相”，母亲很不满，但除了唠叨几句“玩物丧志”，也没怎么干涉。Mother was miffed at such reprehensible table manners, but her intervention went little beyond pitching a few admonitory pearls of wisdom at him.‘Indulgence in playthings is, alas, the bane of a man's spirit’was one of them.