Chapter 80: Chapter Seventy-Eight: This Cat Is Really Stupid

After getting up in the morning, Bian Tou opened his room door, came to the balcony, stretched his arms, and breathed in some fresh air.

He raised his hand to look at the rising sun, and a hint of worry flashed in Bian Tou's eyes.

He had a storage card in his hand, and after storing the information on it he had been waiting for a chance to hand the card to the contact, but lately there has been a lot of movement from all sides, the superiors have started to suspect, and Bian Tou himself is among those suspected.

Those under suspicion are closely watched; Bian Tou knows his residence has listening devices and people around are monitoring him, so he is still somewhat anxious inside, though he does not show this emotion.

Bian Tou was thinking about this when a warm, soft body pressed against his back.

"What's wrong?"

The person behind him asked.

The woman had a delicate appearance and seemed to be of a gentle, compliant type.

"I was thinking my injury has healed, when can I get some work." Bian Tou laughed.

"Rest more, so you don't leave any aftereffects." The woman said, her words filled with concern and worry.

"Yeah, I've just been feeling restless lately." Bian Tou said. He had been stabbed in the abdomen; actually that stab could have been avoided, but he didn't dodge it, merely avoiding vital organs, in order to gain the superiors' trust. However, some leaks have occurred recently, and he is still listed as a suspect.

Since the crackdown in Chu Hua Shi, many people have started to change their business methods, at least on the surface; the underworld has its own rules, the marketplace has its own wars, and no matter what the new form looks like, competition never stops. Mutual probing and pressure have never ceased.

Their words were full of tenderness, but in places each couldn't see, their gazes were not like that.

"Huh?" Bian Tou looked toward the courtyard wall.

This place is a two-story small building with a small yard of over ten square meters; many homes in the suburbs are designed like this.

Bian Tou rents this place from someone else, while the pond in the yard is one he dug himself, in which he keeps some small fish.

As for why they keep small fish in the yard, everyone familiar with Bian Tou knows it's to prepare for a cat; those small fish are actually there so the cat can easily catch them. For fear the cat might drown, the pond isn't very deep, and the edges aren't smooth tiles but earthen walls, making it easy for a cat that falls in to climb out.

Stray cats often come here to fish; one can be seen every two or three days. The locals have gotten used to it.

Bian Tou stood on the second-floor balcony and could see everything below clearly.

A black cat jumped onto the courtyard wall. It glanced at them warily, hesitated a moment, then seemed to think they would do nothing else, and walked toward the pond.

"Another stray cat." The woman behind Bian Tou said, her eyes full of disdain.

She actually dislikes stray cats, as they may carry parasites, skin diseases, and other illnesses; if it weren't for the superiors assigning her to approach Bian Tou to monitor his movements and contacts, she would absolutely not be here—just the presence of stray cats would drive her mad.

When Zheng Tan stood on the courtyard wall, raised his head to look at the second-floor balcony, he glanced again at the target "Bian Tou," confirmed it was the person he was looking for, then jumped down from the wall and came to the edge of the pond.

Zheng Tan was very pleased with his own performance just now; he almost wanted to give himself a little golden statue award. Compared to house cats, stray cats are more wary, even fierce, and don't trust people easily, so he deliberately showed wary and hesitant movements earlier.

And as a cat, the first thing on his mind is food; even if Zheng Tan doesn't like it, he has to pretend. Earlier Wei Leng also told him there is a fish-raising pond in this yard, specially kept for cats, so go ahead and catch as many as you like.

However, Zheng Tan currently doesn't really feel like catching fish; one reason is he has no interest in raw fish, and since becoming a cat he hasn't eaten any. Another is that he lacks experience catching fish.

As a cat that was adopted the very day he woke up, Zheng Tan, aside from his time as a stray, has never worried about food; even when he was a stray he just stole food, never caught fish himself, and how to catch is entirely based on his feeling.

Zheng Tan now looks quite miserable; if the Jiao family saw him now they would surely feel heartbroken, their Hei Tan currently looks rather pitiful.

Zheng Tan can't do anything about it; Wei Leng said he needs to wear makeup, and not doing so is also not easy.

Zheng Tan now has black fur, which doesn't show dirt as easily as white or light-colored cats, but perhaps due to a layer of dust, his fur lacks shine, and in some places the hairs clump together in tufts, like matted clumps.

This brings us to Wei Leng's "makeup" technique; the spots a cat can lick don't have these clumps, only places the cat cannot groom develop a few clumps, making it more careful, adding a natural touch to avoid suspicion.

After grooming his fur, Wei Leng also commented: "You're so big, if you don't wear makeup, how could you look like a stray?!"

"Can't a stray cat be a bit sturdier?"

Zheng Tan remembers seeing several sturdy stray cats without tags roaming outside when he was a stray.

"If not strong, how could one snatch food and territory and survive safely? Especially in the wild."

"Not every stray cat is thin and weak."

Zheng Tan feels he now resembles a down-and-out vagrant wearing ragged clothes patched with scraps.

Having come to the pond's edge, he looked at his reflection in the water, filled with mixed emotions.

Regaining his focus, Zheng Tan looked at the small fish swimming in the pond, pondering how to catch them.

The fish kept in the pond are not the colorful ornamental kind; they are quite ordinary, and there are some stones around and in the pond that make it easy for a cat to catch fish, allowing it to stand on them to do so.

Zheng Tan knows the two people on the second floor are watching him, so he also needs to show the same preferences as other cats, or it wouldn't be normal.

He walked around the pond twice, then stood at the edge. He raised a paw, watched a fish slowly swimming toward him, and struck!

He missed.

The small fish darted away in a blink, mingling with the others, so you couldn't tell which one it had been.

Zheng Tan shook the water off his paws, then moved to another spot and waited for another chance.

Perhaps because the fish here are often stimulated, they are quite alert and not easy to catch.

After trying twice and still not catching a fish, Zheng Tan felt a suffocating frustration; not catching a single fish made him embarrassed to say he was a cat now.

When a small crucian carp about the length of a finger slowly swam toward the edge, Zheng Tan seized the moment and struck!

He curved his paw and accurately scooped the fish from the water, then flung it straight onto the grass beside the pond.

The fish flung onto the grass flapped its tail and jumped; Zheng Tan shook the water off his paws and walked over.

When he reached the fish, Zheng Tan hesitated. The fish had been caught. What now?

"Surely he couldn't eat it?"

"Damn it, I can't do that!"

"Faced with a raw fish, still alive, unscaled, ungutted, with grass and dirt clinging to it—maybe someone even pissed in that pond—how could Zheng Tan bring himself to put it in his mouth?!"

"The rather picky Zheng Tan declared he could not eat it at all."

"At that moment, Wei Leng, hidden in a nearby residential building, looked through a telescope at the scene, rubbed his forehead, and recalled that the Jiao family had said this cat doesn't eat raw fish."

"Hei Tan, you've caught the fish—what should we do with it now?"

"Although somewhat helpless, Wei Leng felt the cat should be able to handle this, so he continued observing."

"Zheng Tan watched the fish flopping on the grass, thought a bit, and seemed to recall that A Huang and Jingzhang usually, if not very hungry, would play with their captured prey first, teasing it until it was about to gasp and hardly struggled before eating it, or simply toss the barely alive prey aside and leave it."

"That also seemed like a good idea. Zheng Tan thought."

After deciding, Zheng Tan recalled the scene of seeing A Huang and them playing when he was in the big courtyard; then he imitated A Huang's way of playing with grasshoppers, bending his claws to hook the fish hopping on the grass, and when the small fish was thrown into the air, Zheng Tan raised his front half and extended both claws to embrace that small fish.

The next step should have been to tear and bite, but Zheng Tan couldn't bring himself to bite, so he decided to rub it twice instead; however, the fish's body was too slippery, and Zheng Tan also didn't use his claws to pin the fish directly, and when rubbing he didn't apply enough force, directly rubbing the fish away.

The small carp traced a beautiful arc in the air, fell to the edge of the pond, flicked its tail twice, and before Zheng Tan could reach it, it slipped into the pond and swam away.

Bian Tou: "..."

Wei Leng: "..."

Zheng Tan really didn't intend to release that fish; he had originally planned to play with it a bit and then leave it where it was, but he accidentally rubbed it away.

The woman standing beside Bian Tou saw this, covered her mouth and laughed, saying, "This cat is really stupid!"

"Perhaps this cat isn't hungry; it just wants to catch a fish to play with," Bian Tou said. He had also seen before that some cats would scoop up a fish to play with before eating it, while others would scoop up a fish and immediately carry it off to the side to gnaw on. Looking at the black cat by the pond, it doesn't seem hungry; it's probably just playing.

Regarding Bian Tou's explanation, the woman neither agreed nor disagreed; anyway, she doesn't like stray cats—they're dirty, ugly, and vicious. This cat in front of her has one more trait: it's stupid.

Wrinkling her nose in disgust, the woman grew a bit impatient watching the cat here; she was about to turn and go back to her room, but then she saw that black stray cat from earlier walk two circles around the pond, give up catching fish, and head toward the house.

Zheng Tan glanced at the closed door, flicked his tail, walked to the side, jumped onto the windowsill, and flipped in through the window beside it.

Windows are naturally like doors prepared for cats; the consequence of not closing them is just this.

Bian Tou and them have seen this kind of situation before, but back then the door wasn't closed, which let the cat in. Moreover, this residence is poorly designed—it lacks ventilation, the ground floor always feels damp, so they often keep the windows open for airflow.

"Oh no, I left some sliced cooked beef in the downstairs kitchen! Don't let the cat drag it away!" the woman shouted, rushing downstairs.

Bian Tou also headed downstairs; if left unchecked, the downstairs would surely erupt in chaos. (To be continued…)

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