Chapter 45: A Hard-to-Please Cat

Translator: Nyoi_Bo_Studio Editor: Tennesh

Morning.

Zhang Zian stretched and got up from his bed. This was his parents’ bedroom, and the bed was his parents’ double bed. The reason he changed bedrooms was very simple—his bedroom was taken over by Fina. When his parents had bought this two-story building, they gave Zhang Zian the best room for his bedroom. That was because, even though the room was a little small, the window faced greenery at the street corner. It wasn’t close to the street and was more peaceful. The air was good as well, and it was suitable for studying. The worst room on the second floor became a storage room. His parents’ room was a bit bigger, but there was an alley right out the window where people and cars often passed by.

Last night, Fina saw Galaxy’s crib and boldly announced its desire to have a similar one, but more like a princess bed with a veil of fine gauze. Zhang Zian couldn’t get a princess bed anywhere within that limited amount of time, so he could only let it sleep on his bed. It even despised it for a while.

After washing up, he went downstairs. Galaxy was roving in between showcases, chasing its own tail, as if playing hide and seek with itself.

“Good morning, Galaxy!”

“Meow! Good morning, Zian! Do you want to play hide and seek?” Galaxy looked at him expectantly.

“Alright, sure, but let me fill my stomach first… I actually envy that you guys don’t have to eat.” Zhang Zian patted his empty stomach.

“Who told you that I don’t have to eat?” Fina was patrolling around inside the store early in the morning, as if this place was its territory. It stopped at this moment and stared at Zhang Zian with its shiny aquamarine eyes. “But you want I to eat the same type of food as those ordinary cats? This is an insult to I!”

Zhang Zian noted that this gold-worshipping cat was hard to please, and his head really hurt. “All right, all right, you want to eat grilled fish, right? I have time to go buy it today, but let me make it clear in advance—I’ve never grilled fish before. I cannot be sure that the fish will be edible after grilling…”

“Then what’s the use of having you?” Fina responded.

Zhang Zian was speechless. “I’m really not a servant!”

He had originally thought that Fina was like Galaxy and didn’t need to take in food, but it seemed that this was not the case. Maybe it was because Fina had once existed as a real cat?

Regarding Fina’s origin, he could not guess. It was definitely a cat from ancient times. Cats from that time had different physical characteristics from present day cats. After all, house cats evolved with human intervention toward their expectations. In fact, referring to it as “evolution” was not proper. This type of evolution was only the one-sided expectancy of humans. To have cats grow toward the direction of “as a little bird rests upon a man”[1] was deterioration in survival for cats, such as furless cats or Scottish Fold cats.

Fina’s figure was the most well proportioned and well built of all cats he had ever seen. Sturdy-yet-not-overly-developed muscles hid under its golden satin-like fur. Every step it took was steady and graceful, and its eyes were clear and sharp. It declared its vigorous vitality every second and every moment. If talking about evolution, this should be the ideal direction of evolution for cats. He had brought domestic water, but it wrinkled up its face in distaste after one taste but eventually swallowed it grudgingly.

Of course, spare the aspect of personality. This fortune cat’s personality was too vile, always talking with an air of pretentiousness and always being nitpicky. It had to sleep in a princess bed, only ate grilled fish from the sea, wouldn’t spare a glance at canned cat food, and only drank bottled water. Last night, Zhang Zian was forced to run to the nearby store to buy water.

“God knows how its previous master had raised it to be such a rascal! Is it supposed to be raised like a princess? Was it a fortune cat or a gold-worshipping cat? Nevertheless, Galaxy is cuter.” Every time he saw Galaxy, he would be charmed. Zhang Zian silently thought about these related and unrelated things while he was about to start today’s clean up work and opened the door for business.

“Huh?” He found today’s work to be particularly relaxed. Those few kittens were not locked away in the display cabinets. Zhang Zian followed Fina’s instructions and put some cat-litter bowls in the corner, then covered them with cat litter. Those few kittens obediently went to the cat-litter bowls to settle their physiological issues. He had saved time normally spent cleaning the few display cabinets and now he just had to clean the Samoyed’s and Schnauzer’s display cabinets.

Feeding and drinking water was also the same. Zhang Zian placed a bowl of clear water and a bowl of food at another corner. The kittens lined up to go eat and drink.

There were two groups for both the clear water bowl and the food bowl. One group was laid flat on the ground for the British Shorthair, American Shorthair, and the Siamese cats. The other group used an abandoned old book to give it height, for the Persian cats—cats with flat faces and long hair. If not so, after the Persian cats drank and ate, their beards, faces, and necks would have food and water residue. In addition, it would consume extra cleaning time. There were more cats, but the workload decreased?

Having to choose between Fina’s pretentiousness and more heavy work, Zhang Zian could only choose to continue to bear with Fina’s pretentious face. After all, having the ability to act pretentious meant that it was actually pretentious. Without the ability to act pretentious, it would only be foolishness. Zhang Zian felt that it would be wonderful if Fina could command the other two dogs as well, but that was just an impossible thought…

The Samoyed and Schnauzer bitterly watched the kittens playing on the floor. Why were they able to play outside, but we must be locked inside the display cabinets? Was this store manager racist?

“Do better in the next life,” Zhang Zian stated.

Since he finished the clean-up work early, Zhang Zian opened the door for business earlier than usual, even though there were probably no customers this early in the day. There was another reason for opening the door for business earlier, and that was to place a new sign he had made at the entrance. The sign was made from a wooden board and written by hand with a highlighter. It was very simple, and the words were pretty ugly, since very few people wrote with a pen nowadays. The contents of the sign were: “This store offers bathing services for cats for a fee.”

The content was a bit long, so he had to simplify it, but he found that no matter what words he took out, it was not appropriate. He tried changing it to: “This store offers bathing service for a fee.”

“No, this won’t do. People would think that it was a shower or bathhouse. Especially with the word “service,” it leads people to think otherwise. There might even be unscrupulous customers who would request special services with soap…”

“What about changing the word “cats” to “pets”? That also wouldn’t work. What if people bring in a Tibetan Mastiff?”

“Get rid of “This store”? That still won’t do. It would be a sentence with no subject, and I can’t afford to mess with the OCD!”

“Get rid of “with fees”? What are you thinking of?”

“Change to “Cats take fees for baths”? Even worse. Am I the store manager or are the cats…”

“That’s it, no changes.”

“You are also carrying out a new business here?” Sun Xiaomeng’s voice came from behind, full of suspicion. Her house was in Cheng Nan, and her pet clinic was at the north entrance of Zhonghua Road. Thus, when she went to open up business for her clinic every morning, she would always pass by the Amazing Fate Pet Shop at the south entrance of Zhonghua Road. Sometimes she would get out of the car to stay a while, and sometimes she would stop the car to give an unfriendly greeting, such as today.

“Of course. Once changes have been made, a solution emerges,” Zhang Zian replied.

“Can you handle it all by yourself?” She knew very well how hard it was to give baths to cats, especially other people’s cats.

“Then how about you come help me?”

“Don’t even dream about it! I’m going to leave first. Customers made appointments early in the morning.” She intentionally flaunted that she had customers, then pressed down on the throttle and left. Her voice drifted from afar, “Don’t forget to come to my store to do cleaning after a week.”

She said it as if she was definitely going to win the bet this time…

Footnotes:

[1] A Chinese saying that describes the weak relying on the strong.