TAM 6

It happened again.

Mo Yao fell asleep in darkness and woke up in shadow. He hid in a cluttered, empty corner and tried to curl his round body tightly.

He was still the same cat. Nothing had changed, yet something was different. Tonight, he was not in the girls’ dormitory. He did not need to worry about getting stuck in the iron gate. The surroundings looked more familiar. This time, he was wandering in the boys’ dormitory area.

Mo Yao walked slowly. His furry tail dragged on the ground, and his round rear swayed from side to side.

Half a minute ago, he had no idea what this cat was doing, but now he guessed that he was hiding. Why hiding? After all, there were many stray cats on campus, not just him, and some of them were even rounder.

Was this a dream?

Mo Yao stood under his dorm building and looked up. He found his room on the third floor. Maybe he could go up and see if there was still a version of himself lying asleep on that bed.

He walked to the big tree closest to the dorm window, lifted his head, and tried to tell which branch reached toward the window, judging if he could jump from it onto the window.

Once he found a route, Mo Yao stretched out his paw and touched the rough bark. Just as he was about to push up, he stopped. Forget it. He decided to try the stairs instead.

Mo Yao turned and walked away.

The dormitory entrance was already closed and locked. Students who came back late normally had to ring the bell and have the guard record their names before entering.

He guessed the guard would not open the door for a cat, so he walked close to the outer wall, moving forward until he reached the edge. He turned around the corner to the side of the building, then walked two or three meters and found a window that led into the corridor.

The window was only open a narrow gap. A person could not pass through it, but a cat could.

Mo Yao looked around, stepped back a few paces, took a deep breath and ran forward. He pushed off the ground with all his strength and actually jumped onto the windowsill.

Wow. If he had not been a cat, he would have exclaimed aloud. He thought to himself that he really was a cat now. Only a cat could have such powerful strength, enough to jump onto a windowsill several times its height.

Mo Yao poked his head through the window but suddenly stopped. He remembered what had happened last night, and felt scared. He pulled his head back, turned around awkwardly on the narrow sill and this time pushed his rear end in first.

If his rear could fit, then his head could follow. The window frame was tight, and there was no space to support his body weight. When half of him got through, his whole body slipped in and fell onto the floor. His rear hit the ground with a heavy thump, and it took a while before he recovered.

That kind of fall would have been embarrassing even for a cat, let alone a human.

Mo Yao stood up and stayed in the corner of the corridor. He stared at the empty hallway for a while before calming down, then dragged his tail forward.

Fluorescent tubes hung from the ceiling, and bright white light shone down.

Mo Yao tried to move lightly. His paws made almost no sound. Only when he passed one or two dorm doors could he hear thunderous snoring through the wooden panels. Each time, he paused and silently pitied the roommates inside.

He climbed the stairs up to the third floor and walked softly to the door of Room 307. He stopped and sat down with his legs tucked together.

Mo Yao looked at the door of his dorm and did not know what to do.

Should he knock? Would anyone come to open the door? How would he explain why a cat was knocking on a boy’s dorm door in the middle of the night?

And what if the person who opened the door was himself?

When he thought of that, Mo Yao suddenly felt chills all over. Was this really a dream? Or had his soul left his body and entered a cat?

When dreaming, how could one prove if it was a dream or reality?

Mo Yao remembered the movie Inception that he had watched before. He wondered if he could find a spinning top somewhere and see if it would ever stop.

He started to feel restless. He stood up and walked back and forth a few steps, then he felt it was inconvenient, so he turned around in circles several times in place.

When he stopped turning, Mo Yao suddenly remembered something. He spread out all four legs and ran toward the stairwell. He ran to the big garbage bin, jumped up, hooked his front paws on the edge, and pulled so that the black plastic bag inside made a rustling sound. His body hung there as he leaned his head forward, and he saw the milk tea cup he had thrown inside earlier that night.

Mo Yao stared at the milk tea in the bin without moving. His mind was working very quickly. What did this mean? Did it mean this was not a dream? But he had thrown the milk tea himself. If his dream recreated the same milk tea, it would not be strange either.

Then how could he prove it?

Mo Yao suddenly thought that if he wanted proof, he should leave some trace now, and if he found the same trace after waking up tomorrow, it would mean this was not a dream but reality.

His small heart started racing.

Since he had already found the milk tea, he decided to use it.

Mo Yao used both front paws and hung his whole upper body over the bin’s edge. He reached one paw into the bin and dug around several times until he hooked the handle of the milk tea bag. He dragged the whole bag with the cup out.

For a cat, carrying a full cup of milk tea was not easy. Mo Yao walked a few steps and lifted his head slightly, silently apologizing to the dormitory cleaner in his mind. He nudged the milk tea out of the paper bag. Because of that, the transparent tape that sealed the bag stuck to his paw, and he frantically rubbed it on the floor for a long time before it came off.

Then Mo Yao bit the paper bag and ran all the way toward the end of the corridor.

Leaving it in the corridor would be too easy for someone to sweep away. The small path beside the dorm building was rarely used, and no one cleaned the grass there every day.

He was almost there. Mo Yao bit the paper bag tighter and started his run-up early. When he approached the window, he stopped his front paws, gathered his body, kicked the floor with his hind legs, lifted his front legs, and with the explosive strength of a cat, jumped up onto the windowsill.

Suddenly, Mo Yao saw a face outside the window.

He should not have been able to see it, because it was dark outside. The face almost blended into the darkness. But it had a pair of bright eyes. They belonged to another feline, round, and sparkling with a chilling light.

Mo Yao was almost scared to death by those eyes. He reacted with reflexes he never knew he had. He pushed both paws against the window frame. His furry body spun in midair, and he fell back down. The landing was ugly, and his round rear hit the ground again.

“Damn!” Mo Yao wanted to curse, but what came out was a meow.

He lay on his back, pushed himself back two steps with his front legs, rolled over, stood up and widened his eyes at the window.

Outside was a black cat, pitch black from head to tail. If it closed its eyes, it could blend completely into the darkness.

It did not enter the corridor. It only looked at Mo Yao through the window, silent and without expression.

If Mo Yao could talk to that black cat, he would have asked, “Brother, what do you want?” But he could not. In his human mind, he made a simple judgment. His fat cat body would never be a match for the agile black cat on the windowsill. Even if he were human now, he would not want to provoke a stray cat. If it scratched him, he might have to get a rabies shot. So he chose to back away.

As he retreated, Mo Yao did not dare turn his rear toward the black cat. He feared an ambush. He bit the paper bag and moved back step by step. He also tried to look fierce, raising his whiskers and baring his teeth.

The black cat just continued watching him.

Mo Yao guessed his intimidation worked. He backed all the way to the stairs, saw that the black cat had not followed, then turned and ran downstairs in one quick streak.