The moving company was very professional. If there were pieces of furniture that couldn’t be carried up through the stairwell, they even had a special crane to hoist items in through the windows. Every single piece of furniture was wrapped tightly in thick paper to ensure nothing would get scratched or damaged during the move.
Lin Lan had no idea what level of quality those pieces of furniture were, but judging by the foreman directing the move—his hoarse voice occasionally shouting, “Be careful! Even more careful!” “Don’t bump into anything!”—and the tense expressions on the faces of the movers working together, it was obvious even without thinking hard.
So then… why?
“I know this one,” said Lin Youyu.
That evening, after finishing work and returning home, the Lin family gathered together to chat. Lin Youyu, who had signed the contract with that wealthy young lady, casually asked about it, and the other party answered straightforwardly.
“That young lady’s name is Wang Jiayi. She’s from the neighboring city. She said she had some conflicts with her family and didn’t want to go back home for the New Year, so she moved all her belongings from her house over here to live in West City. She plans to stay here for about six to nine months to travel and relax, then she’ll decide whether to return or not.” As for the specific nature of the conflict, of course, such private matters were not openly discussed.
The rest of the Lin family listened in silence, speechless.
Grandma Lin was the first to express her displeasure: “What’s wrong with kids these days? They run away from home at the drop of a hat. With less than twenty days until the New Year, how can they be so reckless? No matter how big the grudge, you shouldn’t spend the New Year apart from your family!”
“Exactly! Families should talk things out. Are they trying to say her family is harming her or something?” Wang Xiuzhi agreed wholeheartedly, unable to understand the young people’s reckless disregard for timing and occasion.
Lin Lan lowered her head, too afraid to say a word. She secretly thought, without knowing the full story, who could say who was right or wrong? But she didn’t dare voice this. As the only young person in the family, now was the time to minimize her presence, letting the elders express their views from their own perspectives, rather than becoming the target of their blame and lectures.
But things didn’t go as she hoped. Her own mother’s criticism turned toward her.
“Lin Lan, I’m telling you, if you ever pull a stunt like this, you just—”
“Ah! I just suddenly remembered something. I’m going to my room to get something!” Lin Lan quickly interrupted her mother’s reprimand with a loud voice and dashed off to the storage room.
There were quite a few unused household items in there, including things Lin Lan had brought back from her rented apartment in Magic City.
Wang Xiuzhi rolled her eyes but let her daughter dodge the topic and fell silent.
After rummaging through the storage room for a while, Lin Lan came out carrying something.
“In the middle of winter, why are you bringing out a fan?” Lin Youyu immediately called out upon seeing it.
“It’s not a fan.” She set down a desktop fan on the floor and casually explained, “This is a heater, also called a warming fan. It’s really comfortable to have one in a cold, damp room during winter.”
As she spoke, she grabbed a cloth to wipe the heater up and down. Although it had been wrapped in a large plastic bag and wasn’t very dirty, it hadn’t been used for a whole year. After cleaning it, she still needed to test whether it was working properly.
“You’ve already got an electric blanket in your room, so why do you still need this?” Wang Xiuzhi rolled her eyes at her daughter, thinking she was fussing over nothing. “Even the cats aren’t as afraid of the cold as you are.”
Mentioning the cats, Lin Lan instinctively glanced back at the living room where a special resting area had been set up just for them.
On the heated mat by the sofa, a big group of doughy, fluffy cats of all colors were comfortably squinting their eyes in contentment. Some were curled up like little farmers, others sat like brooding hens, and a few were stretched out flat like pancakes, lounging in long strips. Compared to when they first arrived at the old house, these cats had grown very accustomed to the place. Feeling completely safe, their sleeping postures were becoming increasingly relaxed, no longer the tense, ready-to-run-at-the-sound-of-a-rustle kind.
Only the three cats that had arrived today still kept their guard up, each confined in a quarantine cage placed in the corner of the heated mat. This was to help them slowly get used to their new companions and surroundings. Later on, a “trainer” cat would be sent over to teach them the essential “Eighteen Cuteness Moves” every tea house kitten must master. After all, they wouldn’t be meeting customers anytime soon—uh, meaning they wouldn’t be heading to the tea house to hunt for human-provided canned food.
But that was all for the future. Right now, Lin Lan was busy setting up a heater fan.
After wiping it clean, she pulled out the power cord and plugged it in. Turning the knob to the highest setting, the fan’s head immediately emitted a warm orange glow. As the temperature rose, the light deepened to a reddish hue, glowing brighter and brighter.
“It really is warm air,” the family members gathered around, curiously waving their hands in front of the fan.
Xicheng is a southern city where damp, chilly winters are the norm. The older members of the Lin family, unfamiliar with this novel appliance, were pleasantly surprised.
“It’s just that we don’t really need it,” someone remarked.
With air conditioning at home, they could just turn on the heater when it got too cold. Downstairs at their shop, the family grocery store had already installed transparent insulating curtains early in the winter, and there was air conditioning inside too—after all, this was a whole building’s worth of people. The Lin family never skimped on winter comforts. As for Lin Lan’s tea house, which Cheng Fengyang had spent considerable effort renovating, its heating and ventilation systems were even more advanced.
“It’s not for me,” Lin Lan waved her hand, explaining to her family, “You all know that Little Song in the basement became an employee at my tea house, right? This is for him.”
Though she spoke as if everything was strictly business during the day, Lin Lan felt that a hardworking and dependable employee who saved her a lot of trouble deserved some consideration. With this heater, Little Song’s time in the basement would surely be much more comfortable.
Hearing this, the family had no objections. Lin Lan had already told them before that the young man would only be working a short two-month stint before leaving. Xicheng’s winters were tough, and living in the basement was especially harsh.
“After dinner, I’ll take it downstairs and give it to him,” Lin Youyu said firmly. “It’s cold out there; you just stay home and train the cats.”
“Thanks, Dad!” Lin Lan was more than happy to avoid going downstairs. After all, how much nicer was it to stay warm at home with the cats?
The Lao family happily settled down for dinner, sitting together and chatting about everyday life and amusing stories from their shop, the atmosphere warm and cheerful.
As Lin Lan was picking up some food to eat, a glimpse from the corner of her eye caught a scene in the sofa area that instantly changed her expression. Without hesitation, she dropped her chopsticks and rushed over. Curious, the rest of the family followed her gaze and saw that several cats had somehow slipped out from the heated floor mats. One by one, they were huddled in front of the space heater, eyes half-closed, basking in the warmth.
“Hey, hey, don’t get so close!” Lin Lan hurried forward to shoo them away. She had set the heater to the highest setting, and the floor right in front of the fan was perfectly warm—but it had also attracted these clueless little cats to snuggle up too close. A few of the silly ones seemed completely unafraid, practically pressing themselves against it. “Are you trying to turn into roasted kittens? Move away! Your fur’s practically smoking, you’re gonna get singed!”
Fortunately, the rescue came just in time. The clueless cats escaped serious harm. Only the silver shaded British Shorthair named Milk Candy and the Munchkin named Sausage, who had been closest, ended up with a patch of fur slightly different in texture from the rest—though nothing visible to the eye.
“About the intelligence of a two- or three-year-old…” Lin Lan sighed, holding one in her arms. “Seriously, if you don’t keep an eye on them for a second, they get into trouble.” All dangerous things had to be kept far away from them.
But everyone else treated the incident as a source of amusement—whether it was the family who witnessed it from start to finish, or the customers at the shop the next day who heard Lin Lan casually complain about it.
“Lin, you’re just getting started!” a customer who also had cats laughed heartily, sharing some of his own stories as a fellow cat owner. “I’ve got a cat too, my roommate’s British Shorthair with blue and white fur. When the weather got cold recently, we turned on a heater in the living room. While watching TV, we’d turn it on for a bit, and the cat loved curling up close to warm itself. This went on for days, and neither my roommate nor I really noticed.”
At this point, he seemed to recall what happened next, his face barely able to hold back laughter.
“Then, then… *pffft* haha!”
“Hold on, hold on, don’t just laugh—finish the story!” Lin Lan, standing behind the bar, glared at the customer who was slapping the table with laughter. She wasn’t the only one; other patrons in the teahouse who had been listening were shooting him annoyed looks, like readers glaring at an author who left the story on a cliffhanger.
Sensing the danger, the customer finally finished the tale: “The next morning, my roommate and I saw that silly cat with one eye swollen shut. Swollen, you know? One eye big, the other small. I never knew cats could get swollen eyelids... And the cat kept its usual aloof, ‘I’m too cool for you’ expression, lying on a high shelf—but with one puffy eye staring right at us. We both cracked up laughing. We had to clean and medicate the eye for several days before it went back to normal.”
Later on, to gain everyone’s trust, he even took out his phone and showed the photos he had taken at the time. In the pictures, the silly cat with swollen eyes stubbornly refused to leave the heater fan. The colder its expression as it glanced back at the camera, the more amusing it looked—with one eye wide open and the other squinting, it was downright hilarious.
Winter always brings plenty of funny stories about cats seeking warmth. Lin Lan’s story with that male guest was just an icebreaker, sparking others to share their own tales.
“You guys are just amateurs!” said a man in his thirties who clearly loved cats, his voice tinged with nostalgia. “When I was a kid in the village, I saw even more ridiculous cats. You know those old wood-burning stoves, right? In winter, families with cats would always poke inside the stove before lighting the fire. Seven times out of ten, they’d pull out a cat.”
“Oh, I know this one!” another guest suddenly exclaimed, eager to join in. “The stove’s embers stay warm for a long time after the fire dies down. Cold-sensitive cats instinctively crawl inside to warm up! I remember seeing it too. Grandma would sometimes curse when she went to stoke the fire because cats would come running out, no matter what color they were before, they’d always be pitch black afterward.”
“Exactly. If you forget to check the stove before lighting it, a pitch-black cat might suddenly leap out like a scene from a horror movie, right in front of you, making you scream in fright.” The first guest continued, his vivid storytelling drawing laughter from the group. “But ash isn’t dirty, so cats clean up pretty easily. Cats are really sensitive to temperature and get cold easily. Sometimes, their instinct to seek warmth leads them to do dangerous, silly things. In the countryside, there have even been cases of cats accidentally killed by fires. So if you have cats at home, please be extra careful.”
His tone grew serious by the end, and the others nodded with a sense of caution.
Everyone in the cat café was, of course, a cat lover. No one wanted these little cuties to suffer due to carelessness. The conversation quickly shifted to how to protect cats at home.
Suggestions flew around: keep balconies tightly closed or install protective nets to prevent cats from falling from heights; lock doors with safety catches when leaving for work because some clever cats figure out how to open doors and run off; always store dangerous appliances safely… Before long, the café had turned into a lively gathering of cat enthusiasts exchanging tips on cat care.
Lin Lan happily listened to their stories and advice while wiping cups behind the bar. She even joined in the conversations from time to time.
“Lin, you’re great at raising and training cats. Teach us how to make our little ones behave better, will you?” one guest asked.
“No problem!” Lin Lan replied without hesitation. “Bring your cat here, and I’ll train it for a while. Then you take it home. If it doesn’t work, no charge!” Her words left no room for doubt.
“Manager, I’ve been meaning to ask—do you sell the cats in your shop?” Another customer chimed in with a new question. “From the first time I came here, I noticed your cats are so much better behaved than others’. Their routines are regular, they use the litter box on their own, and they’re perfectly calm during baths. If all kittens were like yours, it would really save a lot of trouble.”
“As for selling them…” Lin Lan’s expression grew serious as she addressed the question, her gaze steady on the curious customer. “There are certain rules in this teahouse. All my kittens are very intuitive; they choose their own favorite owners. That means if you want to take one home, the cat has to agree to go with you first. Only then can we talk about the next steps. Otherwise, my fur babies aren’t for sale.”
After all, selling canned cat food is just a short-term business—it can never compare to the reliability of a long-term, one-on-one commitment.
If any cat in the teahouse really wants to go with a customer, Lin Lan would sincerely wish them well.
As she spoke, the bell above the door jingled again. A young woman, dressed impeccably, stepped inside. Her delicate features were framed by eyes that swept through the teahouse with a mix of scrutiny and curiosity. Lin Lan immediately recognized her—it was the wealthy heiress who had made a grand move into the neighborhood just yesterday.
