After experiencing the anxiety and panic of loss, Shen Wuqiu no longer cared whether the white cat, who had run off for a whole day, was dirty or not. She took the initiative to reach out and scoop her into a full embrace.
“Meow!” The white cat acted like a child who had suffered grievances outside and came back to act spoiled with her mother. Her two little front paws rested on Shen Wuqiu’s shoulders, and her fluffy little head was buried in the crook of Shen Wuqiu’s neck. Her meow sounded like a humming grunt coming straight from her nose.
It was so clingy that it melted right into someone’s heart.
Shen Wuqiu’s heart instantly softened into a puddle of water. How could she still bear to scold this little ancestor, who was a wildcat that had forgotten all about home? Subconsciously, she gently stroked the white cat’s spine. “Alright, alright, we are home now.”
“Meow.” The white cat rubbed against the crook of Shen Wuqiu’s neck, then stretched out her small tongue and tentatively licked her cheek. Seeing that Shen Wuqiu did not refuse, she continued to lick.
Seeing that the white cat was getting more and more carried away with her licking, Shen Wuqiu had no choice but to hold her cat body and pull back a little distance. “Just a little bit of flattery is enough. Are you getting addicted to it now?”
“Meow!”
Shen Wuqiu ignored her spoiled behavior, held her up to look her over all around, and then took out the white cat’s special small towel. After wiping her down thoroughly, she placed the white cat onto the bed.
“I have no idea how you even made it back. It is raining so hard outside, yet your fur is not really wet at all.”
The white cat pricked up her ears, listening to her mutterings. Hearing the end of it, she curled her little paws together and huddled into a ball on the bed, quiet as a mouse.
Seeing her suddenly turn so quiet, Shen Wuqiu found it rather strange. She stroked the cat’s furry head and asked, “Does something hurt?” She paused, then thought of another possibility, “Or were you out with a wildcat for the whole day and got worn out?”
Hearing this, the white cat instantly bristled. She lifted her head and let out a dissatisfied meow at Shen Wuqiu.
“Yo, you cannot even be talked about now?” The little ancestor was still as full of life as ever, so Shen Wuqiu stopped worrying. Furthermore, once the joy of their long-lost reunion had faded, she started settling accounts again. “Since you have become my cat, you have to follow my rules. If you ever dare to disappear without a trace for a whole day again, I will not want you anymore.”
The white cat’s fiery spirit instantly plummeted. She buried her head into her own paws and played dead.
Watching her behave this way, Shen Wuqiu had anger that she could not vent, and internally she even felt a little amused. “Forget it. I suppose you could not help yourself either. It is probably easier to just take you in to get neutered.”
It was an old topic of conversation, and the white cat could not even be bothered to express her anger anymore. She lifted her eyes to glance at Shen Wuqiu, then went right back to playing dead.
Could it be that even the threat of neutering could not bluff this little ancestor anymore?
Shen Wuqiu could not help but look at her a few more times. Her nose and eyes were completely clean, and after all this time, she had not sneezed once, nor did she show any common symptoms of feline illness.
Shen Wuqiu pondered inwardly, “Are you hungry?”
The white cat perked up a little. “Meow.”
Shen Wuqiu perked up as well and immediately got ready to go downstairs to make cat food. When she reached the landing of the stairs, she took a detour, walked over, and knocked on the guest room door. “Are you asleep?”
She knocked three times, but there was not the slightest sound from inside. Shen Wuqiu guessed that the young girl must be unable to sleep, so she did not ask any further and continued downstairs to make food for the cat.
Su Yunzhi was supporting Father Shen as they walked toward their bedroom. Hearing the movement, she stopped. “Still not asleep?”
“Yeah.” Shen Wuqiu nodded, then looked toward Father Shen. “The cat is back. She is probably been hungry all day, so I am going to make her something to eat.”
“This really is an ancestor,” Su Yunzhi could not help muttering. As soon as she finished, she quickly added a sentence, “There is fresh beef and river fish in the refrigerator.”
Shen Wuqiu acted as though she had not heard the muttering. She wished the two of them a good night and headed straight to the kitchen.
Before keeping a cat, Shen Wuqiu had no idea about a cat’s dietary habits. But after raising one, she had grown skillful through practice.
The white cat was a picky eater, and her absolute favorite was fish.
Shen Wuqiu boiled a fish paste for her as usual. Remembering that this little ancestor had been eating meat for many days straight, she added a little cat grass into the paste.
The white cat was truly starving; she licked the full bowl of meat paste completely clean.
After eating her fill, the white cat lay flat on her back on the bed to air out her belly.
Once Shen Wuqiu finished cleaning up, she also climbed onto the bed. Seeing the white cat looking so thoroughly satisfied, she felt quite a sense of accomplishment inside, and absentmindedly stroked the white cat’s belly.
As she stroked, the texture felt a bit off. She quickly sat up and carefully parted the fur around the little bump she had just felt.
Hidden within the soft fur was a tiny little bump. Shen Wuqiu stared at it for a long time, still having no idea what it was, so she opened up Du Niang on her phone.
After searching for five minutes, Shen Wuqiu finally found an image that looked somewhat similar to the little bump on the white cat.
Cat ringworm?
Shen Wuqiu clicked on the picture and zoomed in. The more she looked at it, the more it resembled the spot, and she instantly panicked. She quickly sat straight up and seriously began a carpet search across the entire cat’s body.
Sure enough, just as Du Niang had said, cat ringworm usually did not appear in just one spot. From the belly alone, she found eight of them!
Wasn’t it said that cat ringworm most easily grew in places like the ears, neck, and limbs? Why were her cat’s spots only growing on her belly, and why were they growing so symmetrically?
Shen Wuqiu stared at the white cat’s belly in deep thought. A moment later, she picked up her phone once again.
After cross-referencing for a second time, while she let out a sigh of relief, she also felt ashamed and furious at her own ignorance.
Therefore, she vented her shame and anger onto the white cat. “As a female cat, do you not think your nipples are ridiculously small?”
“Meow!”
“What is the use of just having numbers?”
“Meow!”
Facing the white cat’s calm, serene blue eyes, Shen Wuqiu was ultimately the first one to surrender. She feigned a yawn and said, “The old rules: sleep nicely at the head of the bed.”
With that, Shen Wuqiu crawled into her own end of the quilt and neatly turned off the lights. The mere thought of how she had just mistaken the white cat’s nipples for cat ringworm made Shen Wuqiu burn with embarrassment.
It seemed that on the road to raising a cat, she still had a long way to go.
A sound sleep through the night.
The following day was still a foggy, overcast, and rainy day. Shen Wuqiu, who had spent the night without dreams, naturally woke up when her body had had enough sleep.
Waking up from that sleep, her entire body felt relaxed and refreshed.
Indeed, dreaming was still quite exhausting, especially those unspeakable kinds of dreams.
However, when Shen Wuqiu got up and stretched, catching a glimpse of her somewhat neatly arranged pajamas, she still felt a rather strange lingering sentiment.
Didn’t they say that what you think about by day, you dream about by night?
Now that the person from her dreams had actually appeared in reality, she stopped dreaming about her instead.
Realizing what she was thinking about, Shen Wuqiu quickly rubbed her face, muttering as she rubbed, “Eighteen years old, eighteen years old.”
After clearing these strange thoughts out of her mind, Shen Wuqiu finally got up to wash up.
At this hour, the white cat had run off again.
Too lazy to search every corner of the room, Shen Wuqiu took Gu Lingyu’s clothes out of the dryer. As her fingers pinched the other girl’s little underwear, she paused for a split second, realizing that a nineteen-year-old girl was truly childish, actually liking underwear embroidered with little kittens.
Shen Wuqiu chuckled out of nowhere, wrapped the other girl’s little underwear inside that white long dress, and took them together to the adjacent room.
She knocked several times, but there was still no movement inside the room.
Shen Wuqiu had no choice but to put the clothes back into her own room and head downstairs by herself.
At the landing of the stairs, she bumped straight into Shen Wujun. “My mother was just getting ready to send me upstairs to call you down for breakfast. By the way, I heard Dad say that our family cat came back last night, how come I do not see her?”
“She ran out again,” Shen Wuqiu said as she walked toward the main hall.
Shen Wujun followed behind her. “This cat is really interesting. How come she always loves to run out early in the morning?”
“Playing around too much, I suppose,” Shen Wuqiu replied casually. “By the way, how are your preparations going? I have already spoken to my friend; he said he is currently preparing to set up a new studio in our provincial capital. If you are interested, you can go.”
“Do I need to pass an assessment?”
“Of course. And do not worry about the internship certificate either. Although it is a new studio, it is still under their company’s name, so the company can just issue an internship certificate for you then.”
“Alright, then I will get things ready these next few days.”
As they spoke, the two of them arrived at the main hall.
“Qiuqiu, why didn’t you call your friend down?”
“She is not up yet.” After thinking for a moment, Shen Wuqiu added, “She probably traveled the whole day yesterday and got tired.”
Su Yunzhi chimed in eagerly, “Young girls nowadays are all delicate. Coming all the way to our place from a big city is truly a hassle. Let her sleep a bit more, I will prepare something for her later.”
Shen Wuqiu glanced at her and took a seat at the dining table. “Then I will have to trouble Auntie.”
“There is no need to be so polite. Since she is your friend, she naturally counts as an honored guest of our family.”
Shen Wuqiu lowered her head to eat her breakfast and did not reply further.
After breakfast, the rain stopped. Finding herself idle and bored at home, Shen Wuqiu went with Uncle Zheng and the others to West Mountain to check on the bayberry trees.
Yesterday’s rain had been quite heavy, and these newly planted bayberry trees also required careful attention.
After strolling around the bayberry grove for a while, Shen Wuqiu came back on her own.
As a result, a certain guest who had traveled from afar had no self-awareness of being a guest at all, because she was still not out of bed.
It was almost noon, and this was getting to be a bit too much sleeping.
Thinking this, Shen Wuqiu couldn’t help feeling worried again.
So as soon as she got home, she headed straight upstairs to the guest room and knocked several times with still no response. She tentatively twisted the door handle, and the door opened.
Shen Wuqiu stood at the doorway and called out politely a few times. Just as she was about to step inside, her own bedroom door opened, and Gu Lingyu poked her head out. “Sister, I am right here.”
Shen Wuqiu frowned slightly at her impolite behavior of wandering into her bedroom without greeting, but as soon as she met that pair of smiling, sparkling eyes, she could not muster any anger. She walked over to her. “You are awake?”
“Yeah.” As soon as she got close, Gu Lingyu acted spoiled, draping both arms around Shen Wuqiu’s neck. “Where did Sister go?”
“Just went out for a casual stroll.” Shen Wuqiu was still somewhat unaccustomed to such overly familiar intimacy. She calmly pushed Gu Lingyu’s hands away, and seeing that she was wearing a shirt that was equivalent to wearing nothing at all, she helped take her clothes out instead. “Your clothes are all dry, hurry up and change into them.”
Gu Lingyu took off the clothes she was wearing right in front of her, and even put on her own clothes at a snail’s pace, terrified that the person before her might miss even a single glance at her.
Shen Wuqiu tried hard to look poised and nonchalant. “Are you hungry? What do you want to eat?”
“A little bit. I want to eat braised sea bass, and I also want steamed turbot, plus pan-fried little yellow croaker.”
“How come it is all fish? Are you a cat?”
Gu Lingyu blurted out, “I am Sister’s cat.”
Shen Wuqiu took it as the sweet talk of a young child and did not take it to heart. “Right, my cat came back last night.”
“Didn’t I say she would definitely come back?”
“How did you know?”
“I just guessed randomly.”
As she spoke, Gu Lingyu quickly trotted into the bathroom.
Shen Wuqiu figured she had just been spouting nonsense. Seeing her enter the bathroom, she straightened the clothes the other girl had casually tossed aside. When she went to place them on the bedside table, she noticed that four glowing little fruits had been placed there at some point.
The fruits looked just like figs, but smaller, bright red, and as if they were glowing, looking extremely tempting.
Shen Wuqiu had never seen this kind of fruit before. She could not help but pick one up and sniff it at the tip of her nose. Instantly, a wave of sweet fragrance rushed toward her. Although she did not consider herself a gluttonous person, right at that moment, she could not help swallowing hard from the temptation.
The more she looked, the more tempted she became. In the end, Shen Wuqiu could not resist the temptation, picked up one of the fruits, and popped it into her mouth.