Chapter 240: The Night of Feeding the Tiger

Just before entering the laboratory, Henry did not forget the hungry little tiger in his hand. He set Katie down; now in a new location, she was curiously exploring this dark and desolate world, momentarily forgetting her own hunger.

... Perhaps this little creature was following its instincts, searching for something to eat.

Anyway, Henry still did not quite understand Hu's thoughts. He could only roughly grasp messages like "hungry" or "needs to defecate."

Using his super-senses to lock onto a desert hare not far away, Henry caught it, wrung its neck, and placed it before Katie.

The reason he did not remove the internal organs or cook the meat before feeding it to Katie the little tiger was that raw meat and organs also contained nutrients needed by top predators like tigers—nutrients that could not be obtained after skinning, bleeding, and cooking the rabbit.

Even freezing and then thawing the raw meat would destroy many of these components. Not to mention that this meat had been bled and processed for human consumption.

This was the result of Henry checking books after raising the little tiger on cooked meat for a while and noticing its behavior seemed somewhat off. Otherwise, why would tigers be carnivores rather than omnivores like dogs, able to eat anything?

Henry fed the entire wild rabbit to Katie without any processing. As a tiger, her instincts naturally told her where to bite and which parts would replenish the nutrients she needed.

As for not catching it alive to let the little tiger practice hunting, the reason was obvious enough. An adult tiger merely acting like a dog and being affectionate was already terrifying enough for ordinary people; preserving its predatory instincts would be unthinkable.

Henry had no intention of releasing Katie into the wild; he was waiting for her tiger bones and tiger penis after her natural death. Even causing her to die naturally a bit early was not a major problem, but she would at least have to reach adulthood.

──The little tiger, currently gnawing on the rabbit, felt a chill run down its spine! ──

Since he seriously wanted to raise the little tiger at home, he had to find a way to reduce its wildness and suppress its instincts.

Because not all carbon-based lifeforms living in the city possess methods or knowledge to avoid tigers. If Katie became accustomed to actively hunting and seeking food when hungry, the result was almost unimaginable.

So it was better to just feed her obediently. Feeding her was quite good too.

Henry had already checked: although there were no laws in California at this time restricting the keeping of specific animal species, if a kept animal caused injury to a person or harmed another person's pet, the owner still bore joint liability.

Only for endangered conservation species did US law contain clauses prohibiting trade and possession.

And which animals were endangered conservation species was clearly listed on a checklist. It was not up to conservationists to decide whatever came to mind. Tigers were not on that list.

In any case, the mere rabbit was quickly finished by Katie. Although the rabbit was not large in size, the little tiger still ate with its face covered in blood.

Although the fur was gnawed into tatters, not much of it was actually eaten; Katie mainly picked out the meat. The rabbit's internal organs remained largely intact, except that the heart was eaten, a small piece of the liver was bitten off, and the rest remained mostly whole.

However, judging by Katie's expression of still wanting more, the portion of this little rabbit should have been insufficient.

With no other choice, and coincidentally hearing the movements of a fox nearby, Henry caught it, treated it the same way, wrung its neck, and threw it before Katie.

With Henry's skills, the fox's fur remained quite intact. But if one wanted to skin and use it, it would still require tanning and semi-curing leather-processing steps; otherwise, it would not only be difficult to preserve but also prone to infestation by worms. Henry was too lazy to do that, so he simply tossed the whole fox to Katie to gnaw on.

As for how to tell if she was full, it was very simple. When Katie started playing with her food, it probably meant she could not eat anymore or did not want to eat.

Playing with food, whether for humans or animals, is a bad habit. It represents a lack of respect for life.

Eating is to continue one's own life; but playing with it is something else entirely. That is why people emphasize not wasting.

If a carnivorous animal exhibited such behavior, it could cultivate the vicious habit of killing not for food. Rather than gambling that Katie would not transfer such behavior to humans, it was better to cut off the generation of such behavior from the very beginning.

So whenever Katie started playing with her food, regardless of whether she still wanted to continue eating, Henry would take the food away.

This made the little tiger quite protective of its food; seeing food, it would quickly finish everything edible, leaving the inedible parts for the poop-scooping owner to handle...

While Katie was gnawing on the dead fox, Henry, waiting nearby, looked up at the sky.

In this wilderness without light pollution, a moonless night revealed a starry sky scene that was hard to imagine. Coupled with Kryptonian vision, the stars in the sky were multicolored, not uniformly white.

During this rare time of quieting his mind, Henry emptied himself, allowing his super-brain, which was thinking constantly, to temporarily set aside all thoughts and enjoy a moment of tranquility.

The wind on the wilderness brought fragmented sounds from all around to Henry: the friction of flying sand and rolling stones, the noise of small animals venturing out at night to forage, and the mating signals emitted by animals in estrus.

These noises, which should have been incomprehensible and devoid of special meaning, suddenly gave Henry a sense of integration at this moment. As if everything was one, coordinated and balanced.

The super-brain, which had been emptying itself, in that instant seemed to break through the human limiter and began to operate at high speed. It made Henry feel as if he had a fever; the temperature of his head exceeded normal body temperature and kept soaring.

This was different from the painful situation where the super-brain overloaded due to collecting too much external information via super-senses and having to identify them one by one. This was a very fresh stimulus.

Just as Henry, who had already learned more than thirty official languages of various countries, recently planned to decode tiger language, this super-brain was attempting to decode the world.

Why he entered this state, Henry did not know. He only knew that in some vague way he seemed to see a thread; if he followed this thread to explore, perhaps he could discover something.

Was this something a Kryptonian or Superman could do? Henry, who had not previously been a Kryptonian, could not answer. Superman was merely a character in comics to him; as long as the comics, animations, or movies did not mention it, he naturally did not know either.

But did "not mentioned" or "not brought up" mean it did not exist?

Realizing his current situation, with no precedents to follow, Henry simply let his intuition take over, allowing his body to act according to instinct.

So at this moment, he unconsciously activated his ability to fly, floating into mid-air. He sat cross-legged with his five centers facing heaven.

Purple bloomed atop his head, blue radiated from his brow, green appeared at his throat, green glowed in his chest, yellow manifested above his navel, orange emanated from his crotch, and a point of red light shone at his perineum, responding to the world with this body.

Until he was silently enveloped into the Mirror World, severing his connection with reality.

(End of this chapter)