Chapter 17: Herding Cats

Chapter 17:
Herding Cats

 

“NO BUG Master. Here!”

Noela beckoned to the cat. It paid her no mind, trotting toward the drugstore’s front entrance and curling up.

“Urgh. No listen, Master!”

“What’ve I been telling you?”

“Use werewolf power to force!” Noela cried.

What’s she planning?

The werewolf girl leapt at the cat. It freaked out and bit her, its fur standing on end.

“Master…hurts.”

“I know, I know.” I patted Noela’s head. “Have a potion.”

“Arroo!” Her ears shot straight up. Grabbing a potion from inside the drugstore, she opened the bottle.

Was that her goal all along?

Mina popped out from the house. “You’re both still going at it? It’s just a cute little kitty cat, Mr. Reiji. Can’t we let it be?”

“No, we can’t.”

Honestly, I liked cats, but they’d bother customers if they wandered around outside the drugstore. Sure, there were folks who’d be fine with the critters, but they’d also drive others away. Anyway, letting feral animals prowl nearby wouldn’t be great for the store’s reputation.

“Here! No annoy Master!” Noela tried her best to lure the cat away from the door. No luck.

The biggest problem? We’d gone from one cat to two, and then to three. Their numbers kept rising. The issue had started about a week before, after Noela fed a stray in the neighborhood.

“Don’t give it too much now,” I’d warned her.

“Kitty cold, Master. Empty tummy. Noela save.”

She’d been really passionate about it. But the stray cat had warmed to her, and now a bunch of cats hung out here. They seem attached to Noela; that would’ve been great if they’d obeyed her, but I’m sure you know how those little dudes can be. They probably just saw her as their food-delivery girl.

There are seriously already five cats chilling out here. Jeez, how’d we attract so many? As far as I knew, there were only two strays in the neighborhood before.

“Wow! Look at all these cute little kitties!” Mina’s face wore a big, warm smile.

I was pretty sure Mina was also a guilty party; she’d probably fed the cats a ton after she saw Noela do it.

“Girls, what do you say to looking after these little guys in the house?”

Mina and Noela gaped at me.

“Just to be clear, Noela,” I added, “if we do that, I won’t be your master anymore. I’ll be the stray cats’ master.”

“Arroo?! No! Big problem!”

“I can only be one species’ master at a time,” I insisted.

Noela tried to catch a black cat she’d doted on earlier. “Black Tiger!”

“Black Tiger”? Like the Japanese shrimp? Of all the names to choose. I mean, yeah, it is black… and tigers are felines. Technically, it made perfect sense.

Mina didn’t lift a finger to help shoo the animals away. And, although Noela didn’t want to lose her master to a bunch of cats, the strays would just return if we took them someplace else.

Plus, I feel bad chasing them off. But the drugstore’s gonna become a cat cafe! What can I do here? “Come to think of it,” I muttered, “we don’t have any of that.” I guess I’ll make some. I’d doubted whether it qualified as a “drugstore product,” but my medicine-making skill was responding, so that settled it.

“Can you watch the shop for me, Mina?” I called.

“Sure thing!”

It didn’t look as though any customers would swing by, so Mina would be fine. I glanced at Noela; it turned out she’d admitted defeat. She was just playing with the cats now.

You give up way too easily, Noela! Man, she’s hopeless.

I headed to the lab. Not much seafood was sold in Kalta, unlike Japan. If I used that to my advantage, though, I might be able to fool the stray cats—in a good way.

I mixed the simple formula and shook the bottle. It glowed, signaling that the product was finished.

 

Irresistible Tuna Scent

 

Okay. If I put some of this on the cats’ food…

I heard footsteps outside.

“Aw! You can’t go in.”

“Black Tiger!”

What’s going on out there?

Something clawed at the lab door. Scratch! Scratch! I opened the door slowly.

Fwoosh! The black cat leapt right onto my face. “Meeeow!”

“What the—?!” I fell on my butt.

The rest of the cats were apparently lurking nearby; they leapt on me too.

“Meeeow!”

“Mrooooow!”

“Purrrrr!”

The stray cats licked my fingers. What’s going on?! Oh—they must smell my latest creation! I had the bottle sealed, though. Was its faint scent still enough to get the cats this excited?

“Mr. Reiji’s covered in kitties!” Mina exclaimed. She rushed into the lab, trying to capture the strays.

“Mreeeooooow!”

They really don’t like that. Is Mina the type cats don’t take to?

“Okay, Master?”

“Uh-huh. But I saw those cats going ballistic firsthand.”

“Mreeeeeooooow!” The cats in Mina’s arms were freaking out. They almost sounded like they were yelling for her to let them go.

“Aw. I want to be as popular with these kitties as you are,” Mina sighed. “Why do they hate me so much now? They’re calm when I feed them.”

That’s because they see you as a food-delivery woman. And I knew you fed them! Yet seeing Mina so sad made me sympathize.

Noela sniffed at me intently. “Good smell, Master!”

I handed her the bottle of irresistible tuna scent. “Put a bit of this on top of whatever you feed the cats.”

“Got it!” Noela trotted to the kitchen.

Hrm. I bet she’ll feed them our leftover chicken or something.

However, she soon returned and shook her head. “This no good, Master.”

“Er, why not?”

“Only smell good. No taste,” she said with a serious expression. “Need salt.”

“You ate some, didn’t you, Noela?”

“No…”

“Then how do you know what it tastes like?”

Noela fell silent. Sweat started to trickle down her forehead.

“It’s not salad dressing.” Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether the product was tasteless. It was just supposed to smell really good to the strays—although apparently, even Noela thought it smelled great. At any rate, salt isn’t good for cats.

To ensure that Noela didn’t sneak any more of the tuna scent, I accompanied her to the kitchen, sprinkling the liquid on the cats’ food myself.

From the lab, I heard Mina’s voice. “Eek! Stop thrashing!”

“Let’s go somewhere nice and open,” I suggested to Noela. Rather than letting the stray cats hang out in front of the drugstore, we’d lure them someplace out of the way.

Noela and I exited the shop, both carrying dishes of tuna-scented food.

“Mreeeooooow!” The cats rushed after us, panicked.

Whoa! “Hurry, Noela!”

“Leave it to Noela!” Crunch! “No taste.”

“Stop eating the bait!” I grabbed the food from Noela’s hands, sprinting toward an open area.

Rumble! It almost sounded like the ground behind us was shaking.

“Look, Master!”

I turned around. Lo and behold, a pack of stray cats chased us, eyes sparkling with desire. It would’ve been fine if we were just facing two or three, but literally dozens of cats were approaching. Frankly, it was terrifying.

Noela and I finally reached the clearing. I put the two plates of tuna-scented food in the center before darting away.

“MREEEOOOOOW!”

The cats assaulted the plates with violent fervor. In the circle of strays was a single black cat. “Black Tiger!” Noela cried.

The cat ran toward her, rubbing against her legs affectionately. “Mrow. Meow!”

Like Noela, I scratched Black Tiger on the chin before leaving the strays behind. Fortunately, none followed us.

At the drugstore, I set a rule that employees who wanted to feed the cats had to do it at the clearing. That way, they’d stop waiting for us to feed them outside the drugstore.

“Even I’ll be popular with the cats now!” Mina declared that evening, during dinner.

“Noela play with Black Tiger!” Noela proclaimed.

They’d seemingly gone beyond being the cats’ food-delivery women.

Once I put the irresistible tuna scent on sale, it sold well to cat lovers from Kalta and elsewhere; they rushed to the drugstore in droves. But that wasn’t all. Customers loved that the formula smelled like fresh fish, since seafood wasn’t readily available, and restaurants and households bought it in bulk. It became a crazy-popular product across the board.