Strange Life of a Cat
Chapter 252 - Chapter 252 Chapter 245 Its a commendation but also a

Chapter 252: Chapter 245 It’s a commendation, but also a grounding Chapter 252: Chapter 245 It’s a commendation, but also a grounding Seeing Zheng Tan, Mr. Jiao’s heart, which had been hanging for the past few days, finally settled down. It was good that he could come back; Mr. Jiao had really worried that this cat son had been snatched away by some wild beast.

However, as Mr. Jiao approached, using the flashlight’s beam to train it on the rat Zheng Tan was pressing down on the ground, he frowned.

The night light was poor and could affect the perception of color, but even so, when the flashlight shone on the rat, the red glow it reflected made Mr. Jiao’s heart skip a beat. The heart that had just settled down was now hanging again, and his heart rate quickened.

Is this…

The security personnel behind him all caught up.

“Hey, isn’t this Mr. Jiao’s cat?”

“It should be; it looks like the one on the missing cat poster.”

“This is the one, no doubt about it!”

“Wow, it caught a rat too. Is this its way of asking for a reward?” said the man who had first spotted Zheng Tan scaling the wall, looking at the squeaking rat.

The other security personnel also shifted their attention to the rat.

“Why do I feel like this rat’s fur is red?”

“It does look red indeed. Is it dyed? Check if it’s someone’s pet mouse.”

They started discussing among themselves.

The light had been bad before, and the man who discovered Zheng Tan had only seen something swinging in Zheng Tan’s mouth, and before he could see clearly, Zheng Tan had already jumped over the wall. So, he naturally assumed Zheng Tan had carried the rat in directly and didn’t notice the vine that had dropped onto the grass.

Mr. Jiao took several deep breaths and said to Zheng Tan, “Don’t let go.” Then he turned to the security guards and, after scanning them, said to one of the younger ones, “Could I borrow your lunchbox for a moment?”

“… Oh, sure!” That young man, who was curiously looking at the red rat, quickly handed over the lunchbox. His girlfriend had brought him a box of mung bean soup in the afternoon. After he finished it, he planned to bring it with him during his patrol, enjoying a little sweetness while out on his duty. A lunchbox wasn’t worth much; it was okay to lend it out, since the professors would surely compensate later.

Mr. Jiao, not minding the scent of mung beans, opened the lid of the lunchbox to create an opening.

“Hey, Mr. Jiao, are you aiming to catch the rat? Let me do it, I’m good at catching mice. I’ve even caught voles to eat when I was in the wild,” said the young man, handing his flashlight to a colleague and squatting down to reach for the mouse.

“You…” Before Mr. Jiao could finish, the man reached over and grabbed the red rat from under the cat’s paw.

Mr. Jiao quickly handed over the loosely opened lunchbox, “Be careful! Don’t…”

Mr. Jiao wanted to tell the security personnel “not to crush it,” because during school experiments, the students would sometimes accidentally break the necks of the lab mice. Considering the mouse’s size, much smaller than those used in the students’ experiments, and seeing the gung-ho guard whose actions weren’t cautious at all, Mr. Jiao was feeling agitated.

But before Mr. Jiao could finish his sentence, the man had quickly thrown the red rat into the lunchbox. Although rough, he handled the situation well; the only regret was that he was bitten.

“Thanks a lot, but you should hurry to the infirmary to get that checked. Don’t neglect a wound, charge it to my account,” said Mr. Jiao after securing the lunchbox lid. There were small holes in the lid, so he wasn’t worried about the mouse suffocating.

The young man, hearing that, thought, an opportunity for free treatment — why miss it? There was a 24-hour duty at the infirmary, and recently, a few medical students were interning there, rumored to be quite attractive. With his thoughts swirling, he said goodbye to his colleagues and headed straight for the infirmary. An excuse to skive off work and a chance to see a beauty — what a deal.

After the security guards left, Mr. Jiao carefully held the lunchbox and then looked at Zheng Tan who was still looking around curiously, “Planning on going for another wander?”

His tone was calm, but Zheng Tan still felt an air of tension around him. He shuddered, probably due to the temperature dropping at night in the mountains.

Zheng Tan followed Mr. Jiao back to the dormitory building, where he easily climbed through a window; after all, he lived on the second floor.

Little Youzi was sitting at the desk doodling with a pen, with her summer homework spread out and no mood to tackle it. A few more pages flipped, and one would find a pencil-drawn cat on every page.

Just as she was lost in thought, the mosquito screen was pulled open with a whoosh. Little Youzi and Jiao Yuan, who was venting his frustration by playing with crabs, both looked toward the window.

“Heitan!”

“Mom, Heitan’s back!”

Jiao Ma had just finished washing clothes. She had already received a call from Mr. Jiao, who was tied up with something and would be home later. Seeing the black cat on the table, her depression of the past few days finally lifted. She thought to herself, cats are like people: if you ignore them for a while, they act out, and this time it went as far as playing disappearing acts, leaving everyone anxious and scared.

Grounding was a must! For the foreseeable future, this cat was not going out!

Jiao Ma scolded Zheng Tan under her breath, issuing a grounding order, but also carefully checked Zheng Tan for injuries before finding a plastic basin to prepare a bath for him.

Zheng Tan had returned looking travel-worn, and he could even feel fleas bustling on his body; a good wash was indeed needed.

Eh?

It felt like something was missing.

Where’s the amber necklace?!!

Zheng Tan only then realized that the amber necklace around his neck was gone. It had been there when he went up the mountain, so he must have lost it when passing through the bushes around the base. He would look for it tomorrow.

After Zheng Tan finished his bath, he sat on a stool wrapped in a towel, waiting for his fur to dry before going to sleep. Mr. Jiao returned home, looking somewhat anxious, without the plastic lunch box that housed the red rat. He didn’t know where he had put it.

“What’s the matter?” Jiao Ma asked.

“Heitan hasn’t been hurt, has he?” Mr. Jiao inquired.

“No, he just had a meal and a bath. He seemed quite spry,” Jiao Ma reported.

“That’s good,” Mr. Jiao sighed in relief.

It turned out that the accident involved the young security officer who had been bitten by the red rat. In just an hour after the bite, the young man’s hand had swollen up like a steamed bun, and he felt groggy. Fortunately, the base had a complete stock of medicine, and he received timely treatment. Otherwise, he might indeed have lost his life. Mr. Jiao, upon hearing the news, immediately came back to check on Zheng Tan and, seeing that he was alright, issued a few words of warning before leaving again.

Sweat broke out on Zheng Tan as he listened to Mr. Jiao’s words. Only now did he realize he had been carrying around such a dangerous creature. Luckily, he hadn’t been bitten by the rat in the bushes; otherwise, he would have ended up as excrement for the wild beasts or other insects in the forest.

Before leaving, Mr. Jiao mentioned he might be back very late that night or might not return to sleep at all.

It wasn’t just Mr. Jiao; the other teachers leading the teams, whether they had gone to bed or not, all rushed to one place, leaving the students who had come out to make phone calls feeling uneasy, speculating about what could have happened.

In a room at the base, numerous teachers crowded inside. Originally, this had been just a temporary rest area, which everyone avoided because it was too close to the restroom and uncomfortable to stay in during the hot summer. But now, no one minded anymore.

Some male teachers, upon hearing the news, hadn’t bothered to change and rushed over in their vests and shorts, unconcerned about being the butt of jokes from the other teachers while they fixated on the red-haired mouse in the cage on the table.

The red rat was now in the center of the cage, gnawing on a peanut, still eyeing the people outside the cage without a hint of fear. Perhaps in its mind, these creatures with unfamiliar scents were far less threatening than that cat, which had nearly killed it. These strangers seemed harmless in comparison.

Some teachers had not hesitated to mock Mr. Jiao behind his back for bringing a cat to the base instead of something more useful, like a dog, which would have been more obedient. Cats were seen as troublemakers, never calm or cooperative.

But now, these same people were nearly green with envy, especially the teacher who had brought a dog. Although his dog had helped catch quite a few prey items, it was nowhere near as valuable as this red-haired mouse.

“Mr. Jiao, you’ve got to give your cat some serious praise this time!” an old man in a white vest with reading glasses leaned in to take a closer look at the red rat, and the teachers around him didn’t dare to crowd him, as many had been his students back in the day.

Mr. Jiao smiled without a word, thinking that while the cat deserved praise, it also needed to be grounded. Still, the cat sure could cause trouble–who could have imagined that after disappearing for a few days, it would return dragging a red-haired mouse along? They had initially thought it might bring back a female cat.

Whether it was a red rat or not, Mr. Jiao was still uncertain; identification was needed, but the likelihood was high. He couldn’t tell which specific subspecies of red rat it might be, as that wasn’t his area of study. The reason he made it public before complete clarification instead of hiding it was clear to him–he couldn’t keep it a secret with the security staff having seen it, and sooner or later, it would come out.

Before convening the other teachers, Mr. Jiao had made several phone calls just in case the situation turned sour. None of the others knew about these precautions.

“This little fellow must be well cared for–no, I’ll make a call and have someone specifically responsible for it,” the old man declared.

“No need to trouble Professor Wang with this. We’ve already arranged for someone to take care of it,” said a middle-aged man, an authoritative professor at Chuhua University. He had the most say among the young teachers he led at Chuhua. Usually, he had to give way to the older professor. But on this matter, he couldn’t back down. The old professor was now working at a research institute, and this red rat definitely had to remain with Chuhua University and be cared for by its staff, as per the instructions Dean Xie had given over the phone. When it was time to fight for something, they had to stand their ground. Anyway, Dean Xie would bear the responsibility. He was arriving early the next morning.

“Hey, it’s not yours; what’s the rush? Look, Xiao Jiao, don’t worry. The person I’m getting is a true professional, with twenty years of experience in rearing rats,” the old man said to Mr. Jiao, completely disregarding the other’s remarks.

Great, the title had now shifted directly from “Mr. Jiao” to “Xiao Jiao”.

As these leaders and seniors quarreled among themselves, Mr. Jiao did not dare to interject, navigating carefully between the various leaders and elders.

Mr. Jiao returned to his room once that night to get a box filled with cat litter and told Zheng Tan to urinate or defecate directly inside it.

Are they going to do a urine and feces test?

Zheng Tan stared at the box as if it were the enemy. He never used such a thing at home.

Mr. Jiao sighed and explained to Zheng Tan, “They just want to see what you have eaten, that’s all.”

To put it bluntly, those people just wanted to know whether Zheng Tan had eaten any other red rats. It would be even better if there were undigested fur or bones, which could reveal a lot of research clues.

Zheng Tan’s face twitched once, then again and again…

Studying feces… These scientists really have peculiar tastes!

Had he known the trouble it would cause, he’d have been better off throwing that red rat out. Why did he bring it inside? Zheng Tan regretted it, but there was no use in regretting now. He hadn’t considered the implications at the time, and by the time he had thought of it, he was already over the wall and inside the base.

“Oh, right,” Mr. Jiao said after placing the box, “if they ask you to lead the way tomorrow, you must remember to act stubbornly. Even if you know the way, play dumb. You don’t need me to teach you how to do that, do you?” (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please come to Qidian (NovelFire.net) to cast your votes of recommendation, monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please read at m.NovelFire.net.)

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.