14: Chapter 14 The Useless Cat from Abroad

At 9:30, Chen Sheng arrived at Wangjianglou Park.

At 9:40, Chen Sheng parked his car and walked to the west gate.

At 9:50, Chen Sheng faced west and used his phone's navigation while walking to measure out a distance of 200 meters.

After confirming the location, Chen Sheng supported himself with his hands, half-crouching and half-crawling, and pressed his head close to the drain grate, peering through the gaps to look for signs of the kitten.

"Uh! How should I put it?"

I can only say the drain was quite clean.

It had obviously been cleaned not long ago.

It was so clean that not even a single cat hair could be seen.

"Did I find the wrong place!" Chen Sheng stood up, brushed the little bit of dust off his pant legs, and looked around, but still couldn't see any trace of a kitten... no, more accurately, he hadn't even heard a meow.

Checking the time and confirming it hadn't exceeded the valid period, Chen Sheng opened the intelligence section of his system panel to take another look.

【Today's Intelligence 1: On the side of Wangjianglou Park near Wangjiang Road, 200 meters west of the west gate, a naughty kitten is hiding in a drain. The kitten, tired of being constantly petted by its owner, left home when they weren't looking and accidentally entered the drain while chasing a mouse.

The owner has searched for the kitten to no avail and has now posted a reward of three thousand to find it. The owner's contact number: 136xxxxxxxx.】

【Note 1: This intelligence is valid until 10:27 on June 30th; after 10:27, it will automatically become invalid.】

"I didn't misunderstand it either!" Chen Sheng crouched down again to look at the drain, confirmed there was no kitten inside, and after standing up, he began to continue walking west along the drain.

He planned to walk forward another thirty or forty meters, then walk back thirty or forty meters; if he still couldn't find it, then it just meant heaven didn't want him to earn this money.

However, heaven was clearly still favoring him.

Sure enough, after walking forward about six or seven meters, a weak, urgent meow reached his ears from behind. Chen Sheng turned his head and saw a nimble, brown-and-white figure suddenly leap out of the roadside flower bed, and in front of it was a ground squirrel, commonly found in parks and residential flower beds.

The ground squirrel was just as agile; it first used the lush flowers in the bed as cover, and upon reaching the roadside, it decisively dove into the drain through a gap in the grate.

The kitten, unwilling to let its prey escape just like that, didn't hesitate to dive into the gap as well.

Plop~

Chen Sheng facepalmed. "A genius! No... a cat genius!"

He didn't know if the kitten was too eager to chase the mouse or if it had overestimated its own size, thinking that any hole a ground squirrel could fit through, it could too...

The result was that it got stuck.

Its head went in, but its body remained outside.

What was even funnier was that in its panic, the kitten tried to free itself, but the more it panicked, the messier things got; after a few kicks, its whole body had rotated nearly 90 degrees.

Now it was stuck even tighter.

Chen Sheng quickly walked over and observed the area around the grate. He saw that this so-called hole was just a gap formed by the weathering of the road surface against the grate; as long as he lifted the grate, he could resolve the kitten's urgent predicament.

However, he didn't immediately lift the grate. Instead, he first used his hand to stroke the cat's back. As he gently stroked its back, the previously agitated kitten soon stopped struggling, lying on the curb as if resigning itself to fate, waiting for a kind person's rescue.

Seeing this, Chen Sheng pressed down slightly on the kitten's neck with the hand he was using to stroke its back to prevent it from escaping the moment he lifted the grate. Only then did he use his other hand to hook into the gap of the grate, and with a little effort, the grate was lifted.

Using the hand that was holding the kitten down to grip the scruff of its neck and lift it up, the kitten, now suspended in mid-air, looked up at Chen Sheng with eyes full of shock and panic.

Kitten: "How did you know I wanted to run?"

Chen Sheng: "Heh heh~"

Putting the grate back in place, Chen Sheng carried the kitten by the scruff of its neck straight to his vehicle. Upon reaching the car, he rummaged through the trunk for a rope, tied a sailor's knot in the style of a dog leash, looped it around the kitten's body behind its front paws, and then secured the other end of the rope to the handle next to the trunk.

After finishing all this, Chen Sheng finally let go of the kitten's scruff and placed it in the trunk. Once the kitten landed, it realized it couldn't escape from Chen Sheng's hands and resignedly lay in the trunk, letting out a weak, dissatisfied "meow" at Chen Sheng to voice its protest.

Now Chen Sheng had the leisure to observe the kitten in detail. Upon observing it, he realized that this kitten wasn't the champion of the Chinese cat world, the Li Hua cat, but rather looked a bit like a useless short-haired cat of the cat world.

Now the case was solved.

After all, who doesn't know the story of 'Tom and Jerry'? Expecting a foreign short-haired cat to catch mice is better left to counting on technology to change life, such as mousetraps, sticky mouse pads...

Chen Sheng took out his phone and called the cat's owner.

"Hello?"

A somewhat lazy female voice came through, carrying a hint of alertness, yet unable to hide a trace of anxiety.

"Hello, miss. I saw the lost cat notice you posted, and I think I've found that cat."

"Ah? You found Mimi? That's great! Where are you? I'll come over right now."

Chen Sheng was speechless.

As expected, the owner is just like the cat.

This person was as silly as the cat she kept; she didn't even think to add him on green bubble or something to confirm with a photo first, just straight up said she was coming to the scene.

If she met a bad person...

However, the other party being so proactive saved him a lot of trouble, and naturally, he couldn't ask for more, so he readily said: "I'm in the parking lot opposite the west gate of Wangjianglou Park. Turn right when you enter the parking lot. I'm wearing a black T-shirt; I'm easy to recognize."

"Okay! I live right next to Wangjianglou Park, I'll be there in about ten minutes. Sorry to keep you waiting for a moment."

Ten minutes passed quickly, and a flashy red Range Rover drove into the parking lot entrance. After a drifting turn, it parked right next to Chen Sheng.

Those smooth body lines, combined with the highly recognizable car body, made Chen Sheng like it at first sight.

"When I'm rich in the future, I must arrange one for myself," Chen Sheng thought.

Just then, the driver's door opened quickly, and a man with a crew cut, wearing a suit and sunglasses, stepped out.

The man first scrutinized Chen Sheng carefully, then scanned his surroundings. Seeing this, Chen Sheng originally wanted to be the first to greet him, but before he could speak, the man had already moved to the rear car door, gently pulling it open with one hand while placing his other hand on the top frame of the door.

Chen Sheng: "..."

Just from this professional action, the man's identity was self-evident—a bodyguard.

But it was just a cat, "Is such a big production necessary?"

No wonder she was so straightforward before; she had nothing to fear!

Now Chen Sheng was the one who was instead afraid that he had met a bad person.

Just then, a middle-aged woman dressed in exquisite casual wear gracefully got out of the car.

The woman's appearance wasn't stunning, but one could feel the confidence radiating from within her.

Graceful, luxurious, elegant, dignified...

These sophisticated words didn't seem out of place at all when applied to this woman.

"Hello, this is your cat." Clearly people from two different worlds, and not thinking about building any rapport, Chen Sheng got straight to the point: "When I first found it, it was chasing a mouse and ended up getting stuck in the drain grate."