Chapter 5 (1/2)
Before heading home, Mu Wan and Lin Wei stopped by a pet shop.
It was Mu Wan’s first time raising cats, and she knew absolutely nothing. The staff, however, were enthusiastic with their recommendations, and Mu Wan accepted every suggestion without much hesitation. By the time she finished, she had bought enough to fill two large boxes.
Once everything was packed, Lin Wei went with one of the employees to load the boxes into the car. By the time she came back after locking the trunk, Mu Wan was still at the register checking out.
Resting both arms on the counter, Lin Wei watched her swipe her card and sighed.
“You’re not even married yet, and you’re already a mother.”
The cashier was a young woman. She laughed at that and said, “That’s nothing. Everyone who works in our shop has cats.”
“You like them that much?” Lin Wei asked.
“Of course.” The girl smiled, her eyes bright, as though she had just remembered something dear. “Your kittens are still tiny now, but once they grow up, when you come home and open the door, they’ll all be sitting there waiting for you, meowing to welcome you back. And when you have pets around, you don’t feel so lonely anymore.”
“My three are still a long way from that,” Mu Wan said.
Still, she found herself picturing the scene the girl described: three cats lined up at the door, waiting for her to come home.
She couldn’t quite relate to it.
It had been a very long time since she had known what it felt like to be awaited. Besides, this was her first time raising cats. At the moment, she was still a little dazed by the whole thing.
“Kittens grow fast,” the girl said. “In less than two months, they’ll be running all over the place.”
The receipt was printed out. Mu Wan took it with a smile, thanked her, and got into the car with Lin Wei.
After Lin Wei drove her home, someone from her studio called her away, and she had to leave. Mu Wan carried the kittens inside, set them on the sofa, unpacked the two boxes, took out the cat bed, mixed up some goat’s milk formula, and got the kittens settled before finally heading into the bathroom.
She had only been gone for two days, but the bathroom was still a mess.
The water on the floor, mixed with old bloodstains, had long since dried. The marks sat stiff and dull against the tiles. She lived alone. Even if an ambulance took her away to the hospital, even if her injury healed, once she came back, the mess at home was still hers to clean up.
Mu Wan turned on the tap and began wetting the floor. Water streamed out in a long, hard rush, hitting the tiles with loud, splashing slaps.
And through all that noise, she heard a tiny, soft meow.
Almost instantly, she shut off the tap.
A few unfinished drops fell from the spout and hit the floor in near silence.
“Meow.”
This time, she heard it clearly.
It was as though someone had tipped a whole bucket of water straight over her heart.
She hurried out of the bathroom.
She had put the kittens in the bedroom, in the corner near the foot of her bed. They were so small that even the tiniest cat bed she had bought still looked enormous for them. The three little furballs lay inside it like three tiny stars in an oversized universe.
Their eyes were still closed. The moment they heard her footsteps, they lifted their heads blindly and began climbing over one another, pink little paw pads pressing and scrambling as if they were searching for something.
Mu Wan quickly took over the bottle of goat’s milk formula. The little things had just eaten, but the second the nipple touched them, they latched on and began sucking again.
Wouldn’t that be too much?
Mu Wan pulled the bottle away.
All three kittens meowed in protest and wriggled upward at once, clearly unwilling to accept that decision.
So she hurriedly handed it back.
By the time that whole round of chaos was over, Mu Wan was thoroughly flustered. At first, she had crouched beside them, but later she gave up and just sat down on the floor. The tiles were cool beneath her, yet she had worked up a full sweat.
The three kittens were from the same litter, but they looked completely different from one another.
One was orange, one was orange-and-white, and one was black-and-white.
The orange one had the largest head and looked the sturdiest, so Mu Wan decided it was the eldest.
The orange-and-white one had a white face and white body, with only two orange patches on its back and tail.
The black-and-white one had black fur running from the top of its head straight down in a neat split, making it look as though it wore a perfect center part.
So Mu Wan arranged them in order and gave them names.
The eldest became Datou.
The second became Ertong.
The third became Zhongfen.
Once the naming was done, she put the bottle away. The three kittens had eaten their fill; their little bellies were round, and they lay in the cat bed with their tiny heads tipped up, meowing faintly.
Mu Wan rested her hand on the bed.
The three little things sniffed at her first. Then, one by one, they slowly lowered their heads onto her hand and fell asleep.
Her hand, cushioned in the cat bed, felt only softness. The three tiny heads resting on it were warm.
Outside, the light was gradually brightening.
The sky had cleared.
Somewhere deep inside her, something seemed to begin growing quietly.
Looking down at the three kittens, Mu Wan suddenly found she could truly picture what the pet-shop girl had described: three cats sitting in a row at the door, waiting for her to come home.
They really were a lot like her.
Born without a father.
Left alone after their mother died.
“But the three of you are luckier than I was,” Mu Wan murmured. Her fingers shifted slightly, and her lashes trembled. “I had no one. You have siblings. And you have me... your stepmother.”
The moment she said it, she was the first to laugh.
On Monday, the moment Liu Qianxiu arrived at work, one of the nurses said to him, “Dr. Liu, the calico you always fed died a few days ago.”
The hand holding his pen paused.
He lifted his eyes.
“How?”
“It was hit by a car.” The nurse sighed. “I heard it from the head nurse. She said the calico left a litter of kittens, and she was planning to take them home after work and find friends to adopt them. But by the time she went to look, they were already gone.”
Then, looking a little worried, she added, “Do you think someone took them? Newborn kittens are hard to keep alive. If someone adopted them, that’d be one thing. But I’ve seen stories online about sick people taking kittens just to hurt them...”
Liu Qianxiu closed the patient chart in his hand.
His expression did not change.
“Prepare for surgery first,” he said.
Startled out of her worry, the nurse quickly answered and followed after him. She had assumed that since Liu Qianxiu fed the calico so often, he must have been attached to it. But from the moment she told him the cat had died, his face had scarcely shifted.
People called him Taoist Liu. Judging from this alone, the nickname really did suit him. There was something detached about him, almost as though nothing in the world could fully weigh him down.
At noon, after he got off work, Liu Qianxiu went to the hospital security office and asked to see the surveillance footage from the last two days.
Very few people ever went near the shrubs by the hospital entrance, though plenty of cars were parked nearby.
The footage sped forward.
