Right after graduating from university, at the first company I went to, I picked up a cat named “Zhao Cai” at the company entrance.
It was a standard tabby cat.
It looked only three or four months old. Just like all wild tabby cats, it was fierce, smart, and could fight three against one.
At first, we prepared food and water for it at the company entrance, but there were always stray dogs stealing its food.
Zhao Cai was extremely brave. It rushed to the yard entrance and bared its teeth at the dogs, scaring away three stray dogs.
After it became familiar with everyone, it would sneak into our office every day. In the morning when we opened the door, we could see it squatting at the door waiting for people. Once the door opened, it would slip into the office.
There are really few photos of Zhao Cai.
When I say it was fierce and shrewd, I don’t mean just because of the dog-fighting incident. That was instinct.
It peed in the boss’s sink.
The boss at that time was a narrow-minded person who liked to PUA employees. He always had this annoying look that said “It’s your fortune that we hired you”. Moreover, since there were more men in the office, he would occasionally talk some vulgar topics in front of the girls with those guys. Some of the guys in the office flattered him, while some just smiled awkwardly and didn’t respond.
He didn’t like Zhao Cai. He thought that cats bring poverty and dogs bring wealth, and Zhao Cai had driven away the stray dogs, which led to the company’s poor earnings.
He would sprinkle wine in the yard every few days. Superstitious, stinking, and vulgar.
But except for those who were indifferent to cats and a few bootlickers in the whole company, he was the only one who blatantly showed his dislike.
Coincidentally, Zhao Cai didn’t like him either.
Zhao Cai never flattered our boss, nor would it sleep at the workstations of those bootlickers. It had a proud spirit.
When the boss was spouting nonsense like “If you do a good job, we’ll go to XXX for a trip next year” during a meeting, it would come to my workstation to sleep.
We cut its nails and applied deworming drops, and it never resisted.
But when the bootlickers sometimes held it and tried to make it fight with dogs to amuse the boss, Zhao Cai would show its claws and then run away.
I wasn’t the one who discovered that Zhao Cai had peed in the boss’s sink.
It was another colleague in the company who also had some pride.
That morning, we searched the whole office but couldn’t find Zhao Cai. Everyone thought it might have gone to the rooftop to catch fish or hidden somewhere. Then that colleague came downstairs from the second floor, holding Zhao Cai excitedly and shouting at us: “Found it! Found it! It’s in the boss’s bathroom!”
He said: “I found it peeing in the boss’s sink!! Right on target! The boss sometimes even brushes his teeth there…”
The light shining in the young man’s eyes and the speechless cat he was holding were the most beautiful scene that winter.
It’s not that what Zhao Cai did was so great.
But it dared to sleep during meaningless meetings, dared to pee in the sink of the lousy boss, and dared to give a cold shoulder to those who didn’t like it. It was really brave.
Its shrewdness and domineering spirit had a strong flavor of the common people (not in a derogatory sense), a kind of worldly and bold shrewdness.
If it weren’t shrewd and domineering, it wouldn’t have survived long in the wild. Even if it survived, it would have fallen victim to the bootlicker colleagues and been thrown to fight with dogs to amuse the boss.
Later, not long after that, I resigned. Then, one after another, my former colleagues also left. The last piece of news about Zhao Cai was that it got lost and never returned to the company.
It’s good.
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