The Smartest Cat Alive
"Myaaaaaooow~"
"Haaah...! My heart!"
Director Yeon-du crumpled to the floor as if seized by a sudden, crushing chest pain, clutching at her heart with both hands.
She could barely breathe. She had rolled through countless film sets and witnessed the antics of more animals than she could count, but never in her life had a cat's affection hit her with such lethal, heart-melting force. It was a finishing move of pure, devastating cuteness.
Nabi was playing with human hearts the way a master toyed with a ball of yarn — a little monster, no, a cunning little devil — draining the very souls from every staff member on set.
"Director... Director? We need to start filming..."
A staffer, unable to watch Yeon-du sit there completely entranced by a single display of feline charm, spoke up carefully. Only then did Yeon-du snap back to herself, mortified to realize she had nearly drooled in a thoroughly unprofessional fashion.
"Ah! Look at me."
She pressed a hand to her still-pounding heart and carefully set Nabi down by her feet.
"Nyaang~"
But Nabi was a genius of push and pull. The moment his paws touched the floor, he slipped smoothly between Yeon-du's legs and rubbed his entire body against her in soft, swaying strokes. When a low, rumbling purr joined the performance, whatever remained of her rational mind surrendered completely.
Calling him a genius cat was far too ordinary a title. He deserved a brand-new one: the Incarnation of Affection — no, the Genius of Charm. Just capturing that face and those movements on camera would be enough to send weekend prime-time ratings through the roof.
If a cat could melt the heart of a veteran director of the notoriously exacting Animal Farm and leave her aching with fondness, what hope did ordinary viewers have?
Still, she could not simply stand there forever, burying her hands in his fur and soaking up the healing vibes.
The pleading looks from the surrounding staff, combined with the warm, satisfied gaze of his owner Yuyeon watching from the side, finally let Yeon-du seize hold of the cold, thin thread of her professional composure.
"Nyah."
As Yeon-du cleared her throat and rose to her feet, Nabi flicked his tail with a touch of regret and padded slowly back to Yuyeon's side. As if he had already finished his allotted quota of converting non-believers, he casually licked a front paw and began grooming himself — a picture of residual, utterly shameless mischief.
"All right, all right!!! Everyone, attention! Shall we get the actual filming started?"
Perhaps embarrassed by how thoroughly a single cat had dismantled her, Yeon-du pivoted the conversation at a pitch a full octave higher than usual.
This cat named Nabi... the more she looked at him, the more extraordinary he seemed. To bewitch a seasoned industry veteran from the very first meeting — he hardly seemed like a cat at all. She half-wondered if a thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox had been reborn in feline form. The sheer star power and destructive charm he radiated were in a league of their own.
"Yes, we're ready."
Yuyeon scooped Nabi into her arms with practiced ease and settled into the interview seat. This was the pre-interview that would open the broadcast.
"Nyaong."
Amazingly, the moment he nestled into Yuyeon's embrace, Nabi settled in as meekly as a stuffed toy.
Most cats, faced with camera lights and a throng of unfamiliar stares, would have gone stiff and restless, thrashing or attempting a full escape. Nabi, however, did not struggle even once. He simply tucked his front paws neatly together and sat still.
Even accounting for the famously dog-like temperament of a Ragdoll, the composure Nabi displayed now far exceeded any average. You could almost believe there was a person wearing a cat suit.
"Our Nabi is incredibly smart. And... he really does act just like a person sometimes."
Yuyeon launched into her story for the camera without a single hitch. Praise for Nabi poured out of her the way proud parents never stop boasting about their children the moment their mouths open.
Yeon-du watched the interview through the monitor and nodded along. Whether Yuyeon's boasts were the real deal or heavily filtered through an owner's rose-tinted lens was something they would verify from here on out.
Even if every word of it turned out to be exaggeration, a cat this beautiful simply moving on screen would be more than enough to draw explosive cheers from cat owners everywhere.
At last the slate clapped, and the main camera's red light blinked on.
"I'm going to show you Nabi's very special, very impressive side now!"
Yuyeon declared it with full confidence.
Behind the lights, anticipation tightened in the eyes of Yeon-du and the staff. Just how smart could he be, for her to stake that claim with such swagger?
"See this computer here, currently turned off? I'm going to show you Nabi turning it on all by himself!"
Yuyeon gently set the cat in her arms down onto the floor.
"Nyaong."
The soft thud of paw pads meeting the ground was followed by a short meow as Nabi looked up at her — bright, sharp eyes that seemed to say, Well? Give me the mission already.
Yuyeon smiled to herself and nodded. In this entire space, she alone knew the truth: that Nabi was a spirit creature who understood human language perfectly.
"Nabi, turn on the computer!"
"Nyah!"
The command had barely left her lips before Nabi walked straight to the computer tower without a moment's hesitation. Then he lifted one tiny front paw and firmly pressed the round power button on top of the case.
Wheeeeng—!
The power supply spun up, and the tower rumbled with a heavy mechanical hum.
"Oh...!"
"He actually pressed it?"
Small gasps of wonder rippled through the staff. A cat understanding human speech and pressing exactly the right button — it was genuinely remarkable to watch.
A cat turning on a computer! And doing it because he had understood Yuyeon's words, no less.
But up to this point, it was still within the realm of comprehension.
Cats turning computer towers on or off was a familiar enough sight, after all.
When owners stayed up all night gaming or finishing assignments, attention-starved cats would quietly climb onto the tower and step on the power button, plunging everything into darkness — a classic owner tragedy that filled YouTube. It could still be dismissed as coincidence or trained repetition.
This alone was not quite enough to declare Nabi a genius cat with absolute certainty.
Then Yuyeon spoke again, and the staff and Director Yeon-du had no choice but to freeze in shock.
"Open the shopping site for me, Nabi."
The bolt-from-the-blue request left every pair of eyes wide.
"Nyaong."
Nabi flicked his tail as if it were nothing at all — while the minds of everyone watching twisted into knots.
Is that... even something a cat can do?
Director Yeon-du and her staff had filmed animals for years and met every kind of clever creature imaginable, but a request this advanced was something they had never heard in their lives.
Operating a mouse to open a specific shopping site required recognizing the on-screen UI and understanding, at least to some degree, how a computer worked. It was practically divine territory.
Of course, cats swatting meaninglessly at a cursor dancing across a monitor, or flopping onto a keyboard and unleashing a flurry of paw punches that caused total disaster, were common enough sights.
But a precise, purposeful command like this was on an entirely different level.
Nabi, however, walked with elegant composure straight to the mouse pad, as if he had the entire complicated process mapped out perfectly in his head.
"Nyak! Nyak!"
With paws soft as cotton batting, he gently rolled the mouse to move the cursor, then lined up his aim with perfect precision and clicked. An internet browser opened, and the shopping site's main page filled the monitor.
"Nyaong."
The way Nabi glanced back at Yuyeon — an expression that said this much is nothing — was like watching a scene from a top-tier circus act. This went far beyond casually batting at a mouse. He had located the exact desktop shortcut icon and, without a flicker of hesitation, successfully double-clicked it. The whole mechanism was flawless.
"Whoa... whoaaa...!"
"Insane!"
Exclamations burst out from every direction. The camera operators forgot their jobs entirely and stood with their mouths hanging open, while Director Yeon-du leaned so far toward the monitor she looked ready to fall into it. But the shocking, terrifying spectacle Nabi had prepared was not finished yet.
"Next, I'll show you him unlocking a phone."
As if driving the point home, Yuyeon smoothly set her latest smartphone down right in front of Nabi's nose. A complex pattern lock bloomed across the black screen.
"Okay, Nabi! Unlock the phone!"
"Nyah."
Swish-swish—!
The words had barely left Yuyeon's mouth before Nabi swept his soft, jelly-padded paw tip gently across the screen. A line traced smoothly in the wake of his paw, and then — ding! — a bright unlock chime rang out as the home screen blossomed open.
"No way!!!"
"This can't be!!!"
"Is that thing really a cat?! Is there a person inside?!"
Faced with behavior that bordered on high-level intellectual crime, the staff rubbed their arms as if goosebumps had broken out all over them. This was not something training could produce. Nothing short of a spirit creature with intelligence and judgment refined to near-human levels could explain it.
There was no need to dig through the Guinness World Records. Not a single person left on that set doubted that the Ragdoll cat standing before them was, without question, the smartest genius cat in the world.
And every request Yuyeon made after that, Nabi carried out without a single error.