Kuze stood there dumbfounded, stunned by the absurd drama of a cat calling out his name. In the snow, even when he had a low-grade fever and fatigue, he also had the illusion that he could understand the cat's speech, but the experience of being drowsy with a low-grade fever at that time was completely different from the experience of hearing supernatural speech when he was awake now. He was stunned for a few minutes before he remembered in a trance that he had set a plan for this situation.
Kuze turned on the phone recording in a panic. His fingers trembled, the phone accidentally fell from the edge of his palm, he flicked on the sofa, and just as he was about to slide down the arc to the ground, he was stepped on by the cat's forelimbs. Kuze and the cat looked at each other, and from those water-colored eyes, he saw the unease and doubt that gradually solidified.
"… Kuze?" the cat repeated.
Kuze subconsciously looked down at the reading on his phone. On the spectrogram is the standard human speech spectrum, with no excess high frequency components.
"You... know what you're talking about?" Kuze muttered.
I don't know if the cat understood, but it tilted its head, raised its forelimbs, pointed at Jiu Shi, and repeated it clearly: "Jiu Shi."
Snapped-
It was the sound of the phone losing the support of the cat's claws and falling to the ground along the curvature of the sofa.
After confirming the fact that cats can talk, Kuze took a long time to digest his shock. He sat in front of the computer and searched frantically, but he didn't bother to read the results at all. Without any explanation, Kuze knew that cats couldn't speak at all. He was uneasy about it, and his talking cat seemed uneasy too.
The cat looks far less lively than before. The usual behavior of approaching Kuze and entering the study has disappeared, and even deliberately walking around Kuze—in fact, the living room is just a little bit big, no matter how the cat hides from Kuze, he can see it. , and even the "cat is hiding from him" is clearly seen.
From Kuze's point of view, the cat's response was really hilarious, and a little pitiful. When he was panicking, the other party showed a more panicked appearance, and Kuze spontaneously developed a sense of responsibility, demanding that he must calm down and deal with the situation. He began to reflect on his attitude.
Thinking about it now, the cat talking has already happened. No matter how much we investigate the cause, it will be of no avail. It is impossible to drive the cat away because of this. Besides, the fact that cats can talk doesn't seem to threaten Kuze. No matter how strange it was, it was just a cat, and he had no reason to overreact.
—Looking at it from another angle, the first thing the cat learned was Kuze's name, isn't that sweet? Kuze thought about it over and over again, and even felt a sense of relief as a first-time parent from it.
All in all, Kuze spent two days adjusting his mentality and coping strategies.
On the third day, he stopped the bored cat who was circling the sandbag to pass the time, and put it into the study. The cat looks quite nervous. It sat stiffly on the bay window following Kuze's strength, its eyes turned to the direction of the study door from time to time, its back tense, as if it was ready to escape at any time. Kuze ignored the cat's small movements.
He sat on the ground, looked at the cat, and announced, "Then, I will teach you to speak."
The cat still didn't understand this sentence, but Kuze was not in a hurry.
"'Cat'," Kuze stretched out his left index finger and tapped it on the cat's forehead, "You are a 'cat'."
Kuze originally wanted to give a definition, but after all, he was not a student of biology, and he could not remember the binomial method and scientific classification of cats for a while. It is not possible to arbitrarily define a cat as a small mammal that is soft and golden. Kuze simply skipped this section, just kept pointing at the cat and repeating the pronunciation of the word "cat".
"…Cat." Finally, the cat followed suit. It didn't seem to understand the concept of "cat" very well, but mistook "cat" for the name Kuze gave it. The cat raised its front legs and pointed to itself, "Cat."
After hesitating for a moment, the cat pointed to Kuze again: "Kushi."
The day before yesterday, the cat used the same sentence and the same action to inform Kuze of the fact that it could speak. At that time, Kuze was so frightened that he neglected the cat for a long time. Therefore, the cat was not sure about Kuze's attitude. After saying this, his shoulders tightened again, as if to prevent Kuze from getting angry. Kuze sighed secretly, first patted the top of the cat's hair, and after thinking about it, he simply reached out and hugged the cat into his arms.
"That's right, I'm Kuze." Kuze put his arm around the cat and stroked the cat's stiff back again and again, "It's alright, it's alright. You did nothing wrong."
The cat's language ability is gradual, but much faster than a two-year-old human child. It took less than two weeks for the cat to go from only saying Kuze's name that day to being able to stumble and dance in simple daily conversations. Among them, the most important thing is of course Mao's own efforts. At the same time, it is also inseparable from the reading activities that Kuze still insisted on despite the shock and the "human language class" provided at any time to answer questions and fill in the gaps.
Kuze is not entirely out of the psychology of being willing to help cats. He actually has his own purpose. After confirming that the cat could basically understand his words, Kuze immediately asked this haunting question: "Since you are so smart, why did you run away?"
In Kuze's view, this cat is actually not hostile to humans. After the snow car accident, it has been quite well-behaved, and even took the initiative to follow up with its forelimbs to help when Kuze is inconvenient with one hand. It is really smart and humane. It is precisely because of the intelligence and humanity of cats that its initial behavior becomes more incomprehensible.
To this, the cat's answer is very simple: "Because of fear."
"...Huh? Am I scarier than the outside?" Kuze couldn't understand. He pulled open the curtains with a "swoosh" and pointed to the white mountains outside the window. It is difficult to survive by staying outside. This is the current situation that anyone can understand at a glance. Even cats, by nature, like warm places. Kuze didn't understand where the cat's initial hostility came from: "It's 30 miles from the nearest town, and there's no people along the way. It's sub-zero at night, it's all snow-covered, and there's no food. So you still think I'm more scary? "
"...I don't know." The cat obviously didn't understand Kuze's long sentence. It replied cautiously, "You and the outside, I don't know, are scary."
Kuze squeezed into his chest in one breath. Of course he knew that the cat thought so, Kuze had guessed it from the first day the cat escaped, and it should have been numb by now. But now, Kuze still felt unspeakable anger when the cat said so for granted that it had regarded him as a monstrous beast.
Not wanting to face the cat in anger, he took a deep breath and got up to leave. As soon as he took a step, Jiushi suddenly felt that his trousers were heavy. He looked down and saw that the cat had stepped on it with his forelegs.
"Listen to me. At that time, I just woke up, I didn't know anything, my body was in pain, my clothes were taken away, and my hands and feet were locked—" The cat looked up at Kuze, seeking approval, "I was very scared. .There's nothing wrong with that."
"It's not a 'lock', that's a bandage." Jiusei corrected in a deep voice, "I'm saving you."
"But I don't know. At that time, I couldn't understand you." The cat was a little aggrieved. "You know, when a patient goes to the hospital, he has to write down this and that. I don't have it. I don't know who you are, and I don't know. What have you done to me. I'm terrified."
…what "this what and that what"...is referring to the hospital power of attorney and informed consent? This cat has quite a deep understanding of human society.
The sense of absurdity and the comedy effect softened the anger, and Kuze's aura was half dissipated. He was silent for a moment, then accused: "You are not kind enough."
The cat repeated it twice before realizing the meaning of "kindness". Limited by its language ability, it could not easily express its opposition. It stomped its feet in anger for a while, and turned around for several times before trying to hold back a rebuttal: "... Your requirements are too high!"
The cat felt that he was innocent, but Jiushi did a good deed but was misunderstood. Each had his own injustice, and the atmosphere became awkward for a while. They faced each other for a while, and the cat made a concession: "Well, I'm sorry, I'm not kind enough... But in our job, we can't be too kind. Just trust others, and it's easy to die."
their job
It took Kuze a while to realize what the cat was saying. Enter the human family and offer touch and pleasure in exchange for food. Just like work... Do domestic cats see themselves this way
Since picking up this cat, Kuze has seen a lot of pet-related anecdotes and news, and is also impressed by the reports of a large number of cat abuse incidents. People can choose cats, but cats can't choose their owners. If they are unkind, they will die easily. So the living environment is so bad that cats can only become vigilant and defensive to protect themselves
Maybe cats think so. Kuze thought. But as a human, his first thought is that if people are not malicious, the cat's vigilance will also escalate people's disgust, because good intentions fail to get good rewards and they hate cats. The cat is further alerted by the human disgust. After the negative feedback is formed in this way, it can only be a lose-lose situation in the end. There is no right or wrong, just different stances, and if the evaluation standard drifts a little, a completely different strategy will be given.
Kuze couldn't come up with a one-size-fits-all solution. He was still dissatisfied with the cat's initial distrust, but when he figured out the cat's position, he could no longer criticize the cat for not being kind enough.
Kuze could only sigh with emotion: "It's not easy to make a living."
The cat let out a "meow" and nodded in agreement. They looked at each other, and Kuze sighed slightly. The original suffocation was like an untied balloon. No matter how full it was, it could not explode, and in the end it could only disappear into the air without a sound. He looked at the cat, a little embarrassed for a moment, but he bent down and stretched out his left hand to the cat. The cat didn't understand it at first, but it soon became complacent and held over the forelegs.
That's how things turned around for a while.