“…Why is baby showing interest in you?”
“Huh? I — I don’t know!”
Yeongho startled and actually shied away from me.
“Ah, could it be the smell of food? Still, let’s see if he’ll eat the dry food first…”
Yeongho tore open a small bag of dry food and held it straight out to me. My brow furrowed. The Boss had gone so far as to throw out the old dry food from the bowl and present me with a proper can of something delicious. This one simply had no sense at all.
Now that I looked, it seemed this man had been the one to pour that dry food into the bowl too. There had definitely been only those two men in the house that day.
Whatever small flicker of camaraderie I’d briefly felt vanished on the spot, and my goodwill toward him dropped sharply. I smacked the dry food with my paw and knocked it to the floor.
“After I went to the trouble of giving you that — you knock it right off!”
Startled by the loud voice, I leaped without thinking and shot under the sofa.
Then from behind came a sharp — thwack!
“Ugh—!”
“Who raises their voice in front of baby.”
I peeked back cautiously, and there was Yeongho hopping on one leg, clutching the other. Changgyu stood beside him, watching with a look of pure exasperation.
“You startled him and now baby’s run off. Don’t you know you can’t just shout in front of a little one?”
I blinked. From what I could tell, the man who had been sitting on the sofa had delivered that punishment.
Heh, serves you right. Seeing you pay for startling me actually put me in a great mood.
Yeongho clutched his leg while Changgyu methodically gathered up the cat supplies that had scattered on the floor, putting them back into the bag one by one. Then he presented them courteously to the man on the sofa.
But something was strange.
He hit his own subordinate because of me? That man is still your subordinate, isn’t he? He did startle me, but was hitting him really necessary? I kept tilting my head, puzzled.
Just then, the man rose from the sofa and walked right up to me. I stumbled back in surprise, but there was nowhere left to retreat. As my eyes darted around searching for somewhere to hide, the man knelt down in front of me and extended his hand.
“Baby, it’s all right — come on out. How long are you going to stay in there?”
What on earth does this man intend to do with me? Buying all those supplies — does he genuinely plan to raise me properly…? To their eyes I just look like a cat… But that’s a problem in its own way too…
The man stared at me for a long while, then seemed to realize I wouldn’t be coming to him on my own and stood back up. He held something out in front of me.
Oh. Churr.
Earlier I’d been too busy being furious at the men dismissing me to think about eating, but churr was just as good as the canned food.
As if in a trance, I stepped one pace forward.
“Come here and eat.”
The way he dangled the churr ever so slightly to tempt me made my tail twitch along with it. But the one holding it was… I can’t go. I can’t give in to food. But that looked so good…
I hadn’t eaten much relative to how much I’d moved around, and I was still hungry. And everyone knew dessert had its own separate compartment!
My true form got mocked for being tiny, but despite the small body I had a hearty appetite. My mother had a hard time with that. But there had been so many days of going without that I had somewhere along the way learned to hold out without eating.
When I was human I had enough reason to hold myself back, but being in my true form made it so much harder. Does pride fill your stomach? I decided to act like a cat, didn’t I? In that case—!
My eyes lit up. I wiggled my backside and launched myself toward the target. Yungeon’s brow twitched, but I snatched the churr clean out of his hand.
“Ang-wang!”
Ha — I took it!
An odd sound came out because of the churr in my mouth, but the thrill of having swiped a prize from that scary man had my whole body wriggling with delight.
But the man followed me to the very end and tugged at the end of the churr that was already between my teeth.
“Kyarrrr.”
Let go! It’s mine now!
“Tsk, you’ll damage your teeth. I’ll open it for you — eat as much as you want.”
“Arrrr. A-ong?”
Who would believe that… Hm?
I’d been growling with my teeth bared, and then it slipped right out from between them. I looked up at the man with a blank expression, and he tore open the end and squeezed it right up to my mouth.
A small amount of the contents oozed out and got onto the fur around my mouth.
I licked it clean naturally with my tongue. I was so absorbed in eating that I didn’t even notice I had taken hold of the man’s hand — the one holding the churr — and was eating eagerly from it.
“Ang, ang-yang, e-ong.”
Delicious, so good!
“Eating well.”
I didn’t notice the man’s other hand fiddling with my fur and scratching at my neck. And then taking my front paw and pressing at the soft pads of my feet.
Before I knew it, the man was kneeling on the floor, and I was perched on top of him, being fed churr. When it was nearly empty and I came back to my senses, I found myself looking directly into the man’s eyes.
I scrambled away.
“After eating so happily, why run off again.”
Yeongho watched me and said in disbelief.
“Our baby is smart.”
“Eo-k?”
Smart?
My ears perked at the man’s words.
“You shouldn’t go trotting after just anyone who offers you something good. There are so many dangerous people in the world. Isn’t that right?”
Hidden under the sofa, I stared at the man, blinking. My mother had been the only person who ever said things like that to me. My father, on the other hand, had told me to stop freeloading at home and go outside and charm people — at the very least it’d shake some scraps loose, he’d said.
“But I’m not dangerous.”
You’re the most dangerous one here!
The man noticed I was still wary and fell quiet for a moment, then beckoned to me.
“Let’s get you something better to eat. You’ve had nothing but canned food for a while, so you should have something different. You still look hungry.”
He was right — I was still hungry.
“Ma-ang?”
Something other than canned food? Or a different flavor? Don’t you even dream about giving me dry food. I’d rather starve than eat that stuff. Got it?
I was hidden under the sofa, but the word food lured me out as if I were enchanted. I was startled inside, but played it off like nothing.
It was clear enough that the man wasn’t a threat. I walked toward him and tapped at the paper bag with my paw. Something does smell good coming from in here…
“This is for tomorrow morning — let’s have something else for dinner tonight.”
Once again I was caught in the man’s hand.
“There we go, good. I won’t hurt you, it’s alright. Let’s go eat. You need to eat plenty of nutritious things to get healthy.”
He called himself a Feline Suin, and he clearly knew the weak points of cats well. He must have known that if you grip the scruff of the neck and lift, the body goes still and the legs go limp.
Of course, he only grabbed the scruff to lift me — after that, he cradled me comfortably. I naturally ended up meeting his eyes.
I made a point of looking away. By then, the man had set me down on the dining table.
Why here all of a sudden? This is usually a place people tell you not to climb on.
“Baby is still too small to get up on the dining table on his own.”
“Ak! Ka-ong! Arrrng.”
That’s not true! I can get up here just fine!
Using a chair as a stepping stone, I could get onto any table I liked. I simply hadn’t, because people didn’t like it.
Just then, a delicious smell drifted over from across the room.
It wasn’t the artificial kind that gets added to the canned food from pet shops. Changgyu had appeared, holding a steak — when he’d prepared it, I had no idea.
Other dishes were being set out on the table as well, but my eyes were locked on the thick, sizzling steak. It wasn’t ordinary meat — even at a glance, you could tell the quality was exceptional. An exorbitantly expensive cut that I had never even dared put in my mouth before.
On pure instinct I made to lunge for it, and the man pressed his hand down on my back.
“Ka-o!”
Let go!
The man absolutely refused to release me. In the end I was the one who gave up first. The man had been pressing down on me with his palm to keep me still, stroking me — and then he cut the meat into small pieces.
I glared at him, trembling with betrayal.
You said we were eating? Then why bring me to the table just to do this? I was on the verge of boiling over with anger when the man suddenly pushed a piece of meat into my mouth. In the same instant, the rage dissolved like snow in the sun.
It’s barely taken more than a few chews and the meat is melting in my mouth—!
I opened my mouth and stared blankly up at the air. The man smiled faintly and held out another small piece of cut meat toward me.
“Not going to have more?”
I am!
Afraid the man might take the steak away, I snapped up the piece on the fork. It melted on my tongue so smoothly I felt like I might melt right along with it.
“Ang, e-ong, ak! Eu-ung!”
The man pushed the whole plate toward me now. The flavor was so fantastical, so unlike anything I’d ever experienced, that sounds came out of me on their own.
Even after cleaning the plate completely, I wasn’t satisfied. So I acted sweet and charming toward the man, begging for more, and set my sights on his portion too. And he gave it up.
As I chomped away at the large piece of meat, I felt my wariness crumbling. I was no longer young enough to think that someone who gives you good things must be a good person — but this man was a little… no, quite a lot different from how he looked.
