Strange Life of a Cat

Zheng Tan stayed at Zhuo’s place until they finished dinner and then he left. Zhuo walked Zheng Tan out the western courtyard and watched him walk off into the distance.

Zheng Tan didn’t go home straight away after he left the western courtyard. Instead, he headed for the woods by the side gate.

This was because he knew that the region around the perimeter of the campus was in the process of construction. There weren’t many students that went into that direction. There were even less during nighttime.

Zheng Tan leaped as he traveled through the forest, arriving at the top of a large tree where he squatted.

Deep breath.

“Aaooowoooo–”

Doesn’t sound right.

“Awoooooo–”

Doesn’t sound right either.

Zheng Tan carefully recalled the cries of the big white cat at that time, and howled again.

“Wooowoo–”

Still not right!

After several attempts, Zheng Tan analyzed the causes. Maybe because he had always previously avoided calling like a cat, and had gotten used to howling randomly instead. Now that he needed to learn how to vocalize like other cats, for a moment, he couldn’t make that transition. Zheng Tan didn’t want to make an unreasonable demand to cry like the big white cat. He just needed to be close to it, but the sound he made right now was virtually wails of a ghost.

Huh?

Ghost wail?

Zheng Tan squinted his eyes.

Since becoming a cat, Zheng Tan especially liked to squint his eyes, but he hadn’t realized this issue himself. With the tip of his tails swaying, he pondered upon some thoughts.

Just as he was thinking, a wave of urgent footsteps sounded. Zheng Tan knew for sure without looking that it was the black-backed owned by the side gate janitor. The sound of its paws kicking against dead leaves while running was extremely obvious in such a serene environment.

The black-backed ran over in a hurry, sniffed around then encircled a tree twice before lifting a back leg and urinated against the trunks. After it finished peeing, it dug the paws into the ground in excitement, sniffing about in the surrounding. It waited for the whistles from the direction of the side gate. Only then did it bark in response and hurried back.

Zheng Tan looked at the tree that had dog urine on it. He had realized a few days ago that the tree had an offensive urine odor. The black-backed came here every day during the lookout time to pee; fixed location, attached to this tree only. At the same time, Zheng Tan remembered the tattooed man. That person liked peeing at the same spot. Zheng Tan found this out while staking out around the tattooed man’s house. It was because of this habit that gave Zheng Tan an idea.

Initially, Zheng Tan only wanted to use violence to teach this person a lesson, but later he thought, pure physical damage was too good for him. Probably, this guy still wouldn’t associate this punishment with the three dead kittens. Maybe this guy would still do similar things to other cats. Therefore, Zheng Tan decided to try another way.

Since he decided to change the original strategy, this meant that things couldn’t be acted out in one day. If one day wasn’t enough, then we shall do it day by day.

So thus came the preparation work that Zheng Tan had been gradually doing over this period of time. Plus, things were not going smoothly for the tattooed man, there seemed to be a taboo for red sticky things.

Zheng Tan practiced voicing for a while again, and looked at the time; the sky had completely darkened.

Exiting the woods, Zheng Tan came to the remote corner near the old resident area alleyway side of the school gate. In the corner, there was a number of leafy old pine trees. Zheng Tan had hidden the things that he accumulatively collected up there, wrapped in those black plastic bags. In that corner, there was a small probability for the things to be found, and if they were found, Zheng Tan wasn’t worried. Who would think that those things in the bag were the work of a cat?

He carefully opened the bags.

At the beginning, because he wasn’t accustomed to using claws, the claws always hooked onto the plastic bags. After some tries, things got a lot smoother, since inside this cat body was the spirit of an adult. Although, it was not to the extent that he could deal with such a minor problem of tying and opening bags.

There were four dolls inside the bag. One was slightly bigger, a cat doll with floral patterns. The other three were smaller in size, with the dimensions of an adult palm’s height, all white, and furry. It was the kind that girls liked.

These four dolls were “obtained” by Zheng Tan from the second level of a gift store outside the campus at night.

Other than these four toy cat dolls, there was a pack of cotton swabs, three small packs of tissue, some bags that varied in size used for holding food, a few packets of flavoring pack sized tomato sauce used in fast food stores, and some elastic bands that girls used to tie their hair up with. These elastic bands were much wider than the normal elastic bands that Papa Jiao used in their lab. At the same time, it also ensured that when Zheng Tan wrapped it around his neck it wouldn’t be too loose or too tight.

These were all “obtained” by Zheng Tan over the past period of time. Zheng Tan spent a lot of energy into not letting anyone notice or find out.

There were advantages and disadvantages in taking action as a cat. Sneaking into other people’s stores and warehouses were easy, but “taking” things away were not so easily achieved.

Zheng Tan took a black plastic bag out, placing the bigger furry toy cat into the bag. Then he added a packet of tomato sauce, two cotton swabs and a pack of tissue. Zheng Tan tidied up other things that were temporarily not used, tying the bag and placed it in the old spot up on the trees. There were dense branches around, making it difficult to see from the outside. Even if it was seen, nobody would have the time or spirit to climb up the trees and go through the bags.

He wrapped the things he needed to use today inside the bags, secured with an elastic band.

Taking a look, Zheng Tan made sure that all things here were fixed up and wouldn’t fall off, then he bit the bag between his teeth where the elastic band were and jumped off the trees with this bag of things. He re-emerged from the courtyard fences at the campus border near the mouth of the alleyway in the old resident area. Like a flash, he headed straight to the greening flower bed. Using the plants in the flowerbed and the night as a disguise, he quickly disappeared. The surrounding traffic sped past to and fro. No one would take notice at the dark silhouette that flashed by here.

This time of the day, the alleyway of the old residential area was much more desolated as compared to the central department stores area. It was a completely different sight. Occasionally, there were waning street lamps. Many of the roads were pitch black. You could only see the approximate layout of the alley through some of the light that peeked through from the surrounding households. As for others, nothing was visible.

Those on the night shift, or coming home from work, whether they were riding electric motorbikes, walking or riding bicycles, would all light the way using torches.

Under this environment, there was definitely no one who would notice that by the trash bin at the corner, there squatted a black cat.

Zheng Tan estimated the time inside his mind. According to the information he had obtained from the previous period, the tattooed man would often depart from home at nine in the night to the location where he worked.

As expected, not long later, the voice of the tattooed man was borne. Alone with the tattooed man was another person; the two discussed.

“What I meant is that you should probably show some restraint. The message going around is that Boss Ye’s gang probably had beef with our boss. You should all be careful. Otherwise, you might lose a leg or miss an arm,” the guy beside the tattooed man said.

“Haha, Boss Ye wouldn’t even treat little hooligans like us seriously.” The tattooed man’s voice sounded like he said it with laughter, but the laughter was extremely unnatural.

“Anyhow, when everyone starts to fight, we will play dead and not make any trouble. Don’t let your weaknesses be caught by other people.”

“I know that. Oh, wait, I need to take a piss, hehe!”

As he spoke, the tattooed man walked and took a turn into a dead-end, this was where the tattooed man would urinate when he went out or came back. The dead-end which he peed at was very close to the corner that Zheng Tan squatted. Diagonally across, Zheng Tan could see the situation there from the trash bin.

After waiting for the two to walk off, Zheng Tan gripped the bag of stuff in his mouth and headed for the tattooed man’s house.

This time, he entered from the broken window of the kitchen again. There wasn’t much difference in this room as compared to the first time that Zheng Tan came here, messy and dirty as always.

There was no need to turn on the light. Zheng Tan could use the light that shone through the window from other people’s house to see the arrangement in the room.

Taking the elastic band off and untying the bag, he ripped open the ketchup and wiped it onto the body of the cat doll, and a smear on the corner of its lips. With the plastic bag underneath, the ketchup wouldn’t drip outside.

Then, Zheng Tan placed the toy cat that was covered in tomato sauce beside the tattooed man’s bed.

This was only one of the things. Taking the cotton swab from the bag, he pinched it in the paws. Compared to human fingers, the current cat paw was very inconvenient. Because of this, Zheng Tan would practice holding things in his paws when he became bored at home. He had gotten used to it after some time practicing.

Soaking the cotton swab in the remainder ketchup, Zheng Tan held the cotton swab and drew a red cat paw print on the wooden closet near the bed. Zheng Tan’s illustration skills were limited, but it was only a few circles. As long as you could identify approximately that it was a cat or dog paw print, it was enough.

The location where Zheng Tan intended to draw on was on the wooden closet that was a little high for his reach, so he dragged a chair over, stepped on it and used his two back legs as support to reach. Standing up made the height of the drawing closer to the predicted requirements.

When he finished drawing, Zheng Tan threw the cotton swabs inside the plastic bag. He jumped up and scratched a few claw marks with great force on the drawn paw marks. Zheng Tan had great strength. The claw marks that he made were also deep.

After he finished scratching, Zheng Tan pushed the chair back to its original position, then took a tissue from the pack and wiped off the smudges on his own paws and on the surrounding ground. He chucked the finished ketchup packet, the cotton swabs, and tissue into the plastic bag.

He thought for a second. Zheng Tan’s steps that were prepared to leave turned. He lifted the sheets beneath the pillow and took a look.

It was just Zheng Tan’s action in the spur of the moment. Because when he was in the Jiao household, he had once seen Jiao Yuan hiding his pocket money under the bed liner at the end of the front of the bed. That’s why he had done such action.

The result was rather surprising for Zheng Tan. The tattooed man had the same habit. Did he want to fall asleep counting money?

Zheng Tan had counted: eight hundred dollars. Zheng Tan took one sheet of a hundred, rolling it up and wrapping it with tissue. As for the rest, which was seven hundred dollars, he returned it to the original position.

He looked around and felt that there was no longer anything that was needed to be taken care of. Zheng Tan tied the plastic bag with garbage by wrapping the elastic band around. The tissue that had money inside was also secured inside the elastic bag. With the bag inside his mouth, he left the tattooed man’s house.

Walking out of the alleyway, Zheng Tan found a rubbish bin, took the money out from the bundle and threw the plastic bag inside the bin then headed for the gift store with the money. Using the assistance from external objects, he went inside the second level store room. Pulling the tissue aside, he threw the hundred dollars inside onto the floor. As for the tissue, he chucked it randomly out the window.

After he had finished all that, Zheng Tan returned to the eastern courtyard with ease, put on the security card and entered the building.

To be honest, Zheng Tan wanted to know the tattooed man’s reaction as well. Unfortunately, recently, the Jiao family rested very early at night, all falling asleep at ten. Jiao Yuan and Youzi would go to bed at nine thirty. Zheng Tan couldn’t return too late either.

Knowing that Zheng Tan went out every night, Mama Jiao didn’t close the door, leaving it unlocked. When Zheng Tan returned, all he needed to do was to push the door open, He didn’t need to unlock the door himself, saving a lot of trouble.

When he returned home, Zheng Tan took a bath using the warm water that Mama Jiao had prepared, crouching on the bench as Mama Jiao helped to blow dry his furs, then he went to the bed and slept.

Around ten in the night, the gift store outside the campus prepared to close. The gift store owner, as per usual, surveyed the storeroom upstairs before closing the door to see if any valuable items were missing.

When he went to his own storeroom on the second floor, his sharp eyes caught the sight of the hundred-dollar note on the floor. He looked around and didn’t hear that any of the workers said that they had lost money. After a second of thought, he lowered his body, quickly picking up the money, and stuffed it in his pocket, not bothering to ask the people moving the stocks and the workers if anyone had lost money. He scanned through the shelves in the storeroom quickly to see if there were large items or valuable items missing, other little gadgets he didn’t pay special attention to.

Seeing that nothing valuable was missing, the gift store owner hummed as he left. He was extremely cheerful today as he had gotten one hundred dollars today for free.

What this owner didn’t know was that his own storeroom was already visited many times by a black cat, and had swiped away a number of dolls in separate batches. He might even take something else in the future. That hundred-dollar bill was only the compensation made by the cat.

At four in the morning on the next day, the tattooed man came home with the smell of alcohol.

He was not a sensitive person. He wouldn’t find out some small details in the house and certainly couldn’t see what was different in the house that was out of the usual.

Yawning, the tattooed man kicked off his shoes and lied on the bed, subconsciously taking the eight hundred dollars under the pillow out to count. This was what he had saved up from last time after collecting “protection money” from the students who set up stalls on the streets. He kept the eight hundred dollars in there that looked fairly new under the sheets, counting them every day.

Eight-eight as a sign of making a fortune. He was looking for luck, as it was one of his little hobbies.

Just as predicted by Zheng Tan, the tattooed man liked to fall asleep counting money.

Eight hundred dollars, it was not as if it was eight thousand. He would finish counting in a second.

A hundred missing?

The tattooed man knitted his brows together.

Licking his fingers, he counted again. Slowly, carefully, note-by-note, he counted again.

Still seven hundred dollars.

That was not right!

The tattooed man spat onto the ground in frustration.

He didn’t take any money from here when he went out tonight.

Thief?

Who dares to come here and steal stuff? Do they want to die? The tattooed man considered himself as the overlord of this generation. And to be honest, if there had been a thief, he wouldn’t only take one hundred dollars.

Something doesn’t add up, the tattooed man thought. Recalling from the beginning what he had done today before walking out the door, and yet he still didn’t have any memory of taking money.

Scratching his head, the tattooed man turned his body to continue remembering. What resulted from him turning was seeing a toy cat doll covered in “blood”.

“Holy sh*t!”

The tattooed man jumped up from the scare. It wasn’t that he was edgy, it was because of the restlessness at his workplace. A few days ago at the club, he saw someone who was looking for trouble got his hands chopped off, and some other people slashed with knives; it was quite serious. That bloodiness of that horrifying scene had triggered him. It was not a cat, it was a human, an actual human! So when he saw this kind of things with a redness like blood, he couldn’t stop the goosebumps. Recently, he stopped ordering sweet and sour pork at the club.

After a few rapid breaths, the tattooed man looked around. His line of sight then fell onto the wooden closet.

That red mark… What was that drawing supposed to be?