I’m not sure if it can’t live without me, but I must live without it.
1、2018.11.28
My cat seems to be depressed, the second week after we moved. It kept licking its own fur, refused to eat canned food it usually liked, and spent most of its time in the darkest corner of the room-it was said to be “the darkest” because the room itself was dark enough, and there was little sunshine at any time of the day from sunrise to sunset.
I know this living environment is unhealthy and not friendly enough for the cat. It doesn’t like it here.
But I can’t help it. The rent in Beijing is getting more and more expensive, and my meager salary is only a little bit after moving to the east and west.
So I had to move out of the master bedroom with a big balcony and move into another apartment with a dark second bedroom-in fact, it was originally a study.
Although the living environment has become worse, the rent has also dropped from 3,700 yuan to 1,700 yuan per month, which enables me to send 2,000 yuan more home at the end of the month-my family needs it very much to pay off debts.
Yes, our family owes a lot of money. I don’t know the exact amount, because my mother can’t be trusted-she said it was one or two million, but with my understanding of her, I don’t think it will be so simple-just like when she said she went to the chess room to play mahjong, she was actually gambling.
I was actually very angry at her cheating, not because she owed a lot of debts to me and my dad to pay them back, but because she did something wrong and didn’t want to admit it immediately, and clearly didn’t regard us as the closest relatives.
If she had told us when she owed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, instead of borrowing usury, I don’t think things would have come to this.
My dad sold the house he bought for retirement, and the house price in the small town is not high, so with his savings, he only made up one million yuan, which is still nothing to mention in the face of my mother’s debt.
I asked him how much my mother owed. He was silent for a long time on the other end of the phone, as if it had passed the time to smoke a cigarette, and then slowly said, plus several years of interest, it should be less than 5 million.
Paused, there added: Don’t worry about this matter, don’t wronged yourself outside.
I pretended to be relaxed and said, let my mother pay for what she did. But after hanging up the phone, I immediately found the landlord to return the room on WeChat.
How can I ignore it? My father raised me and my mother on one person’s salary for 20 years. Even if I live in the basement and eat only one meal a day, I can’t let him bear this burden alone.
2、2018.11.29
I took the cat to the pet hospital today.
It was originally adopted by me in Weibo. It is a pure-bred pastoral with white flowers. When we first met, its tail, which was broken by a wheel, had grown well. Although it was shorter than a normal cat and the end was not naturally bent, it was very high-the adopter said that this indicated that it was in a good mood.
At that time, I was thinking, this is really a strong and optimistic kitten. We will be very happy together.
For a long time, all my ideas fell into practice. I have a job that I don’t like, but I can’t say that I hate it very much. My monthly income is enough for me to pay 3,700 yuan in rent, take out food without scruple, and let my cat enjoy delicious and healthy canned staple food.
Although I have no human friends in this city, it has no cat friends, but we have each other, and it seems that we don’t need to communicate with others. For a year and a half, it has never been sick, and even after sterilization, its mood and body have recovered quickly, and it is as strong and optimistic as I evaluate it.
Who would have thought that it would fall into depression because of a move?
Besides, isn’t it me who should be depressed? Except that it no longer has a sunny balcony and expensive canned staple food, its quality of life has not obviously declined, and it also eats the best cat food.
I haven’t eaten takeout for ten days in a row.
When I wasn’t looking, it began to lick around its tail crazily again, where it had already shown a light pink color, showing that its hair was about to fall off cleanly.
At first, I didn’t know it was suffering from depression. I thought it was just a normal stress reaction after moving. I didn’t realize it might be sick until its weight dropped from eleven pounds to eight pounds and its tail hair became bald.
It cost me thousands of dollars to give it a physical examination, and the results showed that there were no physical symptoms except slight dehydration. The doctor said with some uncertainty that it may be suffering from depression, which may be caused by moving or related to seasonal changes.
When he said this, snow suddenly floated outside the window, which was so abrupt that it was somewhat unreal, just like the duvets drying upstairs suddenly committed suicide by caesarean section.
“You see, when winter comes, some cats just get winter depression.” The doctor pushed his glasses and enjoyed the snow scene that created momentum for him with satisfaction.
I love my cat very much, but I still think that the so-called “winter depression” is unreasonable. It is deliberately trying to make my present situation worse-it can do such a thing, just like it often chewed up the files I arranged when I was a child.
I left the pet hospital with my cat bag in my hand. Before I left, I followed the doctor’s advice and ordered a phototherapy lamp online. It is said that this kind of lamp can simulate ultraviolet rays, and I just need to put my cat next to it for a few hours every day to make it happy.
Maybe I have a cat grass? Thinking like this, my mood is actually much better.
3、2018.12.08
The phototherapy lamp doesn’t work.
After receiving the goods, I hugged my cat and took a few days of warm sunshine, but it was still depressed and I was not much stronger-it can be seen that neither cats nor people can produce hormones that make them happy through photosynthesis.
The weather is really too cold. I took some private work. Although the office is warm as spring, I won’t stay long after work if there is no overtime task-the boss said that commercial electricity is too expensive. So I had to go back to the cold room and sit under the covers to work overtime.
After finishing a picture, I subconsciously looked for the cat in the room, and sure enough, I saw it in the narrow gap between the wardrobe and the wall. It squatted on the ground squarely, and the hair on its chest covered its two front paws. It looked as if it had been worried for a long time.
Under my touch, the cat still buried her head without saying a word, and only brushed my palm with her head. I reluctantly took out my mobile phone and found the doctor’s WeChat, asking him if there were any other treatments.
The doctor recommended several synthetic pheromones for cats, saying that they can make cats feel safe and friendly in the new environment, and relax and regain a good mood.
He actually used the phrase “regain a good mood” on a cat. I feel a little funny, just like seeing the composition written by my fifth-grade cousin.
After ordering synthetic pheromones from the pet products purchasing agency I frequented, I went back to bed and continued to bury myself in my private work. It’s not that I don’t want to care about my cat. On the contrary, if I don’t work harder to make money, how can I afford to take care of it?
It was one o’clock in the morning when I finished my work, and there were two unread messages on my mobile phone, from my mother. I didn’t turn it on, so I packed my clothes and went to take a shower, and I had to be as gentle as possible, otherwise my roommate would leave a note on my door tomorrow and scold me for disturbing the people-even though she often didn’t start using the washing machine in the bathroom until midnight.
When I crept back to my room, the cat had reached the end of the bed from the corner and was lying in its favorite position licking its hair.
Licking hair again!
It was at this moment that I suddenly burst into a nameless fire, which came without warning, so that no one could effectively stop it.
So I rolled up the half-wet bath towel in my hand, threw it heavily on the quilt and asked it angrily: Are you finished?
The cat can’t understand me, but it has been facing me for more than 400 days, so it should understand my expressions and tone. It has lost a lot of weight, obviously trembled, and its licking action stopped abruptly. Instead, it stood up and gave me a plaintive look, then jumped out of bed and returned to its corner.
I’m like a love rat who immediately regretted his wife’s domestic violence, standing by the bed and confessing his crimes. The water that didn’t dry the hair tips gradually soaked the back and left a small pool of cold water stains on the floor.
“Mimi,” I grabbed a bath towel and wrapped my hair carelessly, then squatted in the corner and held the cat in my arms. I softly said, “Mimi, come and eat canned food.”
Reason tells me that I should apologize to it because it is ill. But I’ve probably never been an tolerant person, so I don’t want to say sorry to a sick cat, and I don’t know who I’m angry with.
Maybe I’m sick, too.
4、2018.12.15
The synthesis of pheromones by cats has no effect for the time being, which is very frustrating.
But fortunately, at the same time, I received 8 thousand yuan in my bank card, which is the result of staying up late every day to pick up private work. After transferring 6,000 yuan to my dad, I turned on the take-away software and prepared to use the first member red envelope of this month tonight.
I feel very happy, because the problem that bothers me at the moment is only to eat fried chicken or roast pig’s trotters, and there are no more disgusting worries.
Although this happy time only lasted less than two minutes, it ended at the moment I clicked on the payment, leaving no cloud.
My mother sent a message a while ago, saying that in order to pay back the money, she went to the supermarket in front of her house as a tallyman and could get 3 thousand yuan a month. Seeing that I didn’t reply, she sent another message asking me if I hated her so much that I didn’t even want to talk to her.
That night, I rushed to the design drawing after one o’clock in the morning, so it was naturally impossible to reply again. So she called me early the next morning, talked aimlessly about some things when I was studying, and even pretended to be joking about my puppy love boyfriend.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember most of the things she said, and the face of the puppy love boyfriend has blurred into a passerby in the fog. I couldn’t keep up with her rhythm, so I kept responding with “hmm”, “oh” and “ah”, which led to the unsustainable call and finally ended at 7: 30 in the morning, lasting eight minutes and 42 seconds.
But the conclusion was said by my mother: “You have to go to work, right? Let’s not talk about it. Hang up. Bye.”
Saying “goodbye” first probably made her think she had maintained her dignity, but it made her feel more guilty and pitiful, because it was the weekend and I didn’t need to go to work.
So after I received the last payment of 8,000 yuan, I transferred 1,000 yuan to my mother on WeChat, just under the two messages she sent that she didn’t receive a reply.
5、2018.12.30
After using pheromone for more than half a month, the cat’s condition has been repeated, but it has not improved in general.
Doctors don’t recommend taking medicine, because there are bound to be side effects, and before I am sure whether my cat is suitable for taking medicine, taking medicine without authorization is likely to cause physical discomfort, which will lead to aggravation of the disease.
He suggested that I change the environment for the cat, for example, let it live in a room with a balcony, and it is best to see the sky and sunshine. Besides, the doctor said I’d better spend more time with my cat to make it feel loved and cared for.
Changing houses is obviously unrealistic, at least so far it is not so easy to achieve; Companionship is also very difficult, because I can’t lose my job, and almost all my spare time is used to earn extra money, so it is difficult to spend two hours teasing the cat.
For my reply, the doctor sent me a string of ellipsis, and then he suddenly became a righteous messenger covered with divine light, drew a sacred sword and pointed it at me and said, “For you, it may be just a pet, but for it, you are its whole world!”
Well said, it is vulgar enough to put it in any public service advertisement. I thought indifferently.
“The cat is a very sensitive little animal. It has been living with you since it was three months old. It has been isolated from the normal wild life for more than a year, and it will have a sense of dependence on you.”
“It needs your company, because it can’t be separated from your care and care.”
It’s never too painful to stand and talk.
Don’t I want to go back to my life a few months ago? Am I willing to rack my brains every day to decline my colleagues’ invitation for afternoon tea just because I can’t bear to drink a cup of milk tea for twenty dollars? Can I go back to my birth and choose a mother who doesn’t like gambling or lying?
I live in this shining and fast-moving city, just like being in a disco ball that never stops. I desperately try to catch up with others’ footsteps, thinking that I have become a member of hundreds of millions of dazzling spots.
But as long as my family gently pushed me behind, I easily fell and became an unremarkable part of the dim dance floor-then I realized that I was just a reflective patch, and once I left the blessing of the lights, it would become gray and small. Even if I changed my rustic clothes and dressed up as a young man in Sanlitun, it would not change my dull and boring lining.
I looked at the cat. It was crouching by the window, lost in thought in the mottled night outside the isolation net.
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