Recently a piece of old back plastic insulated pipe my landlady kept was chewed to pieces.I suspected rodent activity. But that is strange as this building had been allowed to be a cat hotel by last tenant. I have noticed up to three different cats spent nights or days hidden among the landlord's many equipment from his restaurant days in the store room. We boast of three large deep chest freezers in the roomy kitchen.To get ventilation, the front door is always open. It is pleasant to get land breeze(wind from land to sea) in the mornings and sea breeze(wind from sea to land) in the afternoons or evenings. So far I have heard once or twice mice dancing on the ceiling. Personally I have not seen any mouse, rat or droppings in the building.
I found myself saying "Che Siti" when I pointed to the fragmented plastic.It was an alternate name that my father-in-law used to refer to rats. He said it was a name his grandma, a peranakan lady, would use. Peranakan refers to the descendents of Chinese who could have married other races, as a result Chinese dialects were lost. Generally Peranakan spoke Malay and English more than Mandarin. We find peranakan living in Penang, Melaka and Singapore, called collectively as the Straits Settlement by the British colonists. My youngest child probably inherited some of her paternal great-great grandma's genes. Strangers could ask in all seriousness whether she was Korean or mix race.
Talking about alternate names, I think of one evening in my teens. My family went to visit my father's mother in Johor. My dad's village was at the southern tip of the Malay peninsular across from the Singapore island. My cousin was ferrying me home from town after a day out. My grandma lived in a wooden house on stilts with palm leaf roofing amonst rubber trees not too far from the forest reserve. In the rural area very young people were trained to tranport others and things even though they were under age. My cousin was 12 years old. We rode on a Honda low cc motorbike without helmets. I almost fell off around a fast curve. Amidst laughter, she shushed me. She spoke in a low voice, 'Not to laugh or "Tua Pek Kung" would come hunting.' You see, that morning she told me there were tigers sighted nearby. During daylight hours, she said tigers. At night, she said TPK which meant either oldest great uncle or a Chinese deity who supposedly live in the jungle.
Apparently, if one does not want to invite rats into houses or tigers to hunt one down, we call them by the alternate names.
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