Tang Miao locked eyes with the fish-selling woman.
No escape now.
She immediately pressed her two cat ears back as hard as she could, opened her eyes as wide as possible, filled them with tears, and put on a pitiful expression.
Small and helpless.
From the very depths of her throat, she squeezed out a sweet, coquettish meow:
“Meow~”
“Oh.” The woman paused, then laughed. “A little orange tabby.”
Tang Miao refused to let go of the fish head.
She still had the fish head clamped between her teeth, prepared to be chased off.
But the woman didn’t reach in to grab her.
Instead, she stood up, took another fish head from the cutting board, and placed it at the entrance of the gap.
“Eat up. No need to fight over it—you’ll scare the customers.”
Tang Miao stared at the fish head, then looked at the woman’s face.
A face roughened by wind and sun, deep lines at the corners of her eyes, fish scales stuck all over her apron, and a fishy smell embedded in her fingernails that no amount of washing could remove.
There was no malice there.
Tang Miao lowered her head and began gnawing on the fish head in her mouth.
Fish heads weren’t easy to eat.
Lots of bones, little meat—but there were two small tender pieces on the cheeks, and the brain was mushy with a faint sweet fishiness.
A cat’s tongue has barbs that can scrape every shred of meat from between the bones.
She spent twenty minutes finishing one fish head.
Then she poked her little head out and dragged the second fish head from the entrance into her hiding spot.
She was full.
Truly, completely full.
With real food in her stomach, her body temperature began to rise.
Tang Miao found her mind working faster too.
She was no longer just thinking about surviving the day—she was thinking about how to survive the winter.
This place wasn’t bad.
Drawing on her past life’s experience as a corporate drone who’d dealt with all sorts of people, Tang Miao quickly made herself at home in the gap behind the fish stall.
She learned the woman’s routine.
She arrived at four in the morning and packed up at two in the afternoon, processing about fifty fish a day.
On average, there were ten to fifteen unwanted fish heads, and the woman would leave the last ones at the gap’s entrance for her when she closed up.
But Tang Miao didn’t freeload.
On the second night, after the market had closed, she heard something.
A rat.
It had crawled out of the drainage ditch behind the seafood section—gray, not much smaller than her head.
It ran along the base of the wall, heading straight for a bag of rice left on the ground at the neighboring stall.
Her hunting instinct activated in an instant.
Before Tang Miao even realized what was happening, her body had already dropped low, hind legs coiling with tension.
She pounced.
Her front paws pinned the rat’s rear half firmly. The rat squealed and struggled, and she instinctively bit down on the back of its neck.
A soft crack.
The rat went still.
Tang Miao stared blankly at the rat beneath her paws, unable to snap out of it for a long moment.
She had just… killed a rat?
With her mouth??
She stared at the motionless gray ball of fur on the ground.
Actually… it wasn’t that disgusting?
The Tang Miao of her past life wouldn’t have dared kill a rat—she’d have jumped on a chair and screamed at the sight of a cockroach.
But this cat body had muscle memory for hunting that was completely independent of her consciousness.
Fast, precise, ruthless—the whole process took less than two seconds.
She nudged the rat with her little paw.
Furry. Almost kind of cute.
She even swallowed instinctively.
No, no—she had dignity as a cat. She would absolutely NOT eat a rat!
She quickly carried the rat over and tucked it under the fish woman’s cutting board.
When the woman saw it the next morning, she was stunned for a good while.
“You caught a rat for me?”
She crouched down, looking at Tang Miao in the gap, and tapped her forehead with a finger.
“Alright, you can stay. I’ll feed you.”
And so, Tang Miao put down roots at the fish stall.
During the day, she wandered around the market showing off her cuteness, hoping some kind stall owner would toss her a fresh treat.
Grandpa Zhang had poor eyesight but absolutely loved cats.
All Tang Miao had to do was tilt her head up and rub against his leg twice, and delicious food was guaranteed.
Sometimes it was a steaming sauerkraut and pork bun, sometimes a freshly baked corn cake…
At 11:30 in the morning, Old Liu at the meat stall would be cleaning his cutting board.
As long as she timed it right and sat obediently by the iron basin with her big watery eyes, she’d get a tasty Harbin red sausage.
On days when she was tired and didn’t want to move, she’d lie in her gap and wait for the woman to feed her fish heads.
After the market cleared out at night, Tang Miao came out to patrol.
She caught every rat she saw.
Within half a month, not a single whisker of rat hair could be found in the seafood section.
Old Liu from the neighboring meat stall passed by and saw her chasing a rat. “Whoa!” he exclaimed.
Tang Miao was emerging from under the cutting board with a huge gray rat in her mouth, looking thoroughly displeased about it.
After all, deep down, she was still the Tang Miao who was afraid of cockroaches.
Old Liu crouched by his stall, clucking in amazement while holding up his domestic phone with a cracked screen to film a video.
He posted it on his Moments.
Caption: 【A little orange tabby just showed up at our market. She catches rats faster than my traps. Too smart.】
Thirty-two likes, seven comments.
【This cat looks both smart and dumb at the same time hahaha.】
【I don’t believe it. Unless you ship her to my house so I can pet her.】
Tang Miao knew nothing of this.
She stood at the entrance of the vegetable market, gazing at the gray sky of the small northern town, a puff of white mist curling from her tiny nose.
It was February, and still cold.
But it was a little better than half a month ago.
She had survived.
She had food, shelter, and a group of people who were very kind to her.
By all rights, she should have been content.
In her previous life, she didn’t even have these things.
A six-square-meter rented room, cycling two hundred kilometers every day, and by the end of the month, after paying rent and utilities, there was barely anything left from her wages.
She had lived in this small city for years and hadn’t even had a decent meal more than a few times.
But as Tang Miao looked at the sky, what she was thinking about wasn’t fish heads.
She wanted to eat hotpot.
Chengdu hotpot, Chongqing hotpot.
A pot full of boiling red oil, Sichuan peppercorns floating on top, tripe dipped seven times and eight times until it curled slightly, then stuffed into her mouth with minced garlic and sesame oil.
In her previous life, she had a list saved in her phone’s notes app called “Places to Eat When I Have Money.”
The first was “Chengdu, Mabianbian Chuanchuan Xiang,” the second was “Chongqing, Sister Pei’s Old Hotpot.”
The third was “Changsha, Wenheyou’s Crayfish”…
Below that, densely listed, were more than thirty restaurants scattered across the country.
She hadn’t completed a single item on that list.
She hadn’t even once left this small northern county town.
Tang Miao lowered her head and looked at her four paws.
Orange fur, pink paw pads, a body that had grown plumper than half a month ago.
Now she didn’t have to worry about not being able to pay rent, didn’t have to worry about fines for late deliveries, didn’t have to watch anyone’s expressions, and didn’t have to think about how to survive tomorrow.
A cat’s lifespan was about fifteen to twenty years, if nothing unexpected happened.
That was enough.
Enough for her to visit every single city on that list.
The cold wind blew through her whiskers, but her eyes shone brighter than starlight.
“Once spring comes and the ice and snow melt,” Tang Miao licked her lips, as if she could already smell the aroma of hotpot red oil drifting from afar, “I’ll set off!”
What she didn’t know was that Old Liu’s Moments video had been forwarded by his daughter to a local pet group.
A girl who worked at a veterinary hospital in the group found this cat too amusing and forwarded it to another group.