Strange Life of a Cat

The biology department had recently hired a few professors who came back from abroad, and the enrollment was higher than ever. Therefore, the department had to reallocate resources. Papa Jiao’s office had been given to three young lecturers. He had been given a new office that was much smaller than his original office.

The department was originally worried that Professor Jiao would object, but he was very understanding and moved to his new office the very next day. The department head was very pleased and thought even higher of Professor Jiao.

Of course, the reason that Papa Jiao agreed to the move was not that he understood the department’s difficulties and wanted to help. Zheng Tan thought he could guess what Papa Jiao was thinking. Since the department had made such arrangements, as a faculty member, it would be best if he just accepted.

However, Papa Jiao gladly agreed to move to his new office because of its location. The new office had a window facing south, which guaranteed lots of light in the winter. More importantly, it was a corner office. Outside the window was a parasol tree, and it’s. The tree branches extended to the office window. Zheng Tan could now climb up the tree and enter through the window when he came to visit.

Often, when Zheng Tan was tired or grew bored, he would come over and jump on Papa Jiao’s window sill. Papa Jiao never locked his window when he was in his office. The window was a sliding window; Zheng Tan could easily open it.

Next to Papa Jiao’s desk was a small chair. If Jiao Yuan was not there, Zheng Tan would use the chair to nap. Like yesterday, Zheng Tan walked Jiao Yuan and Gu Youzi to school after their nap, then came over to Papa Jiao’s office and slept on the chair. In the afternoon, the sun was shining directly on the chair. It was the perfect spot.

He slept until five in the afternoon. Zheng Tan yawned. Papa Jiao was probably not having dinner at home tonight. He was too busy these days and usually had his students bring him food from the cafeteria.

He now had three students working with him. One, of course, was Yi Xin. The other two were undergrads doing their dissertation. Papa Jiao normally ate dinner with them. The four often worked until midnight.

Though Papa Jiao had been planning to get a few more grad students, he was not planning to lower his standards. Quite a few professors now had many grad students working in their labs. Papa Jiao still only had Yi Xin.

Most students from Chuhua university entering grad school this year who were worth teaching, were either planning to study abroad or already reserved for the heads of the department. The rest were with professors who had more projects and more money. The others were not up to standards, so Papa Jiao didn’t want any of them. He was planning to wait and see if there would be anyone good from other schools.

Besides working on his projects, he had Yuan Zhiyi’s company to worry about.

The company was named ‘Tianyuan Biology’. ‘Tian’ was a word in Professor Yuan’s name, and ‘yuan’ obviously came from Yuan.

Zheng Tan had heard Papa Jiao and Yuan Zhiyi say that they were planning to set up a research department. However, the company did not have enough employees at the moment. Most people with talent did not want to come work at a small start-up, so Papa Jiao and Yuan Zhiyi had their work cut out for them.

Papa Jiao bought most of the equipment he needed through this company. He was able to buy the same equipment with less money with the support of Yuan Zhiyi. If his project went well, Papa Jiao would have an easier time becoming amaking professor.

Professor Jiao sometimes recommended the company to teachers who wanted to save research funds. He never mentioned his part in the company, but rather only hinted towards it in conversations with his colleagues. Most professors had plenty of projects. They had funds in the millions, and most were not planning to use these funds on just research. Both Professor Jiao and Yuan Zhiyi understood the kinds of shady dealings that went on in academia, so they decided to keep quiet on some things.

Around six, Zheng Tan jumped onto the tree and closed the window. He went home for dinner. After dinner, he went out for a stroll. Tiger was being kept home. Sheriff and Fatty were still the same—, they always stayed out with Zheng Tan until late at night.

Because of the weather, other than a few students outside walking to class, most places were empty. This was good for cats. No one got in their way.

Once in a while, they would run into young couples getting it on. Sometimes, Zheng Tan would watch a little and reminisce of the days when he was still human. When he just entered university, he had done similar things. Now that he thought about it, he should have checked his surroundings for cats. He never would have thought anything of them even if he checked though.,

Zheng Tan and co. came to the little forest where he used to climb trees. They had been playing in this area recently with some other cats from other places. Some belonged to school employees while others came from off campus. This place was on the edge of campus, so cats from the outside came inside to play too.

Fights were unavoidable with this many cats. Sheriff had participated in almost every fight, while Fatty was his usual self. He ignored other cats unless they chose to fight him first.

Zheng Tan had gotten into a fight once, because of a female cat.

He swore he did not like that cat. He still thought of himself as human and was not planning to start a relationship with a cat. He would rather watch the young couples. However, the female cat had approached him and that made some other cat envious.

So he got into a fight. It wasn’t really a fight. He slapped the cat, and it was knocked away. He couldn’t control his force, so he might have slapped the cat harder than he intended.

Other cats who saw the scene left Zheng Tan alone from then on. The cat who got slapped disappeared for quite some time.

Cats were clear when showing their feelings, though they could be hard to understand sometimes as well. Two cats who were close could be licking each other’s fur one moment, then start biting and fighting next moment. Then somewhere during the fight, they would start licking again.

Zheng Tan would sometimes see two cats chasing and fighting in the grass. He would hear them screech then see them soon huddling together again.

Cats were running around under the trees. Zheng Tan could hear meows everywhere. He ignored all of them.

Zheng Tan liked nights like this one. He could do whatever he wished. With the night as his cover, no one would see his odd behaviors. He could run around all he liked.

The cats were running around in the grass, Zheng Tan was running around on the trees, going from branch to branch like a monkey. Under the moonlight, his shadow was barely visible.

It was a dark night. He was a black cat.

Zheng Tan increased his pace. He enjoyed the feeling of standing up high, but he was not ready to stop. He ran along tree branches, jumping onto a new tree when he reached the tip. Against the night wind, he could feel leaves falling onto him. He felt like he was breaking free. This excited him.

When he stopped, he realized he was quite far from the other cats. Sheriff and Fatty would come find him later, and the other cats would follow them.

He stood on a branch and panted a little. The night wind was cool;, it calmed him. He stepped onto a leaf that was falling off the tree. He scratched it into little pieces, then watched the wind blow away the bits. After doing this several times and still seeing no sign of his friends, he couldn’t help but wonder why they were being so slow.

Suddenly, he heard something. He looked ahead.

He heard the sound of someone being dragged. The person’s mouth was covered and could only make muffled noises. The person was fighting back, and the shrubs made rapid rustling noises.

From the sound of it, the person being dragged was a woman. Zheng Tan heard the lowered voice of a man as well. He couldn’t tell what he said, but he heard the voices move deeper into the woods.

He carefully jumped onto another tree and moved towards them.

Suddenly he understood what was happening. Even without seeing anything, he could make an accurate guess.

Every university had one or two ‘PhD’ roads.

It was not a nice name, but rather a sarcastic one.

Every university, especially the ones with large campuses, had one or two places that were too far from everywhere. Once in a while, bad things happened in these places. The most typical was rape incidents.

A ridiculous unspoken ‘tradition’ was that to keep these incidents quiet, the victim would be automatically accepted into the school’s graduate programs with tuition covered if he or she chose to attend.

Therefore, these places were nicknamed ‘PhD’ roads by students.

Zheng Tan came to this part of the school quite often. He would hear talks of similar incidents in conversations between students passing by.

Such incidents had happened in Chuhua university before. This area was surrounded by deserteddisserted buildings that were built too long ago. The roads were long and winded. Beside construction vehicles that had no choice, no cars came this way.

The street lamps and speakers were common victims of vandalism, and the culprits were never caught. The school had given up on the place and had faculty members tell students to just avoid the area at night.

These woods were within the ‘caution’ area. This was why Zheng Tan seldom saw female students around in these woods.

Maybe this was one reason why the school was planning to build new buildings around here. If people frequented the area, these kind of stuff wouldn’t happen quite as often.

Zheng Tan moved closer to the voices while thinking of the stories her had heard. At the same time, he heard the other cats come towards this direction.