The Naming of Cats

Chapter 10

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It's been a week since the stitches were removed from Danny's worst abdominal injury.

The doctor checked the recovery of Danny's wound after dinner. Danny looked down at the long, hideous scar from his chest to his flank. The newly grown skin has obvious color difference with the surrounding, and there are blood scabs that have not completely fallen off at the edge. But the most conspicuous is the traces of stitches, like centipedes, or like the spray paint graffiti on the wall, which is ugly and abrupt. Danny gritted his teeth. Intentional injury - no, attempted murder. He's going to sue his ex-customer to the point where he has no pants left.

"It will fade later." The doctor comforted.

Danny dubiously reached out to touch it, but was stopped by the doctor. The doctor explained in simple language: "Don't touch, don't scratch. It may be itchy, but it's normal. Don't worry."

Danny nodded in understanding.

In fact, while learning Japanese, Danny also considered studying medicine, but soon he was dizzy and chose to give up - before that, he also thought about saving enough money to go to college to study some decent major, and now he can fully Crossed out "medicine" from the list of candidate majors - in short, Danny was half reassuring and half giving up trust in the hands of doctors.

He has been at the doctor's house for more than a month, and his goodwill towards the doctor is increasing day by day. Danny knew in his heart that most of it was due to the heavy snow in winter, and a small part was the previous owner's good foil. But life is made up of all kinds of chances, and Danny doesn't have time to think about the possibility of being rescued by someone else or meeting a doctor elsewhere. In his opinion, even though the doctor's brain is not very clear, he is willing to save Danny, communicate with him, and consider his mood, which is good.

Of course, it would be even better if the doctor had more painkillers in his medicine cabinet.

"As I said, painkillers can't stop itching." The doctor stopped in front of Danny in frustration and pulled him away from the medicine box again, "Don't steal the medicine box, or I'll lock it."

Danny didn't have any hope. Following the doctor's strength, he leaned back and lay upright on the bay window of the study. "I'm dead," Danny announced. Immediately, he rolled his eyes, stuck his tongue out, his head slumped to one side, and played the corpse vividly, only his toes were shrunken and hooked on the raised wool on the carpet.

The doctor was amused by him.

Danny didn't want to scratch the horse like this either, it was too painful to feel the itch when a large wound healed. The doctor had already warned, but Danny was completely unprepared. As a matter of profession, Danny has a fairly high pain threshold, can tolerate most recoverable mild abuse, and has almost no pain when the stitches are removed. He therefore downplayed the possible distress of the abdominal wound until now—not pain, but an indescribable itch. This recovery period was so terrifying, as if a cat was squatting in Danny's head, scratching the nerves that connect his abdomen with his claws all the time. He was anxious about it.

The doctor's condition is not much better. Because of Danny's symptoms of tactile hypersensitivity for the past two days, the doctor consciously stopped most of the skin contact. But he has long since become accustomed to licking Danny. Danny often sees the doctor stretch out his hand to him and then lose it.

"Can't you think of a way?" Danny rolled over, narrowed his eyes, and asked the doctor behind him. Only after the words came out did he realize that his tone was completely coquettish.

The doctor said helplessly: "There's really no way."

He sat next to Danny, habitually touched the back of Danny's neck with his hand, and stopped awkwardly in the air. Danny caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, hummed twice, and was about to sneer a few words, but his ears suddenly became cold, and it was the doctor who got up and left. Danny froze for a moment, then closed his mouth angrily.

After a while, the doctor came back with an extra-large throw pillow in his hand, presumably from his bedroom. The doctor handed the pillow to Danny: "Don't think about the wound all the time. Do something else and divert your attention."

Danny looked out the window, ignoring the doctor's words, and reached out to open the pillow to the side. The doctor let out a "hey", and Danny saw the doctor turn to pick up the pillow thrown by the door from the blurred reflection on the window glass. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass, trying to calm himself down.

Danny knew he was being vexatious. He was uncomfortable, but he wanted to do his best to attract the attention of the doctor. He has been like this since he was a child. Even if he did this business later, he had to learn to hide his emotions, learn to endure pain, and play a designated role. Danny's inner feelings have not changed, and he must face close people. To ask for more. Having been with the doctor for so long, he has already developed trust in him, and when facing the doctor accidentally, he will reveal his true self and become self-willed.

In the reflection on the glass, the doctor picked up the pillow and put it away, and sat beside Danny. The doctor said: "Don't stick the wound to the glass, it will affect the blood circulation."

Danny turned back and bared his teeth at the doctor—and regretted it. Danny thought to himself that the doctor was caring about him and that he should respond positively. He thought so, but in fact he just rubbed in the doctor's direction, raised his hand and pressed the corner of the doctor's clothes, making sure that the other party couldn't leave.

Anyway, if the doctor has nothing to do, just slap him to relieve his boredom.

The doctor did not object to Danny's actions. Seeing Danny baring his teeth, the doctor simply rolled up his shirt sleeve and stretched out his right arm, which was still splinted. Danny was taken aback and turned to look at him. The doctor said, "Well, didn't you bite on the first day?"

Still holding revenge. Danny snorted coldly and ignored the doctor's words. The doctor took Danny's hand and scratched the splint of his right arm with his fingernails a few times: "Cat scratching board, eh?"

... The joke was so cold that Danny didn't even bother to laugh at it. He just stood up and buried his face in the doctor's neck.

How uncomfortable... Danny hunched his stomach, thinking blankly. Blame the doctor. Without a doctor, he would have no hesitation in cursing society, hating the world, being cynical, and like all those who have been hurt by fate, blaming fate on fate for all the equally stupid choices he made either involuntarily or clearly. superior.

But it was fate that made him meet the doctor.

The wound became more and more uncomfortable, and Danny became more and more irritable. He opened his mouth sharply, grinding his teeth on the doctor's shoulder through his shirt.

Painkillers didn't stop the itching, so Danny decided to try his own way. He anticipated that the doctor would object, so he avoided the doctor, but was caught anyway.

In Danny's impression, the doctor's temper was quite good, but he was not completely angry. The first time I saw Danny escape was counted once, and now it's the second time I caught Danny scratching the wound.

"I told you not to touch the wound!" said the doctor. His tone was rarely serious and angry.

The doctor made Danny sit on the sofa, while he knelt on one knee on the carpet, grabbed Danny's hands, and examined a dozen fresh scratches on his abdomen. The traces of congestion were particularly conspicuous on the light-white new meat, and there were several blood scabs that had scratched the skin and edges, and a trace of blood was oozing out.

Danny knew that he was wrong, and shut up and listened to the doctor's lesson. The doctor did remind Danny not to touch the wound, it would get infected, it would leave scars, and so on, and so on, for a lot of reasons. It's not that Danny didn't listen, and it's not that he didn't believe the doctor. The wound was so itchy that scratching it would at least make it clear for a while. He only succumbed to instinct once in a while.

As if he could hear Danny's voice, the doctor suddenly said, "I can't trust the cat's self-control."

Danny has only been learning Japanese for two or three weeks, and sometimes even listening to the doctor speaks and makes guesses. Before he could understand the meaning of this sentence, the doctor had issued an order: "Don't move, wait for me to come back."

"… What's wrong?" Danny asked the doctor's back.

As the doctor walked to the garage, he replied with a long list of pseudonyms that Danny couldn't understand. He guessed what medical term it was, and got a little excited about it, thinking that the doctor was finally willing to do something. Although he knew that judging from the doctor's previous statement, there was a high probability that he could not solve it, but the doctor was troubled by Danny and thinking about his affairs, which in itself cheered Danny up.

Ah, you are such a high-needs baby. Danny laughed at himself inwardly.

After a while, the doctor came back with a few fan-shaped plastic products about 15 inches long and 5 inches wide. Danny wanted to take a closer look, but the doctor raised his hand and avoided it. He puts Danny on the couch and wraps a strip of plastic around Danny's neck. Danny felt the doctor's warm left hand slide over his neck, and his Adam's apple couldn't help but move slightly. He turned his head slightly, but the back of his head touched the splint on the doctor's right forearm.

Danny frowned and suggested, "I'll do it myself, don't knock your splint crooked."

"No." The doctor said briefly.

Danny heard the sound of tape being ripped, and the doctor's hand left the back of Danny's neck and turned to Danny's. Danny was lying on the sofa and was surprised to find that the doctor did not intend to remove the plastic ring around his neck for him. He was finally starting to feel bad.

"What is this?" Danny raised his neck with difficulty and looked behind him. The doctor was putting the same plastic ring on his hand.

The doctor did not answer immediately. It wasn't until Danny's hands and feet were tied with wide rings made of fan-shaped plastic strips that he replied slowly: "This is an Elizabethan circle. Wear that 'ring'. It's for pets that don't behave well. If you scratch yourself, wear this ring until the wound is fully healed."

Danny put some effort into spelling out the word "Elizabethan circle" with the doctor, and when he came to his senses, his mind was stunned.

"Are you kidding?" Danny asked in disbelief.

Doctors are clearly satisfied with their results. He looked up and down and raised his eyebrows lightly at Danny: "It's not a joke, it's a supervision. Isn't this very good? You can't scratch the wound."

Danny didn't feel good. He rolled over suddenly and sat up, finding that the lower half of his field of vision was completely blocked by the milky-white plastic ring. The same is true of the hand, which can only be extended to the edge of the plastic ring. This set of Elizabethan circles completely restricts Danny's behavior, not to mention scratching the wound, and now he can't touch anything at all.

"I don't wear this!" Danny said angrily.

He put his wrist in front of the doctor and waited for him to remove it for him. However, the doctor just held his wrist and did not intend to do anything. He advised: "Wear it to make sure you don't scratch the wound. I don't have enough medicine here, and I can't get out before the snow melts. If I get infected, I can't save it."

Danny pinched his neck hard and stared at the doctor from the upper edge of the Elizabethan circle: "I won't scratch again, I promise."

"You have broken your trust once." The doctor pointed out lightly.

This was far from Danny's best tempered. From the discomfort of the abdominal wound, to the confusion and contradiction when the doctor acts coquettishly and loses his temper, to the injustice and depression when facing the doctor's anger, to the grievance and annoyance of completely trusting the doctor to wear this circle of shame. It all exploded after hearing the purpose of this circle of shame. Danny suddenly pulled his wrist back and shouted, "I said no, but I won't! Even if I did, I'd rather get infected than wear this!"

The doctor's originally half-coaxing, half-reasonable tone was also toughened by Danny's attitude. He frowned and said, "Didn't I say it? I don't have enough medicine here, and the infection will kill you."

"So what!" Danny tugged awkwardly with his hands at each other, trying to rip it off the edge of the circle of shame. But that was naturally impossible, and the length and arc of the Circle of Shame made it impossible for Danny to unravel it independently. The more powerless he became, the more angry he became. Finally, he raised his hand and smashed the scissors that the doctor put on the table: "Then let it be infected! Let it go! I can't wear this kind of thing!"

The doctor quickly grabbed Danny's wrist. He was also angry, looked down at Danny, and said with a very serious tone: "How can it be so simple? Infected in the final healing stage, what is the recovery process before that?"

"Count me! It's me!" Danny yelled. His emotions were raging, and he couldn't remember how to say "choice," "power," "boundary," nor was he in the mood to recall words in those unfamiliar languages. He doesn't expect the doctor to understand at all, because the doctor has already shown it: he only makes decisions and doesn't want to understand.

Danny couldn't hide the cry in his voice. He speaks upside down, the doctor's language mixed with his own indiscriminately: "No one's coercion! Yes, I sell it, I don't expect respect. But all I sell is my time and my body! That It's my business! You can't do this!"

From the initial hostility to the later trust, Danny has regarded the doctor as his own, so he can't accept betrayal. He was angry at the doctor's coercion and disappointed by the doctor's misunderstanding. Originally, here and now, he was dependent on the doctor to survive, relying on the doctor to give treatment and shelter. He can't give anything back to the doctor, and the body that he has been selling as a commodity since he entered the industry has never been needed by the doctor. On the contrary, he was approaching the doctor uncontrollably even in his heart.

What is even more terrifying is that these actions of the doctor have nothing to do with transactions, they are purely out of concern for him. The doctor is not a villain, not a bad guy, and Danny's anger cannot be poured out on him. But at the same time, the doctor really saw him as a cat, so he made decisions for him condescendingly. This circle of shame is saying "you have no ability to be yourself", and it is saying "you must surrender yourself to others to ensure survival". Danny couldn't accept it.

But what can he do

Danny no longer had the courage and stance to escape regardless. Now, facing the doctor, he is more uneasy and helpless than ever before. He lowered his head and let the Elizabethan circle cover his crying face. Tears fell on the milky white plastic ring one by one, and Danny choked: "I'm not a cat, you understand? I can let you rub, let you touch, whatever you want to touch me. I want to! But I really It's not a cat, you can't do this..."

After a moment, a hand reached out and gently wiped the tear from Danny's cheek. The movement was gentle, firm, and addicting. But Danny knew in his heart that the doctor would have the same tenderness towards a real cat. He knew that the doctor still didn't understand.