Soyabean is a kitten when he is adopted by Mr and Mrs A, foreigners who live in a large courtyard house in Beijing. Soon after, the couple bring home Tofu, a rescued dustbin cat. Just as the cats begin to settle into their new pampered lives, Soyabean is offered a job as a model for a new brand of cat food. Meanwhile, a mysterious virus is sickening people across the city and it is cats that are being blamed. Chinese Whiskers is a modern fable set in the ever-changing landscape of early twenty-first-century China. Told from a feline point of view and richly textured with the sights and sounds of the hutong neighbourhoods of Beijing, Pallavi Aiyar's first novel will make you laugh and tear up, and think again about the battles that we all fight between the corruption of fast living and the ideals of traditional life.