018: Cat-Dog War: Meow vs Woof
Tang Yu drew in a sharp breath.
What kind of phrasing was that? What the hell?
He looked serious, almost solemn. “First of all, we can’t have kids. Second, we definitely can’t have kittens.”
He tried to explain, embarrassed.
“We just happened to be standing a little close, and he ‘got a sugar rush’ off it. He balled up the atmosphere between us in his head, turned it into marshmallows, ate it, and felt refreshed. That’s what it means when someone says they’re shipping our cp.”
“Ohhh,” Sang Zhao said, a long sound of sudden understanding.
“Then he’s not that awful,” he muttered.
He thought for a second, then asked, “So what’s a cp?”
He had never been this eager to learn in his entire life.
Most of the time, he was pure little-animal instinct. The way he talked and acted came straight from his nature. He was clearly under-socialized, and he really didn’t care about a lot of things humans treated like unspoken rules.
He never felt awkward. If he was curious, he just kept asking.
Right now his expression was dead serious, the kind of serious you’d expect when doing a math problem. It was so serious that Tang Yu’s embarrassment hit a peak and he had to quickly change the subject.
Tang Yu hit the brakes. “Let me go off-topic for a second. I’ve wanted to ask this for a while.”
“So, how old are you exactly? With that face, you look like you’re only seventeen or eighteen.”
He pressed his fingers against his temples.
“Please, at minimum be eighteen. If you tell me you’re seventeen, I’m going to want to jump off a building.”
The guilt would be unbearable.
Talking like this to a minor, teasing him on top of that, how was that different from openly flirting with a kid?
As for Sang Zhao’s age, that was… tricky.
He’d been a pet cat twice. The first time he’d lived ten years. The second time, another ten. Then, on the road to finding his third owner, bam, he’d turned into a human and been dragged off to work.
So you could say he was twenty.
That was how he did the math, and that was the age he gave. “I’m twenty.”
Tang Yu slowly let out the breath he’d been holding, though it didn’t completely relax him.
A five-year age gap was still… something.
He dropped his gaze to his shoes, lowered his voice, and tried to get it out as fast as possible before his shame swallowed him whole. “Cp means ‘couple.’ It means, like, lovers. You get that, right?”
And Sang Zhao’s reaction was nothing like what Tang Yu had imagined.
He didn’t freeze, didn’t get angry, didn’t get flustered. None of the usual responses a normal person might have when someone teased them like that showed up.
He just turned his head, looked out the window, and said, just as puzzled as before, “But it’s not spring.”
It was like he had some strange, stubborn little belief he clung to. Whenever someone mentioned love, he had to check the season first.
Tang Yu decided to take that as him dodging the question. He thought, Well, at least he didn’t go “that’s disgusting, stay away from me you gross gay guy,” so he probably didn’t hate him.
His ears were red as he went along with it. “Right, it’s summer.”
Sang Zhao turned it over again. “But even if it were spring, it wouldn’t matter.”
He looked at Tang Yu with this weird, regretful expression that left Tang Yu totally lost.
Because even if it was spring, they still wouldn’t be having little kittens.
There was no universe where that happened.
They weren’t even the same species. Why would a perfectly good human end up tangled up with a little orange cat?
He didn’t take it seriously. He just mentally filed it under “new words learned today,” then tossed it straight out the back of his mind.
Which left Tang Yu alone, back at his desk, staring at a half-finished proposal in Word, gnawing on his knuckles while he thought.
So he really didn’t hate him, right?
—
Sang Zhao had no idea about the doubts, second-guessing, or self-strategy going on in Tang Yu’s brain.
He got off work and went straight to the Yao Management Bureau’s evening classes, cramming his schedule full every day until he was as tired as a dog.
During class, Black Panther, the one who’d given him rides on that cat scooter, came to sit beside him again. The two of them hunched over, whispering.
Black Panther shared some rice crackers and asked, “So, how’s work? Are you having fun? My job’s so boring. The Wild Man is always squeezing me dry.”
“Who’s the Wild Man?” Sang Zhao asked.
“My boss,” Black Panther said, waving it off.
“Once he saw I was donating a chunk of my paycheck every month to a stray cat rescue. That was it. The way he reacted, you’d think I’d robbed his wallet. He kept nagging and nagging, all passive-aggressive and swearing under his breath.”
Black Panther mimicked him:
“He’s like this—”
He twisted his voice into something sharp and nasty.
“‘All these cats and dogs are spoiled now. Those strays out in the wild, nobody’s stealing their food, are they? Aren’t they living just fine? What’s there to rescue? Wild cats, wild dogs, who cares?’”
The moment Sang Zhao heard that, his hackles went up.
He stared at Black Panther and hung onto every word.
“So I just said, huh! How can nobody be stealing their food? Out in the wild, there’s you, Wild Man, stealing from them.” Black Panther imitated himself, getting more animated. “Those wild cats and dogs are scared of you, Wild Man!”
Sang Zhao bit into a rice cracker and laughed without mercy.
Since they’d already brought up the nickname, Black Panther kept going, telling him how much he liked giving his bosses code names.
“It’s fine. I only use them in private,” he said quietly. “What about you? What do you call your boss behind his back?”
Sang Zhao hadn’t actually given Tang Yu a special name.
He usually just called him President Tang, Tang Yu, or “ge.” Whatever came to mind, he used. At the office he stuck with President Tang. When Tang Yu took him to eat something good, he naturally and shamelessly switched to calling him “ge” like he’d been born with a sweet tooth.
But yeah, it would be convenient to have a nickname for talking about him with friends without dropping his real name.
He’d never made one before, but he could do it right now.
A flash of inspiration hit him as he chewed his rice cracker. “Corn Bean,” he said.
“What?” Black Panther blinked. It took him a second to realize Corn Bean meant his boss. Then he asked, “Why that?”
“Because he’s like a little corn kernel,” Sang Zhao murmured.
Black Panther thought he got it and latched onto the wrong idea. He grabbed Sang Zhao’s arm, eyes shining. “Oh! Because he’s really yellow? Like, dirty-minded?”
“…No,” Sang Zhao said.
He shoved him away and stomped on his foot under the desk.
He took a moment to organize his thoughts, then gave the real answer. “It’s because corn is golden too.”
Just like his orange hair, just like his red mackerel tabby coat. All that bright, warm gold and orange.
Corn didn’t look like an orange, sure, but corn was great too. Corn was a staple food.
A little smile curled at the corners of his eyes and mouth as he waved his hands. “Corn is sweet and sticky. Sticky corn is corn, tender corn is corn, crunchy corn is corn. Corn in soup is corn, stir-fried with beans it’s corn, popcorn is also corn.”
He finished firmly, “Corn just looks like a kind-hearted staple food.”
Just like Tang Yu. A kind, good person. A corn kernel you could bite into and it would be sweet, sticky, tender, and crisp all at once.
Black Panther listened to this whole speech in a daze.
“So what’s an unkind staple food, then?” he asked weakly.
“Buckwheat, whole wheat, all that rough grain stuff,” Sang Zhao sniffed. “Not kind.”
They were right in the middle of this, when a voice drifted coldly from behind them. It was Director Li doing her rounds.
“If you two keep talking through class, I’m about to stop being kind.”
Sang Zhao: ?!
Black Panther: !!
Neither of them even dared turn around. They straightened in their seats immediately, grabbed their pens, and started scribbling nonsense like their lives depended on it, putting on a show of studying their hearts out.
Only after class did they finally get another chance to talk.
Black Panther invited him out. “We’re having a party. You want to come? If you come, it’ll be me, you, the Pallas’s cat, the lynx…”
He counted it off. All felines. Big cats, small cats, all cats.
Every time he said “party,” his accent twisted it into something that sounded like he’d learned it five minutes ago. It was awkward to say and awkward to hear, but he was clearly thrilled.
Who had a cat-only party lined up tonight? They did.
Of course Sang Zhao agreed on the spot. “Sure. Just send me the time and place.”
“This Thursday. Night. Eleven o’clock.”
“Huh?” Sang Zhao said.
Then he thought about it. Fair enough.
They were all felines. Night-time hunters. Most of their lives were built around night activity, it made them feel safer.
He’d been a housecat for so long he’d gotten used to sleeping at night, sure. But he was a cat. He counted as a night creature too. If he didn’t sleep, he’d be useless at work… but he’d be really happy.
He happily decided he was going.
Then a thought struck him. “Can I bring a dog friend?”
Black Panther frowned. “This is a feline meet-up. What would a dog be doing there?”
“A little dog,” Sang Zhao stressed.
“Isn’t a little dog still a dog?”
“Little dogs are cuter.”
“What’s cute about a dog?”
…
Which was how, on Thursday night, way out in the suburbs, under the dark sky, a glaringly bright, pure white Samoyed ended up squatting there in the weeds.
At first glance, in the middle of the night, that white shape was ridiculously obvious.
It was just… hovering there in the darkness. Like a ghost.
My meow meow god, Black Panther thought. Who can handle seeing that jump out at them all at once?
“Meooowwww there’s a ghost!” a couple of cats yowled, clutching onto each other.
Hearing the noise, Xia Moyè lifted his head and saw, out in the endless darkness, pairs and pairs of eyes lighting up like headlights.
Cold, distant, like ghost-fire flickering in the night. Every hair on his body stood straight up.
“Woof woof woof woof there’s a ghost!!”
He bolted, white paws pounding, and in a blink he’d run two li away.
Arms folded across his chest, Sang Zhao stood off to the side, very pleased with himself.
He was having the time of his life watching the chaos. He even clapped. “Yes, yes, this is exactly what I wanted to see!”
Too funny. Truly. What a bunch of dumb cats and dumb dogs.
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