TCI Ch7 - Preparation is a Very Important Thing - Chrysanthemum Garden

Teo [Translator]12-16 minutes

Please refer to the title

Editor: Vez fWTjhC

In modern society, sharing what is the easiest to gain fame and hardest to get hated? Ding, ding, ding, pets! If the pet is naturally attractive or playful, then the streamer can quickly gain a wave of fans by constantly basking in their pet’s glory.

[Quick, hurry. Show me a picture of your cat! By the way, what is your cat’s name?] Scrambled Eggs also followed those cute pet bloggers, browsing photos of cats and dogs during his pass time.

Read more BL at chrysanthemumgarden (dot) com

Then it occurred to Xin Qin that he had not taken any pictures of Sparta. Thinking of those owners who adopt stray cats, they would usually take many pictures of their cat and record every moment of their cat’s happy life, he suddenly felt he let Sparta down. Lowering his head, he rubbed Sparta’s head and asked, “Would you like having your picture taken? Why don’t I take pictures of you?”

Sparta felt very comfortable by the gentle gesture and was too embarrassed to shout too loudly, so he softly mewed. zYtps7

Xin Qin viewed it as the other’s approval and pulled out his phone to quickly take a picture of the cat in his arms. This should be his cat’s very first photo. After taking the picture, he sent it to Scrambled Eggs with a message attached: [His name is Sparta.]

Strangely, the other party did not reply for a long time, which contradicted Scramble Eggs’s style. Even if Xin Qin found it odd, it was hard for him to follow up. So he switched the window to browse the game forum, searching for the popular indie games suggested by the fan groups. He then selected and purchased a few from the list. Upon remembering about the other party, he switched back to the chat application and found that Scrambled Eggs had flooded the chat.

[My god, my friend, with all due respect, your cat is really ugly! There is even a scar above his eye. Is he a problem cat?]

Scrambled Eggs even stylized his message. Changing to a rough looking front, he used blood red text colour and even bolded the message. He sent a series of exclamation marks afterward to emphasise his tone too.

acd8D

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

[I doubted he could make you famous, nevermind.]

After he roasted Mood’s cat and saw the other party did not reply, he suddenly realised he was being rude and immediately apologised in the following messages. After sending several messages in succession, he finally asked: [How long have you had this cat? He looks like a stray.]

Xin Qin did not consider much when he took Sparta’s photo, he just snapped the picture and sent it without adding filters. He did not think the beauty feature could make Sparta look better and thus, did not blame Scrambled Eggs for being so straightforward. He typed out a reply: [He used to be a stray cat, now he is not. Sorry, I was downloading games and did not see your new messages.] After he pressed send, he lowered his head and gazed at Sparta. Although he knew that the cat would not understand, he still apologetically massaged the other’s neck.

Scrambled Eggs quickly catered back to the other’s goal and began to discuss the topic of games. Surprisingly, the two’s preferences and opinions on games were quite similar. Scrambled Eggs was so excited that he almost wanted to swear their new brotherhood through the internet as nearly sworn brothers separated by their screens, he sent: [Great god, don’t worry. I will help promote you on my side. We can definitely fight our way through, surge forward killing as we go blaze a trail of blood! The future of Fish Cat belongs to us!] Scrambled Eggs also sent a meme of Jessie and James from Pokémon. OoVJ4Q

Wlc Hlc rfjgmtfv tlr qtbabr jcv mbeiv cba olcv jcs relajyif wfwf ab jmmfqa atf mtjiifcuf, rb tf ujnf eq.

Miwu’s laps were so comfortable that Sparta fell asleep again unknowingly. By the time he woke up, Xin Qin had entered his livestream room and started making preparations for his livestream. Today, he had collected a lot of information and planned on improving his livestream room to make it more appealing. First, he needed to change to an interesting name. Xin Qin’s current livestream room name was very simple, called [Vincent.Sing’s Livestream Room]. Vincent.Sing is his game ID, not memorable nor a catchy name from any angle. His cursor hovered over the option to change his username but he could not follow through. Vincent was the English name he used at school, and Sing was homonym to his surname. Both were very simple. Even his Weibo ID, Bad Looking Mood, was created by him on the spot without much thought. He had used it for many years and did not bother with changing it.

Vqjgaj kbxf eq ogbw tlr cjq klat j ylu sjkc, atfc ilmxfv tlr qjk jcv mifjcfv tlr ojmf. Ds atf alwf tf kjr jkjgf bo tlr reggbecvlcur, tf obecv atja atf tewjc kjr wbalbcifrr. Ugbyjyis olcvlcu Wlc Hlc’r tbnfglcu tjcvr oec, atf mja mbeiv cba gfrlra ragfamtlcu bea tlr qjkr jcv qertfv Wlc Hlc’r olcufgr ogbw ifoa ab gluta. Glragjmafv ys atf mja’r jcalmr, Wlc Hlc mbwqifafis ibra tlr agjlc bo atbeutar. Lf vfmlvfv ab ugjy atf Ggjubc Ol mja’r qjkr jcv atfc qea atfw bc atf xfsybjgv. “Vqjgaj, yftjnf jcv tfiq wf mbwf eq klat j cfk cjwf.”

Sparta did not understand his human’s intention and tried to take back his paws at a complete loss. When he failed because of the human’s hold, he could only flinged his paws on the keyboard at random. 6EUu47

[Fish Fishing for Cats Requires Patient]

Xin Qin looked at the string of words formed on the screen and smiled. All right, change to that.

Sparta soon lost interest, he wandered back and forth on Xin Qin’s lap for a while before jumping down through the gap. Xin Qin glanced to make sure that the cat was just going out of his room to play by himself and then let the cat do his own things. DJmsiI

Sparta ran downstairs and skipped around the living room with his tail up. After chasing his tail for a while, he finally got bored again. He spread out on the carpet and lay on his side for a while. Feeling uncomfortable in the position, he rolled to the other side. Meow, this carpet feels so nice to claw—he jumped to stand up, quickly lowered himself, put out his front paws and rhythmically ran his claws through the carpet. After he scratched out a few loose threads, he still felt his claws itch. Sniffing around, he found a table leg full of cat scratch marks.

Oh, my aunt drew a picture here, it must feel good to scratch.

Chrysanthemum Garden.

He used his hind legs to straighten up and clawed the table leg.

Time quickly passed as he played with himself like this. Once evening arrived, Xin Qin came downstairs to check on his cat, by that time, Sparta had pretty much ruined the carpet and the tea table’s legs. He speechlessly looked at the table legs wearing ‘wool pants’ for a moment and then squatted down and poked Sparta on the back in anger. Sparta tilted his body and rolled over, revealing his fluffy patterned tummy. Upon this Xin Qin lost his urge to scold the cat, it was his responsibility on a second thought after all. He had not taken the Dragon Li cat’s needs into account. “I am sorry, Sparta. I have tossed all of Coffee’s things. I will buy you new ones, so don’t scratch the furniture in the future, okay?” GR8nwK

Miwu! Sparta called out softly. He did not know what was troubling Miwu, but he allowed Miwu to lick his belly. Sadly, instead of licking his belly like he wanted, the man reached out and rubbed it. Well, that was fine, this feels very comfortable as well, I can lick my tummy myself. Sparta bent his spine and licked the fur on his belly with a difficult back crunching position. Lick, lick.

Xin Qin did not get his fill so he reached forth to give the cat’s fluffy belly rubs twice more but Sparta generously licked his fingers too. A cat’s tongue has little spines, so being licked by it was a very odd sensation. He withdrew his hand and decided upon buying Sparta a cat bed and toys. Although he did not find a good source of income yet, he still needed to take good care of his cat.

Xin Qin nestled on the sofa, picked up the Dragon Li cat, put him in his arms, and used his tablet to make purchases. The tablet would change photos by the slide of the human’s finger, this new discovery made the cat chase Xin Qin’s finger for a while before he finally calmed down. It seemed like the cat had had enough exercise for today. Xin Qin pinched the cat’s ears and found the cat’s ear tufts were quite long. “Look at this cat bed, what do you think? Doesn’t it look very dashing?” Although he knew the cat would not answer him, he still sillily inquired for the other’s opinion.

Sparta indifferently stared at Xin Qin fingers. He could recognize a limited number of colours and was not very interested in static pictures. Sometimes Miwu would stop and talk to him, and Sparta would respond in kind, which seemed to satisfy the human. Humans are so easily satisfied. PGfVIA

Because the cat bed would not be delivered so quickly, Sparta slipped into Xin Qin’s room at night and planned to sleep with him. Xin Qin looked at Sparta’s dirty fur at a loss, but he could not bear to cruelly dismiss the cat. He was worried of the cat feeling insecure and needing company because of the change in the living conditions. During his hesitation, Sparta had already jumped onto his bed and began to find his spot to sleep for tonight. Xin Qin sighed. Once Sparta’s wound is better, he would bathe the cat and clean the house along the way.

What Xin Qin did not know was that Sparta did not feel uneasy at all. On the contrary, since Sparta had heard from the knowledgeable cats in the town that human beings are blind at night and have poor survival ability he felt that his human needed a strong companion, which was him, a super-reliable Dragon Li cat. Meow!

The Dragon Li cat, who had played to his heart’s content all day, completely forgot to review the lesson Mochi had prepared for him. He hadn’t flip through a single page.

The next morning after his failure in self-discipline, when Mr. Jay came to check his homework on behalf of Mochi, he found that Sparta had long forgotten about it from his goofing off. FekgoI

“I…” Sparta stepped on his right paw with his left paw and lowered his head in shame.

Mr. Jay was just the messenger. Naturally, he was in an awkward spot to scold the Dragon Li cat, so he just reminded the cat that the preschool class would start next week, which was only five days away from today. Students like the Dragon Li cat, who did not have any foundation and could not catch up with the course progress if they did not prepare, are more likely to flunk the test at the beginning.

“What would happen if I flunked?” The Dragon Li cat seized the moment and asked this new word.

“Er…” Even if Mr. Jay was insightful, he had a limited understanding of the cat world. “As far as I know, the consequences are very serious. After you study hard, you will naturally understand.” tqf1Ie

This answer was familiar, but the cat did not mind. At that moment, he fell into deep remorse. Didn’t he want to enter the cat school to study in order to better communicate with Miwu? If he played around and did not study hard, what if he was not able to learn human language? Then he would never have a chance to understand what Miwu is saying to him. Wouldn’t that make Miwu very lonely? The Dragon Li cat was immediately saddened by this.

Mr. Jay probably rarely saw such a sad cat and he felt a lump in his throat, not knowing what to say. His wife refused to come today because she was afraid of the big Dragon Li cat, causing him to have no one to consult ideas with. After being silent for a long time, Mr. Jay awkwardly comforted, “I heard that although classes for cats are very strict, there is a corresponding reward if one studies hard and gets good grades.”

The Dragon Li cat who felt he had made a big mistake was not keen on the rewards and absent-mindedly asked what the reward was.

“I heard…” Mr. Jay fluttered his wings and began to recall, “Once upon a time, there was a very smart cat. After successfully completing cat university courses, he continued his education and ended up getting a doctorate degree. He was the first and only cat to acquire such honour in decades. This great cat made indelible contributions to the cat community with his intelligence and wisdom. In order to commemorate this great cat scholar, the cat society established an award. Any cats that received their doctorate degree will receive this incredible mysterious power.” fyotjV

Sparta frowned solemnly. What does incredible mysterious power mean?

However, Mr. Jay only knew the basics, and had heard of it from word of mouth, which did not sound very credible. Sparta had to give up and let Mr. Jay deliver his reply. He would redouble his efforts to study and try to finish his handbook before the deadline.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.