A Cat

Spring arrived quickly in Yunxi City. Just after the Lantern Festival, girls began appearing on the streets in skirts.

Shuo Yu, who was afraid of the cold, remained wrapped up in her long down jacket and thick knitted scarf, showing no signs of just returning from a business trip to the south.

As she got off the plane, she called her best friend, Shen Zhiyin, to pick her up. Estimating the distance, it would be about ten minutes before she arrived.

Not wanting to stay outside in the cold any longer, Shuo Yu turned into a nearby dessert shop. Her almond-shaped eyes scanned the menu, and she smiled at the staff, saying, "One hot Yangzhi Ganlu, please. Add mango, three-quarters sugar, thank you."

Shuo Yu had one-eighth Russian blood, giving her a cool demeanor with thick, dense eyelashes that made her appear unapproachable when she wasn't smiling.

However, once she spoke, the icy beauty was shattered. Her voice was soft and lazy, the kind that was warm and gentle—an inviting, mature voice.

From the moment she entered, the shop staff felt she looked familiar but couldn't quite place where they had seen her before.

Seeing her order, the staff snapped back to reality and quickly said, "Okay, please pay over here. Here's your order number. You can take a seat and wait for a moment."

Shuo Yu had been on a business trip for over two months, flying to five different cities, and even during the New Year, she didn't get a break, diligently working in the studio.

On her birthday a couple of days ago, she had complained and thrown a tantrum to her manager, finally securing a month's vacation.

Feeling nostalgic for the streets of Yunxi City, Shuo Yu chose a seat by the window and decided to send a message to Shen Zhiyin, giving her the exact location of the dessert shop.

Just after sending the message, a strange system notification popped up—

[Cat Island Diary installation complete. Would you like to open it?]

"This game downloaded so slowly. I've already uninstalled the others I downloaded at the same time," Shuo Yu muttered as she clicked the open button.

She loved playing games but was too busy with work to play those that required daily log-ins for tasks, so she could only indulge in small, standalone mobile games.

Earlier on the plane, Shuo Yu was bored and browsed the game center, downloading several interesting mobile games.

She had to admit that most mobile games either had misleading descriptions, with content that didn't match, or the gameplay was too simple, becoming boring in minutes. Some even had such ugly art that she couldn't bear to look at them.

Shuo Yu uninstalled them all in quick succession, thinking her search for a new game might end in failure. But one game remained!

The icon for Cat Island Diary featured a cute, furry calico cat with big, watery eyes. If it were made into a plush toy, she would definitely buy it without hesitation.

Shuo Yu remembered that the description mentioned it was a cat-raising game where players could enjoy caring for cats on a small island, unlocking different cats, becoming friends with them, collecting materials to make clothes, and even fighting monsters to unlock special interaction cards.

The promotional images showed a variety of cats, each with lively expressions and a fluffy, adorable appearance.

As a cat lover with a tragic cat fur allergy, Shuo Yu was instantly captivated, even though the download took forever to complete.

[Cat Island Diary requests access to network, location, and storage permissions. It also requests use of the camera, microphone, call, and messaging permissions during gameplay.]

As soon as she opened the game, it requested permissions like any other app.

Shuo Yu, familiar with the process, granted them all without hesitation. If she didn't, she couldn't play the game, and as a collector of trashy mini-games, she knew the drill.

After granting permissions, the game finally started.

The screen quickly changed to a crayon-drawn world map. The camera zoomed in, focusing on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean shaped like a cat's head, with perfectly symmetrical cat ears.

Only the tip of the left ear was lit up, while the rest of the island was shrouded in dark gray clouds, presumably to be unlocked later.

Tapping on the western ear, the screen changed to a golden beach.

The island was much larger than she had imagined; even the small ear tip required several swipes across the screen to view fully.

Shuo Yu felt like no one had ever set foot there before. It was completely different from the beaches she had visited during photo shoots—no annoying plastic waste, no signs of human interference.

Following the beginner's tutorial, she learned the basics of chopping wood, planting, fetching water, and fishing.

Before she could get enough of it, her energy bar ran out.

At the same time, Shuo Yu leveled up to level 2.

She received [Cat Coins x180, Diamonds x2, Wood x10, Fresh Water x6, Planted Cat Grass Field x4, Small Miscellaneous Fish x2, and a Beginner's Gift Pack x1].

The materials and coins were automatically added to the materials page as numbers, not taking up space in her inventory.

Shuo Yu eagerly opened the Beginner's Gift Pack, which contained three items.

[Ordinary Cat Canned Food Set (To Be Placed): The most basic canned food, with poor palatability. Cats will only touch it when they're starving.]

[Greasy Fried Chicken Leg (To Be Placed): A roasted chicken leg with a perfect color, aroma, and taste. High in oil and salt, it doesn't seem suitable for cats.]

[Unknown Blueprint (To Be Unlocked): A blueprint with faint patterns visible. It's unclear whether it's for cat items, clothing, buildings, or special tools. Decoding takes 30 minutes.]

The canned food set consisted of twelve cans, which could only be placed in spots where cat paw prints appeared to attract cats.

Shuo Yu dragged it out of the inventory, and the paw prints on the beach began to flash, indicating suitable placement spots.

She placed the cans in four spots, feeling delighted at the thought of cute little cats coming to eat her food.

The fried chicken leg was wrapped in a green lettuce leaf, but there was no specified placement point—it could be placed anywhere.

After some thought, Shuo Yu decided, "Let's place it next to the cat food."

This was a game world, after all. Maybe there were special cats with iron stomachs that could eat anything!

The Beginner's Gift Pack wouldn't give out useless items!

With the food placed, the only thing left to interact with was the blueprint.

Shuo Yu tapped to speed up the decoding process. The system indicated that speeding up the blueprint required ten diamonds, but she didn't have enough, so a top-up page popped up.

"There's no way I'm spending money on this. If I were to spend money, it would be after I see the cats!" she thought, furiously closing the top-up page.

As a result, she didn't see the description below the page for a series of fantastical items like triggering the cat island's senses of touch, sight, taste, smell, hearing, cat affinity, and even cat allergy medicine.

Hearing a WeChat notification, Shuo Yu switched out of the game to check it. Shen Zhiyin said she was almost there.

Shuo Yu finished her Yangzhi Ganlu, which had barely been touched since the game had captured her attention, and grabbed her suitcase, heading out the door.

As the dessert shop staff was about to check Weibo during their break, they suddenly remembered that the girl who had ordered the Yangzhi Ganlu earlier looked like the skincare model from the opening ad a few days ago!

^

"Xiao Yu, you're finally back! Have you been eating properly? You've lost so much weight again!"

Shen Zhiyin was Shuo Yu's childhood friend, now working at gg company, and in her spare time, she was an UP主, posting makeup tutorials and fashion videos online.

Her hair was dyed a muted green, with two strands of silver highlights by her ears. She dressed more strikingly than most girls on the street, a true hot girl.

Though she was half a head shorter than Shuo Yu's 178 cm height, her pink leopard print fuzzy coat, spiked choker, and studded leather boots added to her personality and unapproachable vibe, making her seem even more intimidating than Shuo Yu.

"You ask too many questions. It's freezing—let's just go home." It had been a long time since they last saw each other, and Shuo Yu had wanted to give Shen Zhiyin a hug.

But she was afraid the spikes would puncture her down jacket, so she retracted her hand and patted the car's trunk, signaling her to open it.

Shen Zhiyin helped Shuo Yu with her luggage, then pulled out a brand-new cat-print face mask, smiling ingratiatingly. "Xiao Yu, put this on."

"Did you get a cat?" Seeing the mask, Shuo Yu's mouth twitched unnaturally. If someone was asking her to wear a mask, it meant they had definitely been around cats recently!

Traitor!

She was severely allergic to cat hair, and even a little contact would make her sneeze nonstop and break out in hives.

They had both agreed not to get cats, and yet here she was, betrayed after just a few months apart!

Shen Zhiyin quickly waved her hands, denying it. "No, no, no! I just helped a friend with her cat's vaccination a couple of days ago."

They lived in adjacent apartments, occupying the entire floor. If she got a cat, Shuo Yu wouldn't be able to visit, so to maintain their friendship, Shen Zhiyin wouldn't get a cat easily!

Especially since Xiao Yu had spent nearly ten thousand yuan to buy her a rare vintage piece for her birthday, only asking in return that she didn't get a cat!

They soon arrived at the complex. After being away for months, Shuo Yu wasn't in the mood to entertain Shen Zhiyin.

They agreed to have dinner together later, then each went to their respective homes.

Shuo Yu stashed her clothes from the suitcase into the wardrobe, activated the robot vacuum, and headed straight to the bathroom to take a bath.

Every time she lay in the tub, watching the rising steam, she could finally feel she was truly home.

After finishing up, she still had two hours before meeting Shen Zhiyin.

Thinking it over, Shuo Yu decided to open Cat Island Diary.

As soon as she logged in, the blueprint decoding screen popped up. The blueprint from the Beginner's Gift Pack turned out to be for a fully enclosed cat house.

Most of the ordinary materials needed to make the cat house were already collected.

However, a special material called [Rainleaf] could only be obtained by chopping trees.

With her energy partially restored, Shuo Yu switched to the forest view and began diligently chopping wood.

^

"Cotton, that strange noise is happening again. I'm scared…"

At the other end of Cat Island, a pure white kitten meowed, its cries accurately translating into human speech for Ji Mianmian.

The girl, with a pair of cat ears atop her head, smiled as she rubbed the little white cat. "All fear comes from the unknown! Don't worry, Little White, let's go check it out!"

As the most special cat on the island, and the only one with a human form, Ji Mianmian was always the bravest.

She tucked Little White and another kitten, Little Flower, into a woven grass backpack, crouched down, and carefully made her way toward the western ear coast.

But halfway there, the strange rumbling noise abruptly stopped.

It wasn't good to be out after dark.

Just as Ji Mianmian was considering whether to leave the western ear coast and return to the sandy pit under the rocks to continue hiding, the gluttonous Little Flower stretched out a paw to tap the right side of her neck, meowing excitedly, "Cotton, there's something delicious over there!"