Animals in the house

The tradition’s four animals are painted on the walls of the compass and the four animals essay gives them; this guide is about the ones that ate. A Chinese household kept goldfish in a pot in the court, a tortoise in the pond, a bird in a cage on a hook and a dog at the gate, and each had a reason that was half a pun and half a placement. The shops have kept the fish and added the arowana, and the research, which never heard of feng shui, has asked what an animal in a house does to the people in it. This guide gives the animals as the tradition kept them and why, where each goes on a plan and where the manuals refuse them, and what four studies found a pet, a tank and a dog on the bed worth in a year, a blood pressure and a night.

The fish, the tortoise, the bird and the dog

The fish came first and came as a pun. The word for fish and the word for surplus sound alike, yu, and a fish in a bowl, on a New Year print or on the table at the year’s last meal says what the print says under it, may there be a surplus every year; Knapp gives the prints and the pots, and the goldfish, bred from the carp in the Song and kept in the courts of the Ming in glazed pots and later in glass, is the pun kept alive in a house. The trade added rules to the pot: nine fish, eight gold and one black, the black one to take the household’s bad luck and be replaced when it dies, which is a Hong Kong practice the numbers essay would file with the eights; and the arowana, long yu, the dragon fish of the office tank, long, silver or red, expensive and kept for its resemblance to the dragon, which Emmons found in the territory’s businesses beside the god of wealth. The tortoise is the north of the compass, the dark warrior of the four animals, and its years: a tortoise in the garden pond or a pot on the terrace was the household’s longevity kept in a shell, and the household gods essay gives the New Year prints that put it beside the crane, the other long-lived animal, which was painted rather than kept. The bird was the morning. The old men of Beijing hung their thrushes and larks at the east window at dawn and carried them to the park in their cages, walking the bird as a dog is walked, and a cage on a hook at a window that gets the first light was a fixture of the northern house; Clunas finds the Ming garden owners keeping cranes and deer as well, for the picture. The dog kept the gate, as it keeps the gate everywhere, and the sayings gave it a welcome the cat did not get: a dog that comes to the house brings wealth, the proverb runs, and a cat that comes brings mourning, which Feuchtwang would read as the household’s ledger of which animals guard and which take. The tradition’s animals, in other words, were placed: the fish where the surplus was wanted, the tortoise in the water, the bird in the morning, the dog at the door.

Where they go

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1. 1The tank · living room, seen from the seats, moving water where movement belongs
2. 2The dog’s bed · inside the door, off its line · 3 The bird · the east window, for the morning
3. 4The cat’s shelf · a south sill · 5 The tortoise · a pot on the balcony
4. Refused: 6 a tank in the bedroom · 7 a dog on the bed

The plan above places the animals as the tradition placed them, and the placements are the room guides’ rules with an animal in them. The tank goes in the living room, against the wall the seats face, near the entrance and in view, which is where the water features guide puts moving water in general: the tradition liked movement where the household moves and refused it where the household sleeps, and a tank in a bedroom brings the damp the bathroom page measures, the hum of a pump the quiet guide counts, and the water the manuals would not have by a bed. The dog’s bed goes inside the front door, where the courtyard kept its dog, but off the door’s line, so that the animal guards the threshold without lying across the through-line the entrance page keeps clear; a dog that sleeps in the hall is the household’s door god with a pulse. The bird’s cage hangs at the east window for the morning, which is where the old men hung theirs and where the sleep guide’s first light comes in; a bird at a west window sings at the wrong end of the day. The cat’s shelf is on a south sill, in the sun and above the floor, which the cat would choose anyway; the tradition’s mistrust of the cat was a saying and not a rule, and a cat given a sill has its command position. The tortoise lives in a pot of water on the balcony, the flat’s one piece of the court, and comes in for the winter. And two placements are refused, marked on the plan: the tank in the bedroom, for the reasons above, and the dog on the bed, for a reason the research adds below.

What the animals are worth

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The research on animals in a house is a research on hearts, and the ledger above gives its four best-known entries. Friedmann and her colleagues followed ninety-two patients for a year after a heart attack and found three of the fifty-three who owned a pet dead at the year’s end against eleven of the thirty-nine who did not, a difference the paper could not explain by the walking a dog requires, since the cat owners did as well, and which forty years of smaller and larger studies have neither confirmed cleanly nor made go away. Allen, Blascovich and Mendes gave two hundred and forty couples a stressful task at home, mental arithmetic and a hand in iced water, with the pet present, with a friend present and with the spouse present, and found blood pressure and heart rate rising least with the pet and most with the spouse, which the paper reads as the difference between company that judges and company that does not. Cracknell and colleagues put a hundred and twelve visitors in front of a large public tank at the National Marine Aquarium as it was stocked over weeks and measured them watching: heart rate and blood pressure fell while they watched, and mood rose as the fish went in, more fish being better, which is the goldfish in the pot measured. And Patel and colleagues gave forty dog owners sleep trackers and found that a dog in the bedroom cost its owner nothing, and a dog on the bed cost a little, every night. The plants guide gives the same shape of finding for the living things that do not move: a real effect, modest, on the mood and the body of the person in the room, and nothing on the fortune of the house. The tradition kept its animals for the pun and the guard; the research finds the watching and the company going with better hearts, and cannot say which way round.

Animals, in order

1. Something alive. A plant, a fish, a bird, a dog, each placed where the tradition placed it. The four studies on this page are about the animals; the plants have their own guide and their own research.
2. The tank where the seats see it. Living room, near the entrance, against a solid wall, with a socket and a tap; never the bedroom.
3. The dog at the door. Its bed inside the entrance and off the door’s line; its water by the kitchen; the bedroom if it wants, the bed not.
4. The bird at the east window. For the morning, in a cage that can be cleaned, out of the cat’s reach.
5. The cat on the sill. A south sill above the floor; the cat’s command position, which it will find without help.
6. The tortoise on the balcony. A pot of water in the flat’s one piece of court, in for the winter.
7. The count and the corner, last. Nine fish and a wealth corner are the trade’s; a tank that is watched is the tradition’s and the research’s.