Ruminations on life over yee sang

I WAS astonished to discover – and wondered why I didn’t realise this 12 years ago – that it’s the Year of the Cat in Vietnam, where the arrival of spring is known as Tet.

I was told this auspicious news by Vietnamese friends familiar with my affinity for felines, although ironically I was born in the Year of the Dog, and the supposed historical reason for this is confusion between the Chinese word for rabbit and the Vietnamese word for cat meo.