Before the new cat could come into the house, it first had to be taken to the vet to be dewormed and vaccinated, then observed for a time before it could be brought home. When the observation period ended, Luo Wenzhou picked the kitten up on his way home from work.
"I think there's a cat cage in the basement, have a look and see whether it's still there. In a little while we'll try letting the little one out." Veteran animal keeper Luo Wenzhou picked up the cat carrier and passed the groceries he had bought at the supermarket to Fei Du. Then he looked at Luo Yiguo, who had warily jumped up onto the shoe cabinet. "If it's really no good, we'll separate the two cats for a few days."
"Keep the little one in a cage?" asked Fei Du.
"No, that would be cruel." Luo Wenzhou changed to slippers. "We'd put Luo Yiguo in, of course."
Luo Yiguo, not knowing whom it had offended: "…"
Luo Wenzhou opened the cat carrier, and the new kitten carefully walked out under the two people's gazes. Luo Yiguo leapt off the shoe cabinet, making a bang as it hit the ground.
It hunched its shoulders like a vulture, narrowed its eyes, and made a big half-circle around the kitten.
Before a colossus of Luo Yiguo's tonnage, the kitten's belly clung to the ground, and the tip of its tail trembled.
But perhaps because it had understood the threats of that unfilial son Luo Wenzhou, Luo Yiguo was fairly mature and cool-headed towards the household's new member. From start to finish, it showed no aggression. It sniffed for a while, then went away, ignoring the kitten.
"That's fine. We won't need the cage." Luo Wenzhou relaxed. "I've heard that cats usually don't attack old cats or kittens. It seems that while Luo Yiguo is a good-for-nothing, it still has some basic feline nature… Oh, right, President Fei, what name have you picked for the little one?"
"I haven't thought of one yet," Fei Du said, separating out the things in the shopping bag by type and putting them away.
In this he was particularly skilled, like a human-shaped automatic storage system. What there was in the house and how long there was before it expired would all be recorded in his brain the moment the item went into the fridge. Never mind that when he was idling at home, Fei Du would order food, he could still clearly arrange the storage of the ordered food. As long as he wasn't away from home for too long, there would be no expired milk or food gone off in the fridge. You could call him a must-have at-home super food sorting machine.
The "super food sorting machine" casually switched around the positions of some things in the fridge, putting in place some mystical code. He absent-mindedly said, "Let's call it Skinner, or maybe Watson?"2"
This sounded jarring to Luo Wenzhou. "Picking such Western names for a local cat you picked up off the street, aren't you worried about tripping over them? How about this, you picked it up, so it'll have your surname. We'll put it with Luo Yiguo in the family tree, give it an 'yi' for a generational character. Yeah… It won't fill up a whole pot, but it can just about make up a bowl. Let's call it Fei Yiwan3!"
"Look at me, shixiong." Fei Du poked his head out from behind the refrigerator door. "Look at this: this expression is called 'every last strand of hair is saying no.'"
"Give it a cheap name and it'll be easy to keep… Oh, crap, that nearly… Listen, Comrade Fei Du, enough with the cliff hanging, how many times have I told you?"
While the "super food sorting machine" was practical, he still had his problems. Apart from going to bed late and getting up early, being inattentive towards housework, and refusing to wear long underwear, he also liked putting anything at all on the edges of tables, even with a bit dangerously hanging off—almost half his phone, the edges of bowls and cups, and, worst of all, if you made him cut up fruit, when he was finished cutting, he would put the knife down with an inch of the handle hanging in the air. Luckily, Luo Wenzhou didn't have OCD, or else this would have hounded him to death.
Luo Wenzhou hadn't been paying attention when he took off his jacket and had nearly swiped the phone on the edge of the table and sent it falling. Luckily, Captain Luo was deft and managed to catch it.
"Is our table too small, or are your arms too short?" Luo Wenzhou went into the kitchen and tapped Fei Du lightly on the head, holding his phone. "Maybe if I break it one day, you'll finally behave.—What do you want to eat tonight? Take the food out, then go feed the cats."
Fei Du gave an "OK" and went to work. "Oh, right, Lao Luo, I'm going on a business trip tomorrow."
"Fine, I'll pack some clothes for you after dinner." As Luo Wenzhou washed vegetables, he asked, "How many days? Where? What's the temperature there?"
"At least a week," Fei Du said. "The temperature is about the same as here. It's Binhai."
"Binhai?" Luo Wenzhou stared. Wasn't that a day's round trip in a car? "You're going to stay in Binhai for a week?"
"Yeah." Fei Du paused. "We want to get that piece of land. Lao Zhou and Lu Jia have gone on ahead to lay the groundwork. They need me to connect on quite a few things."
Luo Wenzhou was silent for a moment. He turned off the tap.
Fei Du hadn't said what piece of land, but he knew as soon as he heard.
"Can you get it?"
"Of course. With enough money, you can command ghosts and demons."
"Speak properly," said Luo Wenzhou.
"We're doing our best." Fei Du finished squeezing out nutritional paste for the still nameless kitten, then turned his head and smiled at him. "Otherwise I wouldn't have set aside a whole week. At worst I'll have to make a few trips, chip away at it slowly."
"What are you planning to do when you get it?"
"It's been redesignated as a tourism spot. The plan we submitted to the local government is for a theme park." Fei Du gently pushed aside Luo Yiguo, who was closing in on the kitten's plate. "That's nutritional paste for kittens. The calorie count is too high. I'll buy you low-calorie stuff another day.—Didn't Guo Heng tell you?"
"We haven't spoken recently… Guo Heng? What does this have to do with Guo Heng?"
"We went to the victims' relatives to get their opinions, and they voted on the amusement park," Fei Du said. "Our initial plan is to integrate all the things those girls liked when they were alive into the plans. The…parents taking part in the planning are all basically shareholders. They'll collect dividends. Though we'll see about the exact operation when the time comes. If it touches on others' copyrights, we'll need someone to smooth it out. Lao Zhou may end up wasted on this for the next few years."
"They…voted on it themselves?" Luo Wenzhou frowned. "They aren't afraid of stirring up old memories? I thought…"
"That piece of land, that town, will be a nightmare they can't escape to the ends of their lives," Fei Du picked up. "But the existence of hell is an objective reality. If you don't hear it, see it, or think of it, it still won't disappear on its own, not unless you occupy it, rule it, pick up the hoe yourself and plant it full of flowers—the hardest part has passed, and of course the rest must be done."
"All right, there's some merit in that." Out of professional habit, Luo Wenzhou warned, "Though this was a hotly debated topic. If you build an amusement park there, you may attract perverts."
Fei Du, acting as a human meal separator for the two cats, smiled.
"In my territory?" He pushed up his glasses. "Shixiong, for ten leagues around the place where the King of Poison Insects resides, no insects survive."
"All right, all right, go on, you're amazing, you're evil-warding camphor." Luo Wenzhou puffed out a breath. "Go preheat the oven!"
Before his divine and mighty Majesty, the King of Poison Insects, could finish waving his tail, he was pulled up by it by Captain Luo, and because he didn't remember the lesson, he was called a cabbage caterpillar by Luo Wenzhou that night—
When Fei Du had drunk half of his milk, Zhou Huaijin called him on business. The signal in the living room wasn't very good. Fei Du put down his cup and went out onto the balcony holding his phone, once again leaving a quarter of the cup suspended off the edge of the coffee table.
The nameless kitten was attracted by the smell of milk. Getting up its nerve, it hopped onto the coffee table, wanting to smell what was in the cup. In the blink of an eye, Luo Yiguo, with a vigor at odds with its figure, leapt up in one bound and swiped the mug with its tail.
Bang!
The nameless kitten: "…"
After committing the crime, the culprit Luo Yiguo ran off without hesitation, not leaving behind a single cat hair, unwilling to take credit.
Luo Wenzhou, just packing Fei Du's clothes, heard the noise and ran over to look. His soul of the salaried class tore apart. While he never harped on Fei Du's spending, he would sometimes go online to check some prices to avoid accidentally slighting some of President Fei's valuable but unremarkable things.
"Do you know how much that mug of his costs?!"
The kitten had grown up on the streets. It was malnourished, and its brain was also underdeveloped. It still hadn't worked out what had happened. It stood at the scene of the crime with its clueless eyes open wide.
Luo Yiguo, having scampered secretively onto the cat tree, was licking its paws like a cat who had nothing to do with this, displaying deep approval for what its unfilial child Luo Wenzhou had said—what could be done? There were too many troublemaking spirits in this house.
"Stay away, can't you see the floor is covered in shards?" Luo Wenzhou picked up the kitten and put it into the arms of Fei Du, who had rushed over. "The wastrel's picked up a wastrel cat! Let's just call it Fei Qian4 and get it over with!"
For the sake of the kitten's future self-respect, Fei Du took a stand against Luo Wenzhou for half the night. When he had no choice but to leave the next morning, he went out of his way to instruct the kitten, "Your name is Skinner. Remember that. Don't listen to Luo Wenzhou."
The kitten gave a big yawn and saw him out in confusion.
Fei Du was away on this business trip even longer than expected. He spent half a month running around before bringing a haggard Zhou Huaijin and a self-professed "so tired he had edema" Lu Jia back to Yan City.
Zhou Huaijin went to sleep as soon as he got in the car. When he woke up, they were stuck in Yan City's evening rush hour traffic. He rubbed his eyes and looked out the car window. He saw the strings of headlights, the blurred light and shadow, and felt that he had slept well and comfortably.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lu Jia writing something on his phone's memo pad. He caught an accidental glimpse and saw that the fat man was writing:
X Month, X Day. My boss is driving the car I'm riding in. The luxury car has drawn attention the whole way. The passersby all think I'm the boss. A couple of girls smiled at me while we were stuck in traffic. Great! Oh, boss, you think your charm comes from being handsome? No, it's your ride that has charm!
Zhou Huaijin said, "…What are you doing?"
Planning to revolt?
"Recording the wonderful moments of life." Lu Jia saved the memo. "Some people are born in a honey pot, so the very logic of their world is sweet. People like us, though, we're missing a bit, so we need to pay attention and collect all kinds of sweets, slowly save them up. In a few years, we can save ourselves up a honey pot—that's what the boss taught me."
Fei Du was driving and had his eyes on the road. Not looking back, he said, "Please don't put malicious remarks about me in with your sweets."
But Zhou Huaijin considered it seriously. "Does President Fei also keep a record like this?"
Fei Du denied it. "I have a bit of a sweet tooth, but I don't have such living requirements."
Lu Jia smiled wordlessly.
He took them back to Lu Jia's boxing gym. While getting out of the car and getting their luggage, Lu Jia suddenly seemed to inadvertently mention, "Hey, President Fei, that cake you posted to your Moments on Captain Luo's birthday last year, where did you order it?"
"He posted it, I just liked it…" Fei Du answered thoughtlessly. At this point, he suddenly caught up and looked at Lu Jia with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.
Laughing, Lu Jia picked up his and Zhou Huaijin's luggage and ran off even more robustly than Luo Yiguo after getting up to mischief.
"Damn fatty."
Fei Du shook his head, closed the trunk, said goodbye to Zhou Huaijin, and went home.
There was no need for him to make a record. He was an automatic storage system for a "sweets warehouse"; he was perfectly well aware of each piece of income.
Oh, yes, as for "Skinner"… Skinner, indeed. Fei Du had been gone for half a month. When he returned home and looked, the stupid little animal had already acknowledged the annoying name of Fei Qian. It would come shaking its head and wagging its tail when the name was called.
What prospects could it have in its life if it was called "Fei Qian?"
It joyously took on Luo Yiguo's legacy, becoming the new bottom of the food chain in the house. But that's a later story.
-----------------
Authors note:
(2) B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson were two psychologists, developers of behaviorism, a framework for understanding the behavior of people and animals that assumes that it is either a reflex response to stimuli or the result of past experience. For purposes of the joke, it's notable that both performed behavioral experiments on animals, often rats.
(3) Of course, Luo Yiguo's name (一锅) means "a pot," and the proposed name for the kitten (一碗) is "a bowl."
(4) 费钱, apart from using the character for Fei Du's surname, also means "costly."