Chapter 115: The Fat Tabby
A mate?
That didn’t seem right.
Byeol had been neutered years ago.
Because of his small size and thin build, when Joo Joowon first brought him home, he had assumed Byeol was only three or four months old.
Only after taking him to the veterinary clinic had he discovered that Byeol had long since reached adulthood.
More importantly, Joo Joowon had never once seen Byeol go into heat.
His attitude toward other cats had always been terrible.
Whenever Joo Joowon happened to pet one of the stray cats around the neighborhood, Byeol would secretly run out after he left for work and beat them up.
The only reason Joo Joowon had ended up joining the neighborhood owners’ group chat at all was because of incidents involving Byeol.
The residents had exposed the situation and eventually tracked down him as the cat’s owner.
The fat tabby, of course, had no idea what Joo Joowon was thinking.
After stepping closer and sniffing him, it suddenly flopped onto the ground and exposed its fluffy white belly.
Then it let out a somewhat awkward spoiled sounding meow that was obviously copied directly from Byeol.
Joo Joowon looked toward Byeol, who was currently sitting nearby licking his paw, before hesitantly reaching out his hand.
Then he glanced at Byeol once more.
No puffed up fur.
No signs of jealousy.
Apparently Byeol really didn’t mind.
Only then did Joo Joowon finally reach out and rub the fat tabby’s wonderfully soft belly.
Byeol’s fur was soft too, but his body was simply too small.
Petting him never quite felt satisfying enough.
The fat tabby, however, was a completely different story.
Its waist was astonishingly wide.
One hand was not even enough to cover it completely.
Its belly fat rolled beneath his fingers and the feeling was unbelievably good.
Unfortunately, before thirty seconds had even passed, Byeol walked over and gently bit Joo Joowon’s hand, pulling it away.
The fat tabby, whose expression had been one of complete bliss moments ago, lifted its head in confusion.
"Meow?"
Byeol immediately hissed at it.
The fat tabby instantly sat upright with perfect posture, looking as obedient as a student being scolded by a teacher.
However, after looking carefully at the fat tabby’s eyes, Joo Joowon’s expression became somewhat complicated once again.
The cross-eyed fat tabby’s eyes were the fairly standard orange-gold color commonly seen in tabby cats.
However, now they seemed to carry a faint reddish tint.
It looked very much like the signs of someone infected with the zombie virus and standing on the verge of turning.
Not only that, it looked like the sort that, once it completed its mutation, would either become an elite monster or a boss level creature.
Joo Joowon realized that he had simply been too anxious.
Thinking about it carefully, Byeol had long since become extremely picky about food thanks to his pampered lifestyle.
Whenever he caught prey, he only played with it and never actually ate it.
The probability that he had eaten a zombie bird was extremely low.
Not to mention that he was protected by his luck buff.
By normal logic, good things should generally happen to him while bad things would naturally avoid him.
So was it possible that this fat tabby had ended up taking the disaster in his place?
Joo Joowon hesitantly touched the immunity injection in his inventory.
He only had a single dose.
Since obtaining it, he had never managed to get another one from any monster drop.
Originally, he had intended to save it for himself in case he was injured someday, or perhaps for Byeol if something happened to him.
Using such a precious item on a complete stranger of a cat was honestly difficult for him to accept, even if the two cats seemed to have a fairly good relationship.
After struggling with the decision for a while, Joo Joowon finally made up his mind.
He chose to pick Byeol up and leave.
If the fat tabby followed him upstairs, then he would accept using the medicine.
But if the fat tabby had no intention of following him, then he would simply pretend he had never met her at all.
With only one immunity injection available, he had to prioritize himself and Byeol.
Holding onto that thought, Joo Joowon deliberately chose not to travel using spider silk and instead walked normally.
The fat tabby remained sitting where she was, foolishly watching as Joo Joowon carried Byeol away.
Byeol poked his head out from Joo Joowon’s arms and called out toward the tabby.
The fat tabby froze for a moment.
It glanced reluctantly at the food lying on the ground before answering Byeol with a meow of its own.
Byeol responded with a cat cry that sounded far from friendly.
The fat tabby’s ears flattened slightly.
After hesitating for a moment, it grabbed the fattest zombie bird from the pile and hurried after Joo Joowon.
Seeing this, Joo Joowon could not help but fall into thought.
Originally, he had assumed that Byeol had merely happened to run into the fat tabby by chance.
After reminiscing for a while, they would naturally part ways and continue on their separate paths.
After all, cats were independent creatures rather than social animals.
Unlike dogs, they had very little need for companionship.
Yet from the looks of things, this fat tabby seemed more like a companion that Byeol had actively recruited.
Joo Joowon had no idea where Byeol had managed to find it.
There were barely any stray cats in their apartment complex at all.
It was not because anyone actively drove them away.
Rather, there were simply too many overworked office workers living there.
Even if they liked cats, they had no time to feed them.
Wild cats were clever creatures, almost as cunning as monkeys.
They had absolutely no interest in settling down in a place like this.
After all, these two legged creatures simply could not fatten them up enough.
They continued all the way upstairs.