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Of all his recent achievements, Li Lianhua was the proudest of having learned to Tunisian crochet.
Knitting was easy; crocheting was probably even easier. Cats came absolutely naturally to him, and making coffee and baking? Eh, you just had to follow the recipe. Trust the process. One of his favourite tee-shirts showed a lotus flower with the slogan TRUST THE PROCESS, and he had a large sign of it in the yarn room where he would advise customers about their projects. Trust the process; follow the instructions until the pattern emerged. Never keep the yarn too tight, and never try to second-guess yourself.
His second most impressive achievement, by his own standards, was his mastery of lopapeysa, that is, the traditional shoulder-cowl patterns of Icelandic sweaters, made of the unspun yarn of their hardy sheep. He'd been to the island on one very memorable occasion, he had been to the central Álafoss shop and bought wool and a book, he even had a friend in Reykjavík who'd go to get him yarn from there and ship it halfway around the world so he could sell it in his shop. Or rather, from the yarn room of his shop. Which had a sturdy art nouveau style swing door that kept the cats out of the yarn. Cats and yarn were a dangerous combination, like nitro and glycerine, but the door worked well, and they knew to keep away from it ever since Xiaobao had tried to slip through and got his tail stuck, which necessitated an emergency vet visit, a shaved tail, and a ridiculous pink bandage that immobilised it for weeks. It would have been cheaper to amputate the tail at the point of injury, but Li Lianhua wouldn't hear anything about it. That was his Xiaobao, and he loved him, and the young cat needed his tail to express himself. Xiaobao was a very expressive cat! To be fair, Li Lianhua had haggled the vet down to 50 dollars, but he haggled down anybody to fifty dollars for almost any work, so that was not all that extraordinary.
In turn, Li Lianhua only asked 50 dollars for each or any of the odd services he sometimes provided, up to and including the resurrection of a dead convenience store robber (don't ask), so that was just his way of give and take with the world.
The money was largely symbolic.
50 dollars for the grad student who read out his keynote at his last conference while he pretended to be sick with what might have been interpreted as Covid while he was, in fact, on the run with A-Fei. That had started it all.
His third greatest achievement was ongoing, and that was keeping A-Fei out of the remarkably red and expensively manicured claws of Jiao-jie.
Now, in cat cafés, you traditionally chose on of two approaches. Either, the professional working cat approach you got in many of the original Taiwanese or Japanese ones, or even in the on in Lviv, Ukraine, that had been so present in social media at the beginning of the war. Caramelka, arguably one of the most flawless cats on social media, on par with Suki, Choupette, or Willabee, would always be found in that place — she worked there, she belonged with the café, and her fans from all over the world would find her there when the war was finally over and they could at last go to Lviv and see all the churches and synagogues and the faded Austro-Hungarian charm, and of course meet the cats at the cat café.
Then there was the approach of having adoptable cats in the café that would eventually go home with a guest after they had fallen in love with each other. Li Lianhua had seen that approach in Reykjavík, at the kattakaffihúsið called Mjá (Icelandic spelling for meow), where he had crashed often in his first few weeks of running away. Actually, Iceland had been the random destination of the first flight out that would take A-Fei in his carrier. Of course, he wasn't allowed to bring A-Fei to the cat café, but the dark Maine Coon was content to sleep for many hours on end in their hotel room after all the drama that had preceded their flight. He needed to heal, and Iceland had very decent vets, Li Lianhua found out.
At Mjá, they only served vegan cakes and cream so the cats would not be tempted to steal the customers' food, an approach that Li Lianhua had adopted for his own cat café. At Mjá, all the cats were speed-dating potential forever humans, while in the Cat Café Lviv, you had a business model where the cats worked like ancient Chinese geji or colonial Indian tawaif.
Now, most of the cats in Li Lianhua's café were adoptable, but there were a few exceptions. Huli-jing was a white-and-ginger female whom the Cat Distribution System had literally handed him in a parking lot where he had been sticking GPS tags to a few chosen Humvees (don't ask); she had the friendliest and open disposition, and was very good at thawing out guests who were still a bit sceptical. As fate had obviously meant for him to have her, he had immediately listed her as'not adoptable'.
Xiaobao had attached himself to Li Lianhua in a working class pub where he had been waiting for a man who owed him fifty dollars because Li Lianhua had prevented his nephew from failing English class (don't ask). A fight had broken out, somebody had punched Li Lianhua, and under the table where he had found himself hiding, there was a young tabby cat who licked his cheek and nudged him with his classic brick-coloured nose. When Li Lianhua had finally deemed it safe to emerge, collect his fifty dollars, and leave, the tabby had come with him. He was unadoptable as well because Li Lianhua couldn't beat him off with a stick.
And finally, there was A-Fei, the cat who had started it all. The cat because of whom Li Lianhua was here today, and not a tenured biology professor specialising in animal behaviour, particularly cats. A-Fei, a fellow post-doc's test subject, had been hours away from being killed for having attacked said post-doc who had, in Li Lianhua's opinion, submitted the beautiful dark Maine Coon to conditioning by torture.
The vet in Reykjavík had cut out the electronic device and never asked what it had been for.
A-Fei was the cat who would watch you from the highest bookshelf, his beautiful amber-coloured eyes unwavering; Huli-jing was the cat who would scratch at the spill of orange juice on the floor because she wanted to help clear up the terrible stink; Xiaobao was the cat who followed you to the toilet. Li Lianhua loved them all very much, and they would be with him till death did them part.
Today, Li Lianhua was bringing a large tray of orders through to the courtyard shortly after lunchtime. It was one of the last beautiful days of autumn, and even if there might be yet another one or two coming, you could never tell, so people were out in force to enjoy sitting in the sun for the potentially last time before winter would arrive.
First, a round of iced tea for the guy with the white cat ears hat and his co-workers. Li Lianhua had no idea what that guy's deal was, and he wouldn't ask. Today, the man had brought five colleagues from the unnamed municipal office they all worked at, the maximum number Li Lianhua had seen so far, so the tray was heavy. The guy's number of guests varied from zero upwards, but the white cat ears hat was a constant. Mind you, they were different hats, appropriate for the season, but always white, and always with cat ears. One day, he would tell Li Lianhua voluntarily (they all did eventually); so he didn't ask.
After getting rid of the five iced teas, the tray almost felt as if it was floating right ahead of him to the next table, where a young mother was sitting, knitting something purple. Li Lianhua didn't like tiny kids in his cat café because there would often be conflict over the huge baby carriages that made it almost impossible to get through, and because you could never be sure how little kids and cats would end up interacting, but she was different. She'd come every week before she even was pregnant, often with her brothers, then with her boyfriend and later husband, and Li Lianhua didn't feel like excluding her just because she now came with a tiny person. Also, she bought all her yarn from him, and was an avid knitter.
"I hadn't ordered a cookie," she said almost ruefully when Li Lianhua served her her almond milk latte.
"I know," he said. "I am giving you one anyway; I know you like my white chocolate cookies best. I hope it will make your milk taste even nicer for your little one later."
She looked at him. "You are weird," she said. "Never change."
Her husband had died in an accident before the kid was even three months old, and one of her brothers was in jail for allegedly having caused it. Least he could do was give her cookies. Princess, one of the sweetest among the adoptable cats, liked to keep her company as well. Li Lianhua had gently hinted that even the kindest of cats might react adversely to having their fur grabbed by a baby, but the young widow was very conscientious and attentive.
Last week, she had finally returned the warm lopi wool she had bought to make a knitted hoodie for her husband, discussing the project at great length with Li Lianhua back when she bought it; now, he had of course accepted it back and insisting on returning the full price to her, not just the fifty dollars that she had suggested.
He smiled at her, and drifted on.
A gaggle of half-grown kittens ran over his feet, but Li Lianhua didn't even stumble; this was normal here. The cats had their own little door to the cat room where no guests were allowed, and they roamed the courtyard freely. The house extended on all sides, and only one of the doors and cat-flaps did not lead to Li Lianhua's place of business or residence. He lived above the café, always ready to interfere if the surveillance camera from the cat room gave an alarm during the night. He had programmed the evaluation software himself, using his knowledge from his academic days.
The cat flap on the end of the tiny spiral staircase that led up to Li Lianhua's plant-covered private balcony would only admit Huli-jing, Xiaobao, or A-Fei; it was set to the RFID chips of the two younger cats, and the tag on A-Fei's collar. Li Lianhua knew that this was deeply irrational, but after what had happened, he never wanted to implant anything electronic into A-Fei again. It was stupid — without a chip, Li Lianhua wouldn't even be able to prove this was his cat if A-Fei was ever abducted, a fear was not entirely irrational.
The reason for that fear was the last person whose order Li Lianhua had on his tray right now, a very beautiful young woman who worked at a nearby ad agency and who often spent her afternoons at the cat café working at her newest model Mac without any interruption from the usual office drama. Li Lianhua had heard her devoted interns call her Jiao-jie whenever one of them was given the great privilege to come along, and that was the only name he had for her. She used it on all her personal socials, too.
She had ordered a chai latte with four extra espressos in it. She had tried for six, but Li Lianhua had insisted that he did not poison his guests; also, it would taste atrocious. He brought an entire bottle of Ty Nant with it, free of charge — he really did not want her to either suffer a heart attack, or suddenly hatch a crazy plan for world domination that would implicate A-Fei.
Why she was so enamoured with A-Fei was anybody's guess. Her Instagram was full of admittedly excellent pictures of him, and she brought him incredibly expensive dried salmon snacks that she made sure no other cat got a share of, not even poor Bijoux who liked her even more than she liked A-Fei. Bijoux, a very pretty Holy Birma who had come from a hoarding case disguised as breeding facility, now lay purring next to her very pointy Louboutins as usual.
Li Lianhua served Jiao-jie her weaponized chai, and her free water, and then bent to drop a few of the official cat treats for Bijoux. Sometimes, he was allowed to lounge in Jiao-jie's lap; then, he was the happiest cat in all the world.
A-Fei kept his distance as usual.
Just now, he was sitting on the highest level of the climbing structure that adorned the wall between the kitchen door and the window of the yarn room, surveying the courtyard and keeping an eye on the rambunctious kittens. There was one single tree in the courtyard, but it was cat-proofed with something like a ginormous tree trunk condom, so they could neither scratch nor climb it. Last summer, on a very beautiful full moon night when Li Lianhua had been closing up after the last guest had left, he had seen A-Fei look up into the branches of the trees, bunch up, take a mighty leap, and end up clinging to the bark of the tree above the part that was condomed-in, and from there quickly climb into the branches and sit there, looking up at the moon.
Li Lianhua had put down the bucket of used coffee grinds he had meant to take to his compost bin (quite a number of amateur gardeners swore by his coffee grind compost and were in silent, deathly competition about it — yeah, don't ask), and stood underneath the tree. "A-Fei," he had said, "I know the moon is very beautiful tonight, but you can see it even better from our own balcony. Please come down and don't give the others any ideas."
A-Fei had looked down at him, and Li Lianhua had lifted his arms and waved, to encourage the cat to come down.
A-Fei had just jumped off the branch and into Li Lianhua's arms, never doubting for a second that his human would catch him, and of course he had — his shoulder had twinged for a week afterwards, but anything for A-Fei. Always. He would run into a burning building for A-Fei, or jump into a fetid pond. They just loved each other that much.
Jiao-jie with her expensive salmon would never entice A-Fei into liking her, or coming home with her; he would sometimes deign to accept the treats like his regal dues, and then get back on the climbing structure, or even up to Li Lianhua's balcony.
Why she would even want to impress A-Fei, who was clearly not interested, when Bijoux was right there, ready to worship the very tracks of her red-soled high heels, Li Lianhua never understood.
No more than a week later, the weather had changed beyond the point of no return; the courtyard was deserted (only the hardier cats and the tobacco-smoking humans would go there now), all the outdoor furniture was stacked and covered with tarps, and life had condensed in the three guest spaces of the cat café: first of all, the big main room with the coffee bar, many bistro tables and chairs as well as the long ledge table along one wall that was meant for use with laptop computers. Cats would of course come and inspect your work, but what else did you bring a computer to a cat café to, if not for paws on your keyboard?
THE CATS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT, a large sign over the computer table reminded the guests.
Then there was the lounge room, with low sofas and coffee tables and cat snack dispensers as well as a generous climbing installation on one wall; this was where the people went who meant to stay for more than just a cup of coffee, settling down to play with or cuddle some cats, read, and while away entire afternoons or evenings. This was where the matches were made; usually, this was where Li Lianhua was shyly asked for the contact information of the lady from the private shelter that provided the cats for the café. This was where, some days later, a nervous human would meet with that lady to convince her why they were the right person for that specific cat. Most of the time, the cat in question would sit right beside or on top of the human trying to calm them down. The lady almost never turned anybody down; she might suggest that a different cat might be better suited, or that the human should come to her shelter and pick a companion for their chosen cat. Sometimes, of course, the cats already came in pairs or even trios, and it was obvious that they would only go home together.
Tears and money flowed freely here. It was the place where cats got treats, and in the evenings, this was the place of choice for humans who wanted to decompress with a glass of wine or a gin-and-tonic. At least one marriage proposal had happened on these sofas. Li Lianhua, quite aware that for most people, their romantic affairs had the sort of priority that for him was reserved for felines and fibre-crafts, followed by food and friends, had brought out the real champagne and made sure the whole café celebrated with them.
The third room was the yarn room, where cats usually didn't go, not after Xiaobao's accident with his tail in the swing door. Li Lianhua had a few vintage cocktail chairs there, and a few small low tables, for knitters dealing with the difficult part of their projects, or the rare few guests who found out they were allergic only after coming to the cat café.
And of course, there was an entire bookshelf full of knitting and crochet books people could consult, the stack of cubbyholes for the actual yarn, and an ancient apothecary chest that now housed all the needles and other tools of the craft.
While Li Lianhua had his little helpers from the nearby college who worked here for a few extra dollars, making food and drinks, serving guests and cleaning up, only he himself was allowed to sell yarn. He did have his point-of-sale computer, but actually, the inventory was in his head. If he knew he had ten skeins of the black lättlopí left, and then he realised that there were somehow only eight, he would be irritated for the rest of the day, even if the sale was properly documented, and had been to an established customer who had found they needed more.
Why did anybody ever not buy enough yarn? Normally, you bought too much. Li Lianhua's return policy was very reasonable, too; he even had a leftover yarn bin from which you could pick the kind of accent colours you needed for some patterns. He had one skein of fire-engine red àlafoss wool that he had sold three times already because with that kind of colour, you only ever needed a few yards.
Today, somebody had sold half the cubby of the lovely golden colour which he had taken back from the young widow the other week; while seeing the cubby stuffed to the brim made him sad, seeing half of it empty made him sad as well, and also angry, because somebody had again not waited for him to come back from the vet, where he had been to get three of the older kittens fixed.
"But she insisted she knew what she wanted!" the little helper had protested. "And I booked the sale properly – look here…"
"It's all right," Li Lianhua said, resigned; and because there was nobody else in the yarn room, he had slipped out, went into the kitchen and from there through the one human entrance into the cat room.
There were only two chairs in the cat room, and most of the time, cats were sleeping on them; but when Li Lianhua entered, the angular oriental shorthair named Zhiyu who had been sleeping there got up, arched her back, and made room for him.
Li Lianhua sat down. Zhiyu settled on the back of the chair.
She had come from another weird case the lady from the shelter didn't like to talk about; the former owner had done things to his cats that not all of them had survived. Then, he had got himself murdered, and the surviving cats had partially eaten his corpse. The lady had said so with great satisfaction. Li Lianhua didn't tell his guests that Zhiyu and her two brothers had eaten people flesh; the girl who had adopted one of the brothers had to be told, of course, but the lady did it in such a way that the general sentiment of 'good for them' prevailed.
The cat room sported a huge wall installation for climbing and lounging that was even bigger and more complex than the one outside, and infinitely more so than the one in the lounge room. Otherwise, the room was filled with cat beds and cat trees and litter boxes and food stations and water fountains, with toys and and boxes and little odds and ends the cats had stolen from the guests.
There was a cat flap leading to the main room, and an open cat door high on the climbing wall that led to its counterpart in the lounge room. The cats could always retreat here; the only humans who came in were Li Lianhua and his little helpers when feeding the cats, scooping the litter boxes, exchanging the water, fluffing the beds and picking up odds and ends from the floor. Once every day, somebody would come with a broom and sweep the cat room; the vacuum was not permitted here.
Zhiyu was snuggling up against Li Lianhua's messy ponytail that didn't amount to more than a couple of inches at the nape of his neck, which however, for the cats, marked him as tail-haver, and thus much more familiar and trustworthy than all these tail-less humans. The cats' ideas about human anatomy were a bit iffy, anyway. Li Lianhua had known more than one cat that would hunt their humans' feet in bed, apparently taking them for some sort of undercover mice.
The cat flap from the main room went, and A-Fei entered, in something of a hurry, at least for him, calm, superior and slightly aloof cat that he was.
He casually rubbed by Li Lianhua's leg where he was sitting, and then went to the set of dishes nearest to the kitchen door. Indeed, there was fresh rotisserie chicken in there that the local lunch place tended to donate after lunch hour in the business district across the main street was over. In return, the people from the lunch place who brought the chicken after their shift could have as much free coffee as they liked.
As a rule, the capacity for absorbing coffee was limited, apart from a few choice mad-people like Jiao-jie.
Who, at that moment, entered through the human door from the kitchen, which was extremely forbidden and against the rules, but what good were the best rules if people weren't willing to keep them? You could only try to enforce them, and that was what Li Lianhua had to do now, much as he hated pulling rank.
"You can't be in here," he said, mildly, standing up with Zhiyu on his shoulders. "This room is for the cats only, and no humans apart from the staff are allowed in. The cats need a safe space."
"Oh, here you are!" Jiao-jie said, bending down to pick up A-Fei in mid-meal and hold him up by the armpits like the classic 'longcat is long' meme. She gave no sign of even having heard Li Lianhua speak; she certainly didn't notice A-Fei's surprised and angry hiss. Her red claws looked dangerous in his dark, soft fur.
Li Lianhua got closer, ready to interfere. A-Fei was a big and strong cat, physically able to tear Jiao-jie to shreds for her lack of respect.
However, for the moment, he just hung there, looking put-upon and staring at Li Lianhua with his beautiful eyes. If I damage the guests, you will be in trouble, and that's the only reason she's even still alive, he seemed to say.
"A-Fei!" Li Lianhua said, reaching to take his cat back from the interloper; but A-Fei suddenly squirmed free in a sinuous motion, kicked the woman with his hind feet and launched himself right at Li Lianhua, who caught him and hugged him and held him.
Zhiyu hissed, and jumped to the ground.
"Please, no guests in the kitchen or the cat room," he said to Jiao-jie, burying his hands in A-Fei's dark, luscious fur. "You can't be here, or we'll get in trouble with the authorities."
She simpered, turned, and stalked off. Li Lianhua sank back into the chair, A-Fei in his arms.
He would have to do something about this woman.
There are, of course, no bad cats, just misunderstood or mistreated cats. However, some cats don't fit specific environments; so the idea of making a cat named 'Lone Gunman' (or 'Loner' for short) by his rescuer work at a cat café was probably destined to fail from the start.
Loner was a big dark cat, not quite as big and long-haired as A-Fei, and not nearly as beautiful (in this, Li Lianhua was probably biased); where A-Fei's eyes were a golden amber hue, Loner's were a mere yellow. He had been found on a grassy knoll under a willow tree by a lotus pond, apparently quite dead; but when the people who found him tried to bury him, he had suddenly growled, and then he was taken to a vet clinic, healed, fed, pampered and neutered, and brought to Li Lianhua's cat café to meet people. However, he turned out to really be a loner, and an unholy terror towards some of the other cats.
Li Lianhua, past master of cat behaviour that he was, could never determine why Loner liked some cats and why not. His attitude towards Li Lianhua himself was iffy at best; he could be very smarmy at times, but the moment Li Lianhua turned his back, the cat would drink his coffee and rip up his knitting.
However, he still held out hope for some patient suburban adopters with a big garden when disaster struck.
It was an ordinary Tuesday shortly before Christmas — Li Lianhua didn't celebrate that, of course, but the trappings and decorations were fun to have around in the cat café. Fairy lights, baubles, greenery and gingerbread marked the early winter season just fine, and mulled wine or cider went down well with the after-work crowd. He was just serving Jiao-jie a white mocha with no additional espresso (signs and portents!) when a terrible howl erupted from the lounge room, followed by the shrill screams of very upset customers.
Li Lianhua shut up mid-sentence and ran towards the source of the commotion, which turned out to be — who else but Loner, who was brutally beating up Bijoux in a no-holds-barred cat-fight. Pale fur and blood were flying everywhere; the sweet Holy Birma was down, yowling submission, but Loner kept laying into him.
Li Lianhua grabbed the nearest blanket and threw himself bodily on Loner, and managed to wrap up the mad-cat without being bitten. There were a few scratches, but eh — what could you do.
"Crate!" he ordered, and one of his little helpers exploded from the kitchen door with one of them, and Li Lianhua shoved the deranged cat inside and slammed the door.
Loner growled and howled.
Bijoux was basically reduced to a broken shred on the floor, his white fur matted with blood; and from the cat room, the other cats were slinking in through the cat flaps and high shelves, to see what had happened. Add to that the human patrons, and you had an instant atmosphere of utter cat-astrophe, the worst mood-breaker you could imagine on a Tuesday evening shortly before Christmas.
Bijoux stood, shakily, and wobbled towards the door to the main room, where Jiao-jie was leaning, looking unpleasantly calm.
Well, she worked at an ad agency — a little fisticuffs and bloodshed, shouting and drama was probably nothing to her.
To Li Lianhua's great astonishment, she bent down and picked up the injured cat, getting blood all over her black Chanel jacket and ivory coloured silk blouse.
"Where is the vet you use?" she just asked, holding the cat in her arms. "The poor little guy! I'll take him; you need to see a doctor yourself. One for humans."
Bijoux, finally in the arms of the woman he had adored from afar, hardly noticed, for months, was probably in heaven right now despite his injuries; but he flopped, and yowled a little, and bled pathetically (almost as if he did it on purpose); so she held him and told him she'd make sure he got better, and he had been such a courageous cat, standing up against that bully.
Li Lianhua didn't bother to correct her.
"Our usual vet is one block down the street, but I'm not sure they have all the equipment needed for serious injuries," he said. "If I give you the address and call you a cab, could you take him to the vet clinic on the other side of the park? They have every machine imaginable to determine whether he has internal injuries and the like, and we do have a running tab with them, too."
"Of course," Jiao-jie said. "Do you have a blanket to wrap up the poor little guy?"
One of the little helpers came with a plaid fleece blanket and an actual closed basket (not a crate!) from the cat room, and another came with Jiao-jie's coat and bag and her drink in one of the re-usable to go cups they gave out if somebody absolutely had to take their drink with them.
She grabbed everything, cooed at the poor bloodied cat in his cute little basket, and hurried out of the room without slipping on the blood in her high heels.
Now, A-Fei finally jumped off the wall installation where he had been watching the drama unfold, and stood on his hind legs to lick at Li Lianhua's hand; when he looked down, he realised that he was still dripping with blood that his cat was trying to clean off. Xiaobao and Huli-jing followed from the cat room, crowding around their human; Xiaobao briefly stopped to growl at Loner in his crate. It would be so interesting to find out how the cats actually managed to understand the context. Li Lianhua had always suspected that the scent marks that cats left were infinitely more nuanced than one usually gave them credit for, but his sudden exit from the scientific community had kept him from proving it.
He bent to pick up A-Fei, but almost fell over because, all of a sudden, he felt woozy. Somebody grabbed his elbow and steered him to a comfy chair that he collapsed into, clinging to A-Fei, who was rubbing his very fluffy cheeks soothingly against Li Lianhua's face.
The one who had grabbed his elbow now gave him a glass of water, which he sipped slowly. It was a young guy with noticeable front teeth — not quite bunny teeth, but in the general vicinity of the lapine — and a black hoodie on which snowflakes were still thawing. He was vaguely familiar, but Li Lianhua could only place him when a sweet young woman with a baby on her arm peeked over his shoulder.
The young widow's brother, accused of the murder of her husband. Apparently, he was innocent after all, or she wouldn't be bringing him here.
"Congratulations," Li Lianhua said, incongruously, "and thank you. Free mulled wine or berry punch and a big gingerbread cookie for everybody who had to witness this — I apologise for this terrible miscreant. He will be made to leave."
Loner growled in his crate.
"I'll be off at once, then," the young man said, sounding a bit unhappy but resigned in his fate.
"Not you!" Li Lianhua protested. "The cat. Loner. He beat up Bijoux quite terribly; you may have seen Jiao-jie leave with him?"
"Where do you send a problem cat?" the young widow's innocent brother asked.
"There are sanctuaries," Li Lianhua said, weakly. "I think I'll send him to the Cat House on the Barrow-Downs; they have acres of safe if somewhat arid land. I will have to arrange transport…"
"Why not make my brother take him?" the young woman said. "He needs to vanish from town for a bit; new evidence turned up, and he was released on 50 dollars of bail, but my in-laws are still after him with lawyers. They are convinced of his guilt, because if not, then — ah, well, no need to go into details. I will lend him my car and…"
"Where is my phone?" Li Lianhua said. "I need to make some calls. People owe me favours, and their vet is a friend. Why is nobody handing out mulled wine yet?"
The little helpers, who had been staring like everybody else, hopped to it; and Xiaobao soon turned up dragging Li Lianhua's phone by the strap of it lucky lotus charm.
That wasn't a disneyfied feat of feline cleverness, that was simply due to the fact that the wail WHERE IS MY PHONE?!?!! was something his own cats were all familiar with, and when they actually brought it, they were given not just dry treats but an off-brand churu, which was actually rather unhandy to dispense, and not something Li Lianhua used casually.
Li Lianhua made his calls while giving Xiaobao his licky treat.
After ten minutes, another very tall and gothy young man in a dark hoodie turned up. "I've got the car right outside," he said, instead of a greeting, "but first let me clean up your hands, or my sister will kill me."
"His sister is the vet at the Barrow-Downs," Li Lianhua explained to the young widow, who had been settled with her brother, her baby and her berry juice punch at the same table as Li Lianhua, "but he's an EMT for humans, not a vet tech. And even if he was, I'd totally trust him to daub the nasty orange stuff on my hands and face. Good grief, that Loner is a monster!"
"No cat is a monster," the gothy EMT said, reproachfully. "You must have done something that he interpreted as a threat."
"Yeah, keep him from murdering Bijoux," Li Lianhua grumbled; but he submitted to the treatment. Luckily, the young man decided that a clear gel was enough, and the terrible orange liquid wasn't needed, so Lianhua would be able to continue his evening without looking like a one-man battlefield.
The upset had died down fully, the blood had been wiped from the floor, and soon, the two young men in the dark hoodies departed, carrying the crate with the growling and hissing Loner between them.
"Thank you," the young widow said, softly. "I thought I might ask for your help, seeing that he's not safe until his case has been formally dismissed…"
Li Lianhua nodded. "Let our problems solve each other," he said. "Loner gets off the premises ASAPissimo, and your brother can stay up there in the Barrow-Downs with my friends for a bit. They always have jobs for volunteers."
Pause.
"I say, I got some very soft gold baby yarn the other day, how about we adapt the design we had worked out for your husband's New Year's gift for your son instead? Warm little hoodies are always good, at any age."
Life had to go on, cats came and went, drinks had to be dispersed and woolly comfort knitted.
The young widow nodded, tears in her eyes and a smile on her soft, pretty face.
Five days later, Li Lianhua got an email from Jiao-jie (whose full name apparently was Jiao Liqiao) that she would be keeping Bijoux, if he didn't mind? He was such a sweet cat, had now been discharged from the vet clinic, and should by no means be made to return to the place where he suffered such terrible trauma.
Li Lianhua nearly replied that cat adoptions didn't work this way, but instead, he just wrote to her that he was very happy with her decision, and would she mind very much making the requisite donation to the cat rescue that his cats all came from?
He'd work out something with the lady from the rescue about the paperwork and the rest of the formalities. Things always fell into place in the end, or would slide there with a little nudge (don't ask).