The daily routine of the Jam tiger (a term used to describe a street-smart, resourceful cat) was always the same.
Eat, poop, sleep, eat, poop, sleep.
It’s no joke—it’s just about filling the gaps between those actions with what I call “Jam tiger behavior.”
By definition, Jam tiger behavior involves scouting for a suitable can opener (a human who feeds me) and executing the operation.
It was necessary to turn the humans who approached me, drawn by my feline charm, into my personal can openers.
If I didn’t, humans were the type to lose interest and walk away at any moment.
Emotions are fleeting fluctuations, but business must go on.
Humans pet the Jam tiger to heal their stress, and the Jam tiger gets food to fill its belly.
It’s the perfect world where no one gets hurt.
Of course, there were precautions to take to maintain a healthy relationship.
Don’t form excessive intimacy.
Otherwise, you’ll become a house cat.
Don’t expose your belly.
If a human presses on your belly as a joke, you might end up with a black eye that very day.
Never make noise at night.
One of the things humans hate the most is being woken up by loud noises while sleeping.
Never defecate where humans can see it, especially in places they’d dislike.
Even in the world of poop, cat poop is filtered out.
“What did I clearly tell you yesterday?”
“Uh… humans are the best?”
“Don’t make things up! I told you not to poop anywhere!”
“But, but this is our territory now…”
The brown-furred cat, whose head I was pressing down with my paw, desperately tried to make excuses, but that was exactly the kind of thing that couldn’t be allowed.
“Before it’s our territory, it’s humans’ land! It’s a good thing no one’s around, but if someone had seen you, you’d have been buried in the ground along with that poop!”
Unlike humans, if we get hit just a few times, we can become a carpet on the spot!
“S-sorry…”
“When you poop, either go to the trash area or do it where no one can see it.”
At the very least, humans shouldn’t see the poop.
The moment poop is spotted in the garden, we’re no longer the Jam tigers who’ve claimed a corner of the garden—we’re treated as environmental destroyers who deserve to be chewed up and spat out.
Especially by that gardener who manages this place. He might literally tear us to shreds.
I haven’t run into him yet, but…
There’s no way that old man wouldn’t come to the garden, so we had to avoid doing anything that would ruin the scenery.
“If I see you messing up the garden again… I’ll send you to the black dog.”
If I send you to the black dog, you’ll have a rough time.
I don’t actually plan to do it, but instilling fear is a necessary survival tactic.
Humans might be slow learners, but the ruthless wild is a different story.
You’re slow to learn?
Then you die!
That’s the basic grammar of this world.
I’m not a mother cat teaching her kittens, so I can’t explain everything kindly, one by one.
“P-please, not that!”
Sigh.
Training a 30-gram brain is harder than I thought.
I stretched and let out a sigh. It was about time for that pitiful grad student from yesterday to show up.
“Hi~ Did you sleep well?”
You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday?
Even though she’s wearing a lab coat, my sharp eyes don’t miss a thing.
This human didn’t change her clothes.
And her dark circles are even darker now.
She’s definitely a human in need of the Jam tiger, the universally recognized healing machine.
“Meow.”
“Yeah, yeah, you must be hungry, right?”
At the sound of my meow, the student quickly rushed over to us.
Kneeling down, she pulled out a metal-smelling box from her worn-out bag.
What did she bring this time?
I tried to ignore the musty smell coming from the grad student’s body and sniffed the box.
The mix of her sweaty odor and the meaty scent from the box was giving me a headache.
Unaware of my discomfort, the grad student, reeking of academic stress, smiled and placed the box in front of me.
“Don’t fight, share nicely, okay?”
“Mine! Meat, meat!”
“Alright, calm down.”
By the way, this girl must be doing pretty well for herself.
I didn’t expect her to bring this much.
“Eat up. I spent all my food budget for today, so I’ll have to go hungry…”
You spent your own meal money on us?!
If I were human, I’d have snapped at her, asking if she was crazy and telling her to buy her own food instead of ours, but…
I’m just a street cat in a worse position than a grad student.
It’s not my place to meddle in the affairs of can openers.
This is strictly business, and once the deal is done, I don’t care about the backstory.
With my business mindset firmly in place, I, the ruthless Jam tiger, had to act accordingly.
So, I buried my face in the box the scatterbrained student brought.
Ah, the meat’s delicious.
I don’t know what kind of meat it is, but as long as it’s not poisoned, it’s fine.
There was quite a bit of meat in the box, so after eating about half, I pushed the box toward the brown-furred cat.
“Oh, are you sharing? How kind.”
This little guy’s appetite is too big for his size, so I had to eat first before he devoured it all.
Suppressing the words rising in my throat, I slightly lifted my chin.
Alright, I’ve received the goods, so it’s time to deliver the payment.
Hurry up and pet me.
“Feeling good?”
The hand scratching my chin.
Since I can’t reach my chin with my tongue, it’s always been itchy, so this feels great.
It’s like Toxoplasma gondii bursting inside me.
“Hehe, your tail’s trembling. You must be really enjoying it.”
“Meow~”
As if the previous chin scratches were nothing, the sensation intensified. She switched from one finger to two.
With the added finger, the grad student’s hand grew bolder.
From my chin to my cheek, from my cheek to the top of my head.
Naturally, her hand took over my head, carefully stroking my ears and fur.
“If only my professor were half as good as you…”
Just as a soldier’s greatest enemy is their superior, a grad student’s greatest enemy must be their professor.
Opening up about her professor, the grad student continued to vent about him.
She complained about how he was unbearably strict, scolding her multiple times a day, and how his sense of time was absurdly slow, dragging out research…
“I didn’t join the lab just because of Professor Ruyen’s reputation…”
Ruyen?
That name sounds familiar.
It’s on the tip of my tongue, but the constant petting keeps interrupting my thoughts.
Ah, this is why a 30-gram brain is no good.
With a brain the size of a walnut, it’s hard to focus when being petted like this.
“Meow.”
I lowered my tail in protest and pulled my head away from the grad student’s smelly hand.
Ah, I can’t groom my head now.
“Oh, sorry. I got lost in thought…”
Do you think a cat would understand that?
Of course, I do.
But if I showed that I understood human words, things would get very annoying, so I swiftly turned and darted into the garden.
“Mine?!”
“You come too.”
It’s about time to cut it off here.
Maybe because the brown-furred cat didn’t get much attention, or maybe he just liked the human, he kept glancing between me and the grad student before finally following me and asking,
“Won’t she stop coming if we leave like this?”
“No. You have to cut it off at this point to keep the can opener from crossing the line.”
In this world, the most dangerous thing is thinking, “This much should be fine, right?”
This much should be okay, right?
This much is enough, right?
This much is nothing.
That kind of thinking is like poking your head into hell, so don’t even think about it.
If you keep pushing the line back, it might eventually become a deadline.
Once you set a line, crossing it means it’s time to cut things off cleanly.
Cats who cross the line don’t live long.
It’s ironic for a creature said to have nine lives.
“Mine, what if she’s disappointed and stops coming?”
“We’ll find a new can opener. That’s all.”
The world is full of people, and even if you filter out only those who like cats, you could fill this city with them.
How many of them would become our can openers?
“Mine, you seem so cold.”
“You’re just too soft.”
It’s a miracle you survived as long as you did before meeting me.
Keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself, I watched the grad student’s retreating back.
I won’t give affection.
So don’t you give it either.
Did she understand my message?
She’ll probably figure it out in time.
I let out a yawn, releasing my thoughts, and curled up in a sunny spot, closing my eyes.
Until the sun disappears and the moon shyly rises.