063: Kittens Are Born to Be Kittens
Tang Yu sat on the bed, looking at the little orange cat beside him, snoring away under the blanket.
The little cat was sleeping soundly, chest rising and falling. Since it was already afternoon, light kept seeping in around the curtains, so the cat had put his paws over his own eyes to block the brightness.
He looked like a smart cat, not a dumb one.
Tang Yu’s expression was complicated. His head was full of all sorts of thoughts, all tangled together like a ball of yarn. But one thing was shining there loud and clear.
That was: not everyone got to have a little cat boyfriend.
Before this, he’d had no boyfriend and no cat. Now he had a little cat boyfriend, two problems solved in one go.
Wow, what a deal.
Thinking about it carefully, in theory he should be scared, but at the same time he felt like he shouldn’t be scared. He ought to be thrilled. After all, if this had happened in a dream, he’d laugh himself awake. Now that it was really happening in front of him, how could he not be happy?
Sure, yaoguai were scary. But if the yaoguai was a little cat… then it was just cute.
At the same time, the weird things that had been happening around him suddenly all had answers.
In fact, he had vaguely realized there was something off before. He had noticed the problems, but rationality kept talking his instincts down, shoving aside all the obvious clues.
After all, this was a huge blow to a human’s worldview… He’d rather doubt his IQ than easily believe the world had stopped working like it had for the past twenty-six years.
He’d been living just fine, believing in science and trusting reason for twenty-six years. Then in the blink of an eye, he discovered that his boyfriend was a little cat, and that it seemed like there was more than one yaoguai around him.
Tang Yu covered his face and took a deep breath, working hard to calm down.
All right, all right. He’d seen so many suspicious things already and forced himself not to look at them. His usual avoidance reflex said if you weren’t hurt, then you “hadn’t seen anything.”
But now the situation had slapped him across the face. His boyfriend had just slept with him, and then turned into a little orange cat.
If it wasn’t that his dick had some evil power to turn people into orange cats, then it had to be that Sang Zhao was a cat to begin with.
Sleeping with a man was too stimulating for a little cat, so after they slept together, he’d started turning back into a cat in his sleep, last time and this time both.
He’d originally fallen asleep next to Tang Yu, but while he slept, he’d ended up with his warm furry belly spread over Tang Yu’s forehead, napping on the top of his head.
A little yaoguai.
Tang Yu repeated the words in his mind.
As for all the other little yaoguai hiding in his company and in his life, he wanted nothing to do with them for now. What he cared about at this moment was just this little yaoguai sleeping beside him under the blanket, purring like a tiny motorcycle.
“Little… cat yao,” Tang Yu murmured softly, staring at the blown-dandelion puff of fur on the little orange cat.
“And you lied to me about dyeing your hair every week.” Tang Yu pinched one of Sang Zhao’s front paws and pressed it lightly. “Turns out it’s natural orange fur.”
He held the cat’s paw up to look.
Mm, an orange-furred paw. But the little cat seemed not to have taken very good care of himself. The fur on his paws was a bit long, so long it was covering his claws.
He flipped it over. Under that orange fluff, the paw pads were pink.
Pink paw pads were usually called “strawberry paw pads,” but Tang Yu thought it wasn’t quite the bright strawberry shade.
It was a very light pink, like the faintest streak of evening cloud, like the blush on someone’s cheek when they saw their lover.
He sneakily poked at the pads with a fingertip. Sang Zhao was in a deep sleep, really out cold. In that hazy state, his paws feeling ticklish, he instinctively started “making biscuits” on the air.
His paws opened and closed, little claws unsheathing and retracting, like he was kneading an invisible ball of fluff, squeezing and letting go.
Combined with the purring in his sleep, it was unbelievably cute.
The more Tang Yu watched, the more entranced he became. He felt like he didn’t need to do anything at all. He could just keep watching this little cat, all the way until it got dark, then keep watching until tomorrow.
How could this little orange cat be this cute? No matter how he looked, it was never enough. His gaze simply couldn’t move away.
He’d already liked Sang Zhao before. Now that they’d done the most intimate thing, and he discovered that the person lying in his bed had turned into a little orange cat, he liked him even more.
Before this, he’d liked all cats equally. But in this moment, he understood why Sang Zhao had only ever said he liked orange cats because he himself was a little orange cat.
Naturally, from now on, Tang Yu’s favorite kind of cat would also be orange cats.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly leaned back against the headboard. Listening to the breathing beside him, he didn’t even feel like picking up his phone.
He just wanted to stay like this, doing nothing, with his little cat boyfriend sleeping next to him while he spaced out.
So easy and comfortable, every second passing tasting like happiness.
Tang Yu: …No, wait a second.
Tsk. Something still felt off…
Suddenly he thought of something and went pale, his brows knitting tight. The jolt of fear made him completely forget that he’d just tucked the blanket around the little orange cat and dragged him over to sleep by his side.
No sleeping, absolutely no sleeping! This is serious, what’s a little yaoguai doing sleeping at a time like this!
Like a starving tiger, Tang Yu pounced over to Sang Zhao, grabbed the little orange cat’s two front paws, and shook him like he was rowing a boat.
“Wake up! Sang Zhao, wake up first!” With all that shaking, the cat went limp, wobbling this way and that like he didn’t have bones at all.
See? Cats really were liquid.
Halfway through his nap, with his day off he was supposed to sleep in until the afternoon with full moral justification. So how was it that before he’d even woken up naturally, something was dragging him back to consciousness?
He blinked his eyes open, still groggy, and reached out automatically to feel for his phone so he could turn off the alarm.
But no, there was no alarm. It wasn’t an alarm that woke him up. It was Tang Yu.
More importantly, what he stretched out wasn’t a hand, but a round orange paw.
Ha. A perfectly round little hand.
When Sang Zhao woke up, the first thing he saw was Tang Yu’s anxious face.
Holding him with his thumbs hooked under his front legs, Tang Yu flipped his grip and just picked him up.
Sang Zhao flailed a bit, discovering his cat paws were sticking straight out. He’d been pinched and lifted! If a human held him like this, he was supposed to be pulled into a hug. What was wrong with Corn Bean, why was he just pinching without hugging, dangling him up here like that?
It completely baffled Sang Zhao.
His brain was half a beat behind. In a daze, he slowly realized, oh, Corn Bean was the one holding a little cat.
Tang Yu stared into the honey-colored eyes of the newly awakened cat, speaking urgently, “Tell me, do you yaoguai even care about basic biological principles? I’m not really going to get pregnant and have kittens after sleeping with a little cat, right?!”
Sang Zhao let out a round, puzzled sound. “…Huh?”
Wait, where am I? Who am I?
How had this little cat woken up just to find himself dangling in someone’s grip!
His head was still foggy, but when he looked down, all he saw was the orange-red tabby stripes on his chest.
He was being held in midair, but he still insisted on pretending, selling the act as hard as he could. He pretended Tang Yu had grabbed the wrong “person,” pretended he didn’t know anything, like that perfectly pronounced “huh” hadn’t just come out of his own mouth.
He twitched his whiskers and gave Tang Yu a slow blink, a comforting, affectionate cat expression, while stubbornly saying, “Meow meow.”
At this point, it wouldn’t have mattered if he barked. Tang Yu wasn’t going to believe him.
Tang Yu shook the cat. “Don’t try to placate me, little cat yao. I’m not that easy to fool. I’ve got it all figured out!”
“I didn’t call you out before because I was doing psychological prep work, not because your act was good, understand?” He lifted the cat a bit higher.
Sang Zhao: “Meow.”
“Stop meowing. Where’s all that swagger now!” Tang Yu shook him again, stretching him out into a long cat. “Hurry up and tell me! If a human sleeps with a demon cat, will there be little kittens born after nine months?!”
Sang Zhao really wanted to laugh, because the closer he looked, the more terrified Tang Yu’s expression seemed.
Oh man, he’d imagined this before too, what kind of reaction Corn Bean would have when his little cat identity got exposed.
Since Corn Bean was timid and had been scared of anything even slightly abnormal, Sang Zhao had wondered: would he be so frightened that he’d ignore the cat? Would he regret falling in love with a cat?
Or, would he like him less after finding out he was a cat… He’d thought through all sorts of possibilities.
He just had never pictured… the current situation.
Being chased down by Corn Bean and interrogated about whether he’d give birth to kittens… how was Sang Zhao ever supposed to predict this?
Tang Yu said, “Answer me! Answer whether you yaoguai care about reason! Am I going to give birth to your little kittens or not?!”
Shaken twice more, Sang Zhao could practically feel his underwear being yanked down in this interrogation.
His cat form was literally being held in Tang Yu’s hands. There was no way to talk his way out of this.
He fell silent for a moment, then opened his cat mouth and spoke human words. “Of course not. You’re a man. You’re not a cat.”
Tang Yu let out a breath of relief.
Sang Zhao honestly wanted to tease him, but he could tell Tang Yu was genuinely afraid. Just managing to accept a little cat boyfriend was already brave enough. Asking him to accept the idea of giving birth to kittens on top of that really would’ve been too much.
Tang Yu was just a normal human, after all, who’d lived with a normal worldview for twenty-six years. The fact he could handle this much already was pretty impressive.
Once his fear subsided, Tang Yu went back to studying the little orange cat.
Curiously, he looked him up and down, his gaze steadily sliding lower. “So you’re an un-neutered cat?”
“Of course,” Sang Zhao said.
He hurried to change the subject. “Hey, aren’t you going to ask about my past? I’ve been a pet cat twice. I’ve got a ton of stories!”
Hearing that, Tang Yu frowned in disapproval. “You were a pet cat twice and never got neutered either time? Did your previous owners know anything about responsible pet care?”
…Of all the questions, this was the last one Sang Zhao had expected.
He bopped him in the face with a kitty punch and snorted.
If he’d been neutered, he wouldn’t be a male cat anymore but a eunuch cat. How were they supposed to do what they’d done last night then?
Yumi Dou was being completely ridiculous. What kind of question was that!
Kicking with his hind legs, he wriggled free of Tang Yu’s hands, dropped onto the bed, landed with grace, stretched, and shook out his fur.
He shook his paws, then burrowed into Tang Yu’s arms, eyes drifting down to fix on the level of Tang Yu’s abs.
Busy finding just the right spot to sit, his mouth was busy too, defending his mom.
His mom had raised him scientifically. He was strong and healthy; how could anyone say she hadn’t taken good care of him?
Of course, if it had been completely by-the-book, he probably would’ve been neutered by now…
“What if I had been neutered,” he huffed. “Do you want responsible cat care or do you want to sleep with me? You’re so confusing.”
Tang Yu stroked his fur and asked curiously, “So how’d you pull it off?”
Clearing his throat, Sang Zhao explained, “How do I put this… I don’t, um, go into heat, and I don’t pee everywhere to mark stuff, so there wasn’t that urgent need to neuter me. Plus, if anyone tried to take me to the vet, I’d scream like a pig being slaughtered, so…”
So no neutering!
Tang Yu nodded, still finding the sight of a cat opening his mouth to speak human words utterly surreal.
He held down the little cat who kept trying to burrow into his neck and slid his hand up over his head to his ears.
The moment he touched them, he understood.
Right. This was exactly it. This was the texture from that time when Sang Zhao had “changed into” a headband with cat ears for him to pet.
Sneaky little cat. Calling it some high-tech headband, when it had actually just been his own ears.
There wasn’t any high tech involved here at all. It was all demon business, not science, but metaphysics.
“With such a well-raised little cat, how’d you wind up going out to work?” Tang Yu murmured, rubbing his head and talking to him.
“I wasn’t supposed to. And I didn’t want to,” Sang Zhao said, burying his face in Tang Yu’s chest and pushing against him with his head.
“Then all of a sudden, I turned into a person, and the person form just happened to have a head full of orange hair. They said if I went to school like that, I’d look way too rebellious, so I had no choice but to go get a job instead.”
Thinking back to his own university classmates’ hairstyles, Tang Yu felt indignant for the cat. “What? How is that rebellious? There were tons of people in university with way more outrageous styles than that.”
“Why shouldn’t our little cat get to go to school?” he added, taking up the cause on his behalf.
In his arms, Sang Zhao kneaded at the wrinkles of his shirt, scratching and patting until he’d created a perfect little nest, then flopped down there.
“Because I can’t do university,” he said, perfectly justified. “If they sent me to school, it’d have to be elementary or middle school. There’d still be hope there. What would I do in college? I have zero chance of understanding anything.”
Tang Yu fell silent and started scratching under his chin.
Still sleepy, Sang Zhao was also truly hungry again. So while he chatted to Tang Yu, he was already thinking about what he wanted to eat when he got up.
“The shrimp yesterday was good,” he said, smacking his lips and making little catty nibbling sounds. “Can I have more today?”
Tilting his head back, he stared up at Tang Yu’s jaw.
Now that he’d been caught as a cat, he simply dropped the pretense altogether. If he was exposed as a little orange cat, what was the point of acting human anymore? He was done being human.
He’d just curl up in Tang Yu’s arms as a cat and sleep there. When night fell, he’d turn back into a person and sleep with Tang Yu.
Best of both worlds. He’d have his mom and his boyfriend. Yumi Dou could be his boss, his dear colleague, his close playmate, his boyfriend, and also his mom.
Heaven. This was literally that fantasy he’d had before. And now, it had just casually come true like this.
He fussed about wanting shrimp, and Tang Yu told him the truth. “We finished it all yesterday.”
They’d gone through a whole plate yesterday. Every shrimp from the fridge had been cooked last night for Sang Zhao. There wasn’t any left now.
Of course they could buy more, but that anxious, overthinking side of Tang Yu kicked in again. A whole plate yesterday, another plate today. What if all this shrimp made the cat’s uric acid sky-high? He had to be disciplined.
He laid all that out for Sang Zhao, but Sang Zhao had zero interest in listening to logic. He didn’t care about any of that. He just knew that he’d had shrimp yesterday, it’d been delicious, so he wanted shrimp again today.
With a pitiful tone, Sang Zhao said, “I left my mom when I was little…”
Tang Yu’s hand froze mid-pet.
A wave of guilt rose in his chest. Right, he thought, such a tiny orange bundle of fluff, his fur puffed out like a dandelion puff. How much comfort could a little ball of fur like that have had? You could tell at a glance he’d suffered.
The way he said it too, this child had lost his mother young. Now that Tang Yu was his boyfriend, what did it say about him if he couldn’t even satisfy his boyfriend’s craving for shrimp?
Then what was the point of running a business? Of making money? Of being a person at all? He might as well stop being human too!
Sang Zhao piled it on. “No mom, only you, gege. Mimi follows you just for a bite of shrimp…”
He was doing it on purpose. He refused to use “I” properly. He imitated Ye Ye the Samoyed’s cutesy way of speaking.
Ye Ye never said “I,” he called himself “Ye Ye.” But Sang Zhao wasn’t a Samoyed, he couldn’t call himself “Ye Ye.” So he called himself “Mimi” instead.
That one move was enough to daze Tang Yu completely.
Like a muddled emperor seduced by a favorite, he stopped caring about anything else and agreed on the spot. “Okay, okay, okay, we’ll eat, we’ll eat, we’ll eat!”
Satisfied, Sang Zhao hooked his claws into the collar of Tang Yu’s pajamas and poked his whiskers against Tang Yu’s chin. Then he pressed his damp little nose to Tang Yu’s cheek.
“Is that my little cat kissing me?” Tang Yu asked.
“Meow,” said Sang Zhao.
—
Curled in Tang Yu’s arms, Sang Zhao slept for another hour and a half.
Tang Yu held his phone, handled a bit of work, then read some of a romance novel he hadn’t finished.
He’d never read stuff like that before. He’d found it silly. Love this and love that, all messy and complicated, just trouble. A few lines of the main character’s inner monologue and he’d already feel bored.
Reading it again now, he realized some of these novels were actually pretty well-written.
“‘Your lover doesn’t care about your talent, doesn’t covet your success, just stays close to your soul, and melts into you…’ That’s really nicely put, isn’t it?” He pinched the tip of the cat’s ear, watching Sang Zhao’s ears flick on instinct, and quietly tried not to laugh.
Now that he knew Sang Zhao was a cat, he simply couldn’t get enough of his cat form.
When Sang Zhao woke up, Tang Yu held a cup and helped him drink some water. When the cat wanted to turn back human to go eat, Tang Yu wouldn’t let him.
“I ordered delivery. It’ll be a while before it gets here,” Tang Yu coaxed. “Ask me to brush your fur. I’ve tried to brush cats before and they all ran away. I’ve never actually managed to brush a cat.”
Right now, such a beautiful red-tabby orange cat was right in front of him. He could scoop him up and kiss him, or sit him down on his lap and slowly brush him out.
Staring into Tang Yu’s pleading eyes, Sang Zhao gave in helplessly.
Now he was starting to feel like something was off… What was going on here anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to be a human’s boyfriend? How had he turned into both boyfriend and pet?
Even so, he still said yes.
It had been a long time since anyone brushed his fur. The last time had been when he’d been shedding fur to make Tang Yu’s birthday present, and Ye Ye Dog had brushed him.
But Ye Ye Dog was all clumsy paws. And Ye Ye Dog was, well, a dog. A dog brushing a cat was never going to feel as good as a human brushing a cat.
With a little comb, Tang Yu worked slowly through his fur. If he ran into a tangle, he’d patiently ease it apart with a light touch, then carefully brush it smooth.
Sang Zhao didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of pain. He just felt comfortable. Purring away, he rolled back and forth on Tang Yu’s lap. Sometimes he’d expose his belly and demand belly brushing; sometimes he’d stretch his paws out and tell him to brush his paws.
Brushing a cat was physical work, sure, but it wasn’t tiring at all. In fact, any human who did it would find it addictive.
Tang Yu was no exception. He was hooked, so hooked he was almost obsessed.
Not only did he brush, he didn’t even ball up the fur to throw away later. Instead he carefully smoothed it out and saved every bit.
Seeing that, Sang Zhao asked what he was doing.
Tang Yu replied in a mysterious tone, “I’m going to spin it into yarn, and then knit a little blanket for you.”
His eyes shone. “That way, the little cat can sleep under a blanket made from his own fur. The little cat… sleeping… under a blanket… made from his own fur…”
As he went on, his voice got slower and slower, and the mental image he’d conjured up was so cute his fingertips started to tremble.
“It’s too cute,” he concluded.
Sang Zhao didn’t really get it, but he rolled over and let him keep brushing.
Tang Yu opened the curtains. The afternoon sunlight wasn’t harsh, just gently warm.
The daylight was bright, the sun outside shining softly on him as his human brushed his fur.
Sang Zhao felt perfectly happy. He couldn’t hold back, the tractor-engine purring rumbling right out of him.
But a cat’s instincts always kicked in when things felt too good. The moment they got especially happy, there’d be a jolt of alarm, some deep biological instinct reminding them to stay wary.
So of course, Sang Zhao got a little wary too.
He was afraid that this very scene, being brushed in the sun and rolling in Tang Yu’s lap, was actually just a dream.
And reality? Reality would be that Tang Yu had found out he was a yaoguai, screamed, run away, and shouted that loving him had been the biggest mistake of his life.
If that were how things really were… if that was reality, he’d accept it too. But he’d be very, very sad. So sad he’d shed every last one of his red-tabby orange hairs, turning into a hairless cat, crying wu-wu-oh-oh instead of meowing ever again.
Fear gnawed at him, so he chased after Tang Yu’s reassurance. “I’m a demon. Aren’t you scared of me?”
“You should be scared of me. I’m a yaoguai,” Sang Zhao repeated. He needed to hear it from Tang Yu, over and over again.
Tang Yu tidied the fur he’d collected, holding it up to the light and nodding in satisfaction.
Then he echoed, “You should be scared of me.”
“It’s you, little kitten, who should be scared of me. Because…” He let out a villainous little chuckle.
Then he grabbed the cat’s front paws, lifted him to reveal his white belly, and dove his face right into it.
Busy burying his face in cat fluff, he still found the breath to declare, “Because kittens are born to be eaten up by wicked humans!”
Author’s Note:
Corn Bean accepted things so quickly only because the cat is a cat and not a flying cockroach.
If it were a flying cockroach, what kind of story and romance would this even be…
Cat: born to be a little cat!
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