Pet King

Nabari squinted his eyes. His vision was no longer as good as when he was in his prime, but it was nevertheless still much stronger than the average person’s.

He didn’t know the names of the wild cats, but they completely coincided with the image in his memory and complemented the blurry parts that he could not remember.

At this time, the usually stern Nabari suddenly smiled. His mood became clear and relaxed, as if he had set down all his responsibilities and burdens. He felt that he was now closer to the true God then ever before.

He now felt that his life was almost complete. As long as the others were taken out of the desert safely, it would then be truly complete.

Wei Kang’s mood was different from Nabari’s. He was so excited that he feared he would have a heart attack.

He set up a tripod and kept pressing the shutter. However, due to the low light setting, there was a time lag between each picture. Nevertheless, each one was extremely precious.

Was this the original Egyptian cat?

He was not sure—what exactly was the original Egyptian cat? There was no exact definition.

Human beings began to consciously engage in breeding of domestic cats, producing the colors and shapes that people liked. This had not been going on for long—likely no more than 200 years. This was in stark comparison with breeding dogs, which had started as early as thousands of years ago.

What he was looking for was a transitional cat species in the history of cat evolution. He believed that such a cat species most likely existed in Egypt.

Just as the fennec fox was the smallest canine, the sand cat was also one of the smallest felines. Perhaps mammals in the desert could only try to reduce their size in order to survive the heat.

The sand cat was a close relative to the domestic cat’s bloodline. There were four known subspecies. Among them, the Pakistani subspecies had gone extinct decades ago. The North African subspecies was previously thought to exist only in the southeastern parts of Egypt. Now, Wei Kang had discovered a new subspecies at the junction of Libya and the western parts of Egypt.

It was deep in the Sahara Desert, far away from the Siwa Oasis and the Kufra Oasis. This place should have been an oasis as well many years ago, as described in folktales. There was reason to believe that these sand cats had lived here for thousands of years. Having been isolated for a long time, just like Australia, they retained the most original bloodline of the species.

It was probably exaggerated to say that these sand cats were fossils, but they were indeed quite an origin species.

Similar to other kinds of sand cats, their ears were large. They were larger than those of ordinary domestic cats. The ears of the fennec foxes were more exaggerated compared to theirs, but they had more sensitive hearing than the typical domestic cat.

Their faces were neither pointed nor round, and the hair made their chins look like the longitudinal section of the bowl, very similar to the inverted trapezoid. They had a faint squid pattern on their bodies, which was almost invisible in the night. They also had two prominent black circles on both their forelimbs.

Although Wei Kang’s movements were very quiet, it was inevitable that the tripod and the camera would make sounds. He thought that these sensitive sand cats would have already heard them, but somehow they did not choose to escape.

It was probably because of Fina.

Wei Kang looked at Fina with relief and worry. Fortunately, he had come to Egypt with her. Otherwise, he would definitely return empty-handed. At the same time, he also hoped that Fina had not had physical contact with the sand cats, for fear that she might be infected with germs. These sand cats had lived here for a long time and likely produced antibodies to counter the germs, but Fina would not have that immunity.

He did not know that Fina had lived here before.

There were a lot of low, dead tree branches in the position where the infrared camera was placed. These sand cats were not interested in climbing. Even if they were on the tree to play, they simply clung on to the trunk before letting go with their claws and jumping. They didn’t seem like they were able to climb trees or good at it.

On the contrary, Wei Kang found that they were not just playing around, but they were doing so to smash their weight into the sand. Occasionally, they ended up pulling some small animals out of the sand to eat. Sometimes, they even drilled a shallow hole for food and then crawled into the hole. Then they emerged from the sand, usually with a sand dune gecko in their mouths. With a few bites, they were able to swallow the gecko in full.

A cat that was not good at climbing trees but was good at digging in sand.

In order to deal with the high temperature of the sand, the cats had thick hair on their claws. Their claws could not be retracted like those of domestic cats and were constantly exposed. It might be for them to be able to dig into the sand.

In theory, sand cats were widely distributed across the Asian and African continents. However, people had not seen living sand cats in the wild for several years. They had almost no knowledge of the population of this rare animal, and no scientists specialized in studying them.

The research done on their group behavior and habits was basically zero—it was not because scientists were not working hard to study them. They could not find wild sand cats. Even photos of sand cats were used repeatedly for several years, since they recycled old photos taken from the past.

Wei Kang did not think about the fame and honor brought by this discovery. He focused on recording every move with his eyes and camera because no one knew when they would disappear.

He had only one small regret. He wished he had woken up his students so that they could see these rare creatures in real life.

He didn’t think about capturing them and bringing them back to the country, because the habit of digging in sand was different from that of ordinary domestic cats. They couldn’t adapt to the air outside the desert, and a slight cold could probably kill them.

They should live here without being disturbed by others.

Therefore, he turned off the GPS information for the photos in the camera settings. Not doing so would encourage hunters and smugglers, who would hunt this unknown subspecies to extinction in a short time.

The sand cats were rather cowardly. However, this may be the first time they had come across human beings. They didn’t know how terrible humans could be. One of the bolder sand cats ran toward the camera out of curiosity. Once closer, it stared at Wei Kang with wide eyes.

Wei Kang pointed the lens at it and pressed the shutter repeatedly. After a while, it lost interest in the middle-aged bald man and returned to its companion.

At the moment of its turn, the shutter captured a clearer picture of its spots. A faint line of spots existed on its side.

There were sand cats with squid lines and spots?

Wei Kang’s heartbeat momentarily stopped. He wanted to announce his joy to the world because other subspecies only had squid lines but no spots.

Although he still had to enlarge the original picture on his computer for confirmation, he had considerable confidence that he had reached the goal of this trip.

He turned his head and smiled at Zhang Zian. He seemed to want to express what he meant. Or maybe he wanted to mouth a “thank you.”

Just then, there was a thunderous bang in the depths of the Devil’s Sea. Even the earth was shaking.