Stay Healthy, Butler—That's How We'll Be Happy
While Chu-chu roamed free, I studied the materials the hideout would need with careful eyes. If I was going to build it at all, I wanted to pour in the best supplies and every bit of care I had, and give her a hideout she could use for the rest of her life.
"Hmm... maybe I should have gone somewhere else."
But as anyone could tell, finding decent materials at Daiso was no easy thing. Then again, what Chu-chu wanted was a hideout that felt like a box. Build it out of expensive materials, and she might not even like it.
"Foam board, glue, tape, and... what else would be good."
I was still turning it over when—
"Pfft! What is that?"
I turned my head a little, and a red balloon was drifting above the tall display shelves. The balloon I'd set up to keep track of her was performing far better than I'd imagined, and I ended up laughing for a good long while.
"Seriously cute."
How was it possible to be that cute from a balloon alone? I bought the essentials first, then headed for the floating balloon to see what Chu-chu was looking at.
"Chu-chu, is there something you want to b—"
The moment I found her, I froze where I stood. She was holding a basket. And inside that basket, cat treats were piled up like a mountain.
"Nya? Unni, there's so much food here."
She had, in a word, cleaned out the pet-treat aisle.
"Chu-chu, do you... want to eat all of that?"
"Yeah! I only picked things I've never tried."
If she ate every last one, she would become a pig-cat in every sense of the word. I like Chu-chu with a soft little belly. I do not want her turning into a pig-cat.
"You'll buy them, right?"
She even demanded it, bold as anything. Maybe it was because I'd been letting her have whatever she wanted. I had a feeling I'd taught her some bad habits.
"Chu-chu, if you eat all of that, you'll become a pig-cat."
"But they all look delicious."
"Mmm... even so, I can't buy all of that."
It wasn't the money. It was Chu-chu's health. Picturing her happy face as she ate everything she wanted was nice enough on its own, but I didn't want to watch her swell up round and miserable.
"Then let's do it this way. Promise me. One treat a day."
"One means one bag, right?"
"What are you talking about. One single piece."
"Ehh... that's too little."
"Instead, every time you do something worth praising, I'll give you one more."
"So you're buying them anyway?"
"Yeah. If you keep the promise, I'll buy them."
"Then I'll keep the promise!"
She had kept her promises well so far. There was no reason she would break this one.
I paid for every treat Chu-chu had picked out and all the materials I'd chosen for the hideout, then loaded them into the trunk one by one.
"Chu-chu, can you put that in for me?"
"Yeah, got i— Waaah!"
I thought I heard something strange and turned around. She had picked up a big foam board, a strong wind had caught it, and she was one step from toppling over.
"Aigoo, careful."
"I almost fell..."
Once everything was in the trunk and we got home, we changed into comfortable clothes and got down to building the hideout in earnest.
"Chu-chu, this is how I want to make it."
I showed her the plans and the expected result I'd drawn on the tablet so she could see the shape, then split up the work.
"I'll cut the pieces, and you fit them together into the frame. Got it?"
"Yeah, got it!"
"Good. Let's start!"
I measured with a ruler and cut the base and the posts without a hair of error, fixed them firmly with glue and double-sided tape, and handed them to Chu-chu. She took them and matched the shapes while looking at the drawing.
"Chu-chu, you're doing well, right?"
"Yeah!"
She answered with such confidence that a strange unease crept in, and I swept my eyes over the work. Sure enough, she had set a post onto the base in the exact opposite direction from what I'd shown her.
"Pfft! Chu-chu, that's not how you do it. Look carefully. This is the right, and this is the left."
"Oh. I did it backwards."
"Which hand do you eat with?"
"This one!"
"Right. That's your right hand. You get it now?"
She nodded and nodded, then fixed the direction to match. Luckily she had only slotted the pieces into the grooves in the base, so they pulled free easily and went back in.
"Butler, this thing."
"Curious about the ruler?"
Chu-chu pointed at the marks on the ruler and came closer.
"What are all these tiny things?"
"Those show length. See the numbers?"
"Yeah, I see them."
"After the number 5, there are four marks, and then you see the number 10."
"So one mark is one number."
"That's right. The unit is centimeters."
I taught her ordinary things one by one as we kept building, and after about an hour we finally finished Chu-chu's hideout.
"Ta-da! Chu-chu's Hideout!"
"Waaah! We made this together!"
"Yeah, we did. We really did a good job, didn't we?"
"Yeah, yeah! Can I go in right now?"
"We still have to decorate the inside."
Chu-chu's Hideout had turned out roomier than I'd imagined—roomy enough that she could curl up on her side or stretch her legs out to sleep without the slightest discomfort. It would take up a lot of space, but since I was making her a hideout anyway, this was how much I wanted to give her.
"Go get the plushies and cushions you like."
"Okaaay!"
While Chu-chu went to gather things to put inside, I colored it with markers. Thinking of her, I painted it white and blue so it would call to mind clouds drifting through a blue sky, then made a sign from the leftover foam board, wrote Chu-chu's Hideout on it, and hung it at the entrance.
"Butler, I brought everything."
"Chu-chu, what do you think? Do you like the colors?"
"Wow! It's the sky! It's so pretty!"
"Good. Look at the entrance. I wrote Chu-chu's Hideout there, too."
A fluffy blanket, cushions, and a few small plushies went inside, and with that Chu-chu's Hideout was perfectly complete.
"I'm going in right now!"
She darted inside, stretched her legs straight out, and hugged a plushie, letting out one excited little laugh after another.
"Chu-chu, you have to be careful with this hideout. It could break."
"Yeah, I know! I love it so much, Butler! I really, really love it!"
"You like it that much?"
"Yeah! I like it even more because I made it with you!"
She came out of the hideout and dove into my arms as if she meant to tackle me. I hugged that unbearably cute cat tight and patted her back.
"Chu-chu, let's keep doing all kinds of things together from now on."
"Okay! If it's with you, I like all of it, and all of it is fun!"
"Aigoo, my baby! You're too cute!"
Chu-chu didn't come out of the hideout for a while, and before I knew it she was fast asleep. I used the opening to push on with work.
"Ugh...! My back."
My lower back was acting up again. The nature of the job meant I had no choice but to sit for long hours, and on top of that I crossed my legs out of habit every time I sat down. Because of it, the spine running up from my tailbone curved to the right—clear enough that an X-ray would show it at a glance.
I had no choice but to stop what I was doing, lie down on the oak massager Daeun had given me, and start stretching my back out.
"Uuuugh...! I'm dying."
Come to think of it, ever since I started raising Chu-chu, I had lived as if I'd completely forgotten exercise. A healthy body was the only way I could raise her well. So once my back was loosened, I started the home workouts I used to do now and then.
"Hwaaaam... Butler, whatcha doooing?"
"I'm working out. I haven't been exercising much lately, and I think my back's gone bad again."
Halfway through a leg-raise plank, Chu-chu woke up, came out of the hideout, and watched me exercise.
"Exercise... do I have to do it too?"
"You don't have to yet. But if you get any rounder than that, we'll do it together."
"I hate exercise."
"You like moving around, but you hate exercise?"
"Yeah. It's a pain."
A cat who was barely two years old already knew what it meant to be bothered. Wasn't she growing up a little too fast?
"Hoo... done."
"Is your back really bad, Butler?"
"I have no choice but to sit and work for a long time, so it got bad."
One sentence, landing out of nowhere in a moment I never saw coming, froze me where I stood.
"Chu-chu..."
"Yeah, Butler."
I pulled her into a tight hug and rubbed my cheek against hers like a madwoman.
"Kyaaaah! My baby! Yes, yes! Let's live happily together! We'll do everything you want, and we'll have fun!"
"Uweeeek... I-I'm getting squished..."
"My baby, when did you grow up enough to say something that sweet! You've gotten so big, my baby!"
"I-if you're happy, Butler... that's enough."
"Kiss!"
"I hate kisses!"
The moment I puckered my lips—she had been perfectly still, and then she wasn't—she moved in a flash and ran. I held firm to the belief that if we kept living together, the day would surely come when she liked kisses too.
"Chu-chu, should we take a bath today?"
"I don't wanna do that either..."
"If you take a bath, I'll let you have two treats."
"...Really?"
"Yeah, really. I've never once lied to you, have I?"
Her ears shot up at the word treats. After a brief pause she crept over and took my hand.
"Chu-chu, from now on, are you going to sleep in the hideout every time you sleep?"
I had made the hideout so she could use it as much as she wanted, but if she tried to sleep apart from me just because she wanted to stay in there all day, I would be awfully hurt.
"No. At night I'll sleep with you."
That was basically her saying my arms were much better than the hideout.
"Really?!"
"Sleeping next to you is soft and comfortable."
From the first day she came to our house she had climbed into my arms on her own, so she clearly preferred sleeping beside someone.
"I hate sleeping alone. I hate being alone, too. I want to be together."
The words that followed made me think about a great many things. Maybe, after she was given to her previous butler, Chu-chu had come to believe she wasn't alone anymore. But that butler had abandoned her on the street again, and until she met me she must have lived feeling lonely.
"But tell me. How did you know where my house was?"
"Whenever I wandered the streets, I saw you being nice to the other cats."
"Really? I've never seen you once."
A Ragdoll stray? There was no way I would have missed a creature that rare.
"So I thought, if it was that human, she could raise me well, and I memorized the house."
"I see. And right around then, you turned into a person?"
"Yeah, that's right. So I came to you."
I had looked after stray cats wanting nothing in return, simply because I liked cats, and I had ended up with a gift I never saw coming.
"I think I found the right place! I like you, Butler!"
"I see. Thank you for liking me that much. But."
Before I went on, I caught Chu-chu's hand and held it even tighter.
"You've been looking more and more like you're about to run, haven't you?"
"Wh-what are you talking about."
"And where do you think you're going, you cat. You're taking a bath with me."
"H-hey, what's that?!"
Some nonsense that wasn't even going to work—she meant to make me look the other way and bolt in the gap.
"Butler, there's really something weird."
"Chu-chu, that trick doesn't work."
"I'm telling you, it's real."
"If I turn around and there's nothing there, you're in trouble... Kyaaaaaah!"
I turned around on the off chance she wasn't lying, and a bug of an impossible size was crawling along the wall.
"Wh-what?! Th-that...!"
The strength even left my legs, and I staggered. That was when it happened.
"Nya."
Thwack!
Chu-chu walked over as if it were nothing, crushed it flat with her hand, washed her hands clean at the sink, and came back.
"I got it, Butler."
My baby... has this much Tetosterone Power...?