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Weekend chapter: 10/10
Only when the kitten was in his hands did Pei Shiyi realize just how small it was. It was a whole circle smaller than its siblings. It hadn’t been able to compete for nutrients in the mother’s womb. It fared even worse after birth. Its eyes were tightly shut, and it didn’t really cry. It only let out a tiny whimper when Pei Shiyi lifted it into his palm, a sound so weak he almost missed it.
Worried this little puffball wouldn’t pull through, Pei Shiyi transferred a bit of spiritual energy into him.
The puffball twitched slightly, as if that small movement had exhausted all his strength. It lay flat in Pei Shiyi’s palm, breathing slowly.
Pei Shiyi’s brow furrowed slightly. Though he had cared for kittens before, he had never dealt with one this small. According to his own common sense as an oviparous creature, a newborn this weak would have simply suffocated inside its eggshell, unable to hatch at all. Even if it did come out, it would likely take two breaths and immediately head for reincarnation.
Since mammals don’t have the process of breaking a shell, maybe they’re a bit easier to keep alive?
Bo Jin remarked, “How can it be this weak?”
Old Man Zhong: “He’s much better than when he first came out! Back then, he didn’t make a sound at all. It really felt like he was gone.”
Bo Jin reached out to pet the tiny kitten, but Pei Shiyi swatted his hand away. He turned his gaze toward the mother cat eating her food and said indifferently, “Any weaker and he’d have stopped breathing.”
Hearing those words, something stirred in Pei Shiyi’s heart. Pressing the thought down, he said, “We’ll come back this afternoon to finish the paperwork, but we’ll take the cats now. This little one was born too weak. We need to take him to the vet.”
Old Man Zhong nodded repeatedly. “You should, you really should. I’m old. I truly can’t look after so many cats on my own.”
Pei Shiyi smiled and chatted with the old man for a bit before heading back to the cat café with the cats.
With such a tiny puffball that could stop breathing at any moment, Pei Shiyi was on edge the whole way back, using his spiritual energy to shield him and even tucking his sleeve down to act as a cushion. Fortunately, the energy worked. By the time they reached the café, the kitten’s condition had actually improved quite a bit.
Setting the kitten down, Pei Shiyi chuckled. “Not bad. He’s got quite the will to live.”
The kitten had been absorbing his spiritual energy the entire way. It was something no ordinary newborn kitten would know how to do.
Miss Penny was currently knitting. The moment Pei Shiyi walked in, she caught the scent of new cats.
Using her magic to keep the knitting needles moving, she walked over to Pei Shiyi. When she saw the kitten in his palm, she gasped in surprise, “Is it a newborn? How is it so small?”
Pei Shiyi replied, “Yeah. I was afraid it wouldn’t survive with the humans, so I brought it back.”
Bo Jin set the carrier down. The Siamese mother, nervous after being moved to a new place and unable to see Pei Shiyi, shielded her kittens beneath her. Unimpressed by Bo Jin’s help, she hunched her back and hissed at him.
Bo Jin: “Should I let them out?”
Pei Shiyi pulled out a handkerchief to cover the kitten and said, “No, take them to the glass room on the second floor first. A nursing mother is very wary. It’s better to isolate them for now. Also, tell Yin Zhou to keep an eye on them, especially make sure Tong Qian doesn’t go over there to cause trouble.”
Bo Jin was an obedient boyfriend. He immediately took the carrier upstairs and, while he was at it, scooped up Tong Qian and brought him back down. Facing Pei Shiyi’s questioning look, Bo Jin said calmly, “Bringing him down ensures he won’t harass the new cats.”
Pei Shiyi: “…”
That actually made sense.
Pei Shiyi lifted the kitten with both hands and held him up to Bo Jin. “Look at him. Could it be Zuo Bai?”
Bo Jin leaned in. He sniffed for a moment, then frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know. The Black Cat clan walks the path of both the living and the dead. If his soul were attached to an object, I could identify it. But if this kitten was born a stillbirth and Zuo Bai possessed it, it’s no different from reincarnation. I can’t tell the difference.”
The main problem was that such a frail kitten couldn’t respond.
Pei Shiyi: “Then we’ll just have to let Yu Gao come back.”
Yu Gao’s current body belonged to Zuo Bai. His soul would resonate with his original flesh. Yu Gao would definitely feel if something was off.
Dan Huang: “Yu Gao took Sui Shou and the others out this morning. He didn’t say when he’d be back. I’ll go find them.”
Pei Shiyi smiled. “Thanks for the hard work, Dan Huang.”
Miss Penny added, “It’s better not to tell Yu Gao yet. Just say the boss is looking for him. If it turns out not to be him, we’ll save him the disappointment.”
Dan Huang nodded vigorously. “Right, right.”
Dan Huang followed Sui Shou’s usual walking route and soon found the group of fluffballs. He licked each of them in turn and said to Yu Gao, “Meow.”
New cats are at the café. The boss wants you back to see them.
Yu Gao’s body tensed slightly when Dan Huang started grooming him. As a human, although he loved watching cats groom and nuzzle each other, he still wasn’t quite used to being on the receiving end.
But his body was very honest. Grooming felt too good. Yu Gao couldn’t help but purr, grunting a response as he lowered his head to let Dan Huang comb his fur. He didn’t even process what Dan Huang had said before he followed him back to the café in a daze.
Sui Shou tried to lead his younger siblings off to play, but Dan Huang picked him up by the scruff and hauled him away.
Dan Huang: “Meow!”
The boss said there are kidnappers outside. Kids can’t wander around alone!
Yu Gao felt uneasy all the way back. His subconscious felt like something was about to happen. His pace grew faster and faster until he was in a full sprint toward the café.
Leading six or seven kittens who were constantly trying to slip away, Dan Huang couldn’t possibly keep up with Yu Gao. He eventually shook his head in resignation.
Yu Gao charged into the café, his heart thundering harder the closer he got. He burst through the door and immediately spotted the tiny kitten in Pei Shiyi’s palm.
Yu Gao stared blankly, suddenly afraid to move closer.
Seeing his state, how could Pei Shiyi not understand?
He leaned down slightly to lower the kitten. Yu Gao practically dragged his feet to get in front of Pei Shiyi.
He didn’t know how to process various scents. He found it hard to distinguish feline faces.
But the moment he got close, he knew that this was Zuo Bai.
Meeting in the height of summer, reuniting in the depth of winter.
The kitten, still unable to open its eyes, struggled to stretch its neck. It touched Yu Gao’s cold nose, and it immediately felt hot tears falling onto its body.
Zuo Bai thought: Useless. Crying again. What would you do without me?
…
After the various government offices resumed work, Pei Shiyi and Pei Huang completed the paperwork for the branch store. With careful nurturing, Zuo Bai’s body grew healthier by the day, while the mother cat devoted herself to raising her other two kittens.
Once Zuo Bai had recovered enough to let out clear cries, Pei Shiyi and Bo Jin finally learned how he had ended up in the body of a Siamese kitten.
After giving his body to Yu Gao, Zuo Bai’s soul had been uncontrollable, drifting with the shifts of Yin and Yang energy. He had stopped at an antique shop in Yingnan Square, his soul temporarily residing in an antique bracelet. Exhausted, he had fallen into a deep sleep.
The Siamese mother had given birth in a nearby teahouse. The first kitten to emerge was a stillbirth. Zuo Bai sensed a body that could nourish a soul and struggled to drift over and enter the kitten.
This led to what the teahouse owner had described: “Didn’t move at all at birth, but later regained the breath of life.”
Hearing this, Yu Gao’s eyes welled up with heartache again.
To compensate for the suffering Zuo Bai had endured, Yu Gao essentially turned himself into a “nanny”, never leaving Zuo Bai’s side. After becoming a cat, he had intuitively learned the language of cats. By the time Zuo Bai could speak clearly, it was already after the Lunar New Year. The first time Yu Gao communicated with Zuo Bai, he hid in a corner by himself and cried for a long time.
It was Bo Jin who found him.
After the New Year, the four of them set up a childcare schedule. Today was Pei Shiyi and Bo Jin’s turn at the cat café.
Director Bo listened curiously to Yu Gao’s crying for a while, then went upstairs soundlessly. He said casually to Pei Shiyi, “Yu Gao seems to be crying on the second floor. Do you want to go check on him and maybe record a video?”
A bedroom full of little rascals all whipped their heads up, twenty-one pairs of large eyes flashing with curiosity.
Tong Qian even started yowling, demanding to go down and see for himself.
Yin Zhou pinned Tong Qian’s head down with a paw.
Pei Shiyi was speechless for a moment. “How wicked can you be? Someone is hiding away to cry. Instead of comforting him, you want to film it.”
Bo Jin looked incredibly innocent. “Weren’t you thinking about what to do for your million-follower milestone gift? I’m just giving you ideas.”
Pei Shiyi: “Is that an idea? That’s a terrible idea. You’re just causing trouble.”
Bo Jin: “…”
Yun Chao, the great boss who looked down on 90% of men, heard this and said coldly, “Crybaby.”
Miss Penny said with a smile in her eyes, “It’s normal for young boys to be a bit prone to tears.”
Dan Huang, huddling next to Miss Penny, also nodded. “He’s still young. To have something like this happen so suddenly, he must have been quite panicked.”
To cat demons several centuries old, someone in their twenties or thirties was indeed just a child.
Zuo Bai was sleeping on Pei Shiyi’s pillow. He let out a low “Meow.”
He’s just a crybaby. He’ll be fine once he’s done.
Yun Chao was right. Yu Gao was indeed a crybaby. Zuo Bai was used to it. Yu Gao used to hold him and cry.
Zuo Bai shifted his body slightly, thinking: I need to get healthy quickly, or that crybaby will only be able to hide and cry in secret.
…
As the demand for a million-follower special grew louder, Pei Shiyi had to start brainstorming a video. He had no choice. Xiao Zhou had gone home. It was fine to send him footage for editing and post-production, but it would be too heartless to call him back just to film.
Fortunately, heaven solved the problem for him. Yuchuan was hit by its heaviest snowfall in recent years. It snowed for two days and a night, leaving the world white. A thick layer of snow covered the streets, and the weather bureau had issued a blizzard warning the day before. Although it affected traffic, the vast, clean shroud of white was breathtakingly beautiful.
When Pei Shiyi pushed open the door, dawn was just breaking. A line of red touched the horizon. The rooftops were bathed in white, and the long streets were covered in snow, pristine and flawless. Snow was still falling, large as goose feathers, though it wasn’t falling quite as rapidly now.
Yin Zhou, who loved the cold, looked up and meowed at Pei Shiyi. “Meow.”
Sir, can we go out and play in the snow?
Pei Shiyi: “Sure.”
He turned back and clapped his hands at the other eager fluffballs in the café. “Anyone who wants to play in the snow can go out.”
Miss Penny, having lived in the cold Norwegian forests, had a natural love for ice and snow and was naturally willing to go out.
Since Pei Shiyi was preparing for the follower milestone, he had kept the camera close at hand. He suddenly realized that a video of cats playing in the snow would be perfect. He gave them a quick heads-up and began recording.
The snow in front of the café hadn’t been cleared and was already quite thick.
Yin Zhou lifted a paw and pressed it into the flat snow, leaving a clear print. Joy flashed in his eyes. He gathered his strength and leaped, poofing right into the snowbank.
He left a cat-shaped crater.
Miss Penny was much more poised. She stepped out slowly, leaving beautiful “plum blossom” prints behind her. She tilted her head back as the goose-feather flakes drifted down.
She looked like a painting.
However, the kittens soon broke the mood. The little rascals, followers of Miss Penny and Dan Huang, scampered out after them. Before they had gone far, nine of them came shivering back.
They were all short-haired and huddled together around the heater-like Pei Shiyi, trembling.
Xiao Man let out a dainty “Meow.”
The boss is so mean.
Pei Shiyi laughed heartily.
Da Shu, thick with fat and fur, still hadn’t lost weight after several months. The craters he stepped into were deeper than the other cats’. He couldn’t help it. Although he didn’t fear the cold, his small paws made him ill-suited for walking in deep snow. The long-haired Jing Zhe and Qing Ming, both breeds bred for cold climates, began frolicking in the snow immediately.
Yun Chao, originally a northern cat, enjoyed the snowy scenery. She nudged the drowsy Fondant and decided to build a snowman for her, leading the curious Fondant outside.
The big boss was pure white and blended perfectly into the snow. A single jump made her disappear. Fortunately, there was the seal-point Fondant. Wherever that fluffy, dark tail stood up was the coordinate of the two “fairies”.
Tong Qian was eager. Seeing Yin Zhou having so much fun, he wanted to join in. He let out a yowl toward Yin Zhou. “Meow-row!”
Boss Tong is coming!
Yin Zhou looked over, only to see the large leopard cat charge into the snow and immediately sprint back.
Yin Zhou tilted his head in confusion. “Meow?”
Tong Qian huddled against Pei Shiyi’s leg, shivering. “Meow.”
Paws cold.
Pei Shiyi couldn’t stop laughing. Suddenly, his waist was squeezed as Bo Jin hugged him from behind. Bo Jin rested his chin on Pei Shiyi’s shoulder. Wearing only thin pajamas, he radiated heat through the fabric.
“Why are you up so early?”
Bo Jin’s voice was thick with sleep. His nose brushed against Pei Shiyi’s neck, his lips occasionally grazing his skin.
Pei Shiyi: “I saw the snow was thick enough, so I let the little rascals out to play. Where are the other cats?”
Bo Jin: “Dai Dai and Mao Mao are still sleeping. Yu Gao is watching Zuo Bai. The Siamese is feeding her kittens. Dan Huang is on… me.”
No sooner had he spoken than Dan Huang leaped from Bo Jin’s shoulder into the snow, creating a round crater.
Well, a crater twice the size of Yin Zhou’s.
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Maria Lian On CFRFGC Chapter 104