Why bother with dating when you already have a cat?

By this time, Hu Tian had already prepared the milk tea and orange juice, as well as an ice cream cone that Xu Jiani's mother had ordered.

Li Qiqi placed the drink on the cup holder on the table and handed over the ice cream cone.

When Xu Jiani saw the ice cream cone, her eyes lit up and she said to her mother, "How about we call it ice cream cone?"

Ai Qing and Xiao Yu blinked, glanced at the ice cream cone in Xu Jiani's mother's hand, and the white ice cream on it, and then smiled at each other.

Xu Jiani's mother was also taken aback for a moment, then laughed: "Of course you can, are you sure?"

"Hmm... let me think about it." Xu Jiani was still hesitating. "Although I think it doesn't have to be related to black, the ice cream cone is white, which seems a bit inappropriate."

“What does it matter?” Xu Jiani’s mother said. “It can also be chocolate flavored, can’t it?”

"Oh right!" Xu Jiani exclaimed, suddenly realizing her mistake after her mother pointed it out. She excitedly hugged the little black cat, "Then I've decided! From now on, your name will be Ice Cream Cone!"

"Ice cream cone, ice cream cone~ ice cream cone, ice cream cone~ do you understand?"

Xu Jiani squatted down and patted the ice cream cone's head, her face full of happiness and joy, forgetting even to eat the ice cream cone in her mother's hand.

They played until after six o'clock, when Xu Jiani's mother finally took Xu Jiani's little hand and said goodbye to Ai Qing and Xiao Yu.

However, when they were about to leave, they realized they had too much stuff to carry, so Aiqing and Xiaoyu simply helped carry the litter box and other things, and saw the mother and daughter off.

After dropping them off at their doorstep and putting their things away, Ai Qing and Xiao Yu wanted to say goodbye immediately.

Hsu Chia-ni's mother, however, invited the two to stay at her home for a while, saying it would be a good opportunity to teach Hsu Chia-ni how to care for a cat.

She went into the kitchen to prepare dinner and invited the two of them to stay for a meal.

The two stayed until 8 p.m. After dinner, they played with Xu Jiani for a while, taught her what to do every day to take care of the cat, and finally left.

"That's great." Xiaoyu hugged Aiqing's arm and walked back.

"Yes." Ai Qing nodded. "The ice cream cone has found a good home."

"That's not what I meant." Little Fish rolled her eyes at him. "I meant a child, that's so nice~ I want to raise one like Nini too."

Chapter 203 New Book Available

At 10 a.m., Ai Qing's editor, Guagua, opened her backend and pulled up the list of new books to be released this Friday.

Among them, Ai Qing's book "Daily Life in a Cat Cafe After the Revival of Spiritual Energy" consistently ranks first in terms of readership, with over 7000 views.

To be honest, I'm speechless every time I see this data.

Because of the title and opening that Ai Qing gave, Guagua wasn't really optimistic about it.

On the one hand, apart from the tag "Reiki Revival," the book title itself has virtually no other tags to attract readers.

Even terms like "cat cafe" and "everyday life" are relatively limited to a specific audience, and may even be the opposite of the audience for "Reiki revival," with little overlap between the two.

While Ai Qing's opening was certainly eye-catching, placing it in a cat cafe... well, it was rather risky.

It's difficult to write about animals in a compelling way, especially when it's a group of cats, rather than just one cat, one dog, one turtle, one pigeon, or a combination of different animals.

In other words, since they are all writing about cats, Ai Qing needs to write about each cat in a unique way to distinguish them.

This is quite a challenge for an author who has only written two books with less than a million words before, and whose books don't have many characters.

As a new editor, Guagua doesn't actually have a particularly rich pool of authors under her command.

There are only six or seven emerging high-quality authors like Ai Qing in her circle.

However, Ai Qing was the shortest one among them.

However, they also have distinct and prominent personal characteristics.

After all, it's rare for someone to write three books about cats in a row, yet still manage to write them all beautifully.

Most importantly, Ai Qing is an author who has made a name for herself by writing all three of her books, from her first book as a newcomer to her third.

She currently has access to a number of high-quality authors, including one top-tier author, five authors with over 10,000 subscribers, and more than twenty other excellent authors.

Most of them were handed over after the previous editor left. Although Guagua did his job, the relationship was not particularly close.

These top authors, in particular, all have their own networks in the industry and know quite a few editors.

If an author wants to switch their new book to another editor, it's not easy for a new editor like Guagua to stop them.

Therefore, in addition to doing her own job well, she devoted most of her energy to Ai Qing and the other six or seven people.

To put it bluntly, it means supporting one's own cronies.

Of course, the online literature community still prioritizes the quality of the works. Guagua can only offer a little help in terms of notifications and vetting the beginnings of online novels.

So when Ai Qing decided to write this book, Guagua initially tried to dissuade her.

Finally, at Ai Qing's insistence, he was allowed to give it a try.

After all, online novels are sometimes unpredictable, and editors can make mistakes too.

Guagua herself never expected that her misjudgment this time would be so egregious.

Looking at the data of over 7000 followers in the backend, Guagua's heart was pounding. He thought that the first author to reach 10,000 subscribers who came out of his hands was probably about to be born!

Don't be fooled by the fact that it only has 7000 readers.

Given the current level of website anti-piracy measures, any website that gets two or three thousand initial subscriptions, and whose quality remains consistent, has a good chance of reaching ten thousand subscriptions.

If the initial subscription is 7000, but it doesn't reach 10,000 in the end, then people will laugh at you.

Guagua was initially a little worried that Ai Qing's slice-of-life story might lack staying power.

But if you open his book and find the data in the character section, you'll discover something quite amazing.

The novel is now about 170,000 words long, and there are a total of seven cats that appear and are described in detail.

One of the cats is the female lead, and it consistently ranks first in the number of likes and comments.

This phenomenon is quite normal. In many novels where the female lead is well-developed, the number of heart gestures from the female lead is much higher than that from the male lead.

But what happened next was rather bizarre.

The introduction page shows three characters. The first one is the female protagonist cat, while the latter two are a "fake three-sword style" Japanese man and an orange cat who "why work when you can just slack off".

The main character's heart-shaped gesture data can only be seen by clicking into the details page.

Moreover, the fourth place ranking looks a bit precarious, with a beautiful maple leaf and a bread mom following behind.

Is this a good thing?

Absolutely wonderful!

Anyone who truly understands the ecosystem of Qidian should know what it means if a supporting character in a novel receives more hearts than the protagonist.

What does it mean if several supporting characters can outshine the main characters?

This shows that the author's skill in character design alone is enough to attract readers.

Especially for slice-of-life novels, once the characters are well-developed or even become popular, it means that you can keep writing as long as you want.

Moreover, readers can enjoy reading it.

Because for everyday writing, there is no clear "end point".

For some other books, if you want to keep the reader's expectations up, you have to set goals for the protagonist.

Once a goal is achieved, a new goal must be set to prevent a gap in the reader's expectations.

Furthermore, since novels about leveling up often have something like "realms" or "levels" in them, when the protagonist reaches the top level, the story either ends after a major climax or the protagonist moves to a different map to further improve their realm.

The former means the end, while the latter means a sudden drop in reading speed.

But everyday stories that manage to stand out are a different story.

It is very stable.

As long as you can keep following the established characters and continue arranging the daily plot, you can keep writing without losing readers.

Such books are actually quite rare. Although Guagua knew that this was possible, she just couldn't believe that an author with only one 800,000-word masterpiece could have a new book that could reach this level.

It's like he's suddenly enlightened.

But since things have come to this point, Guagua will definitely give him all the resources he needs.

Apply if you can.

As a result, she actually got a splash screen promotion, including a first-order event.

Unfortunately, another top author was also launching at the same time, with over 10,000 readers following the story. Ai Qing's recommendation had a relatively low percentage, but it was better than nothing.

[Editor Guagua]: It will be available at noon today. How's your draft preparation going?

After reviewing the data for the new books to be released today, Guagua found Zhuanjiao Huakai's QQ and proactively inquired about the status of the manuscripts.

……

At 10:30, Ai Qing was taking photos of the new stray cats that had come to the store.

In the cat cafe's cat-petting area, one wall is specifically used as a photo wall.

The entire photo wall is divided into three sections.

One of the sections is a cat information wall. Currently, there are about twenty cats in the cat cafe. Except for the newly arrived ones who haven't been photographed yet, all the others are listed.

The second section is the adoption section, where photos of adopters and their adopted cats are displayed as keepsakes.

Currently, there is only Xu Jiani.

However, a few customers have recently expressed interest in this, and Ai Qing and Xiao Yu are both looking forward to it.

The last section is the customer payment section.

If a customer particularly likes a certain cat, they can pay to take a photo with it, and the photo can be hung on the wall as a souvenir.

Every month, the cat cafe will calculate the number of photos taken. The top three cats with the most photos taken together will receive an outstanding employee award, which includes cat food cans and small treats.

If it's just a regular cat cafe, it's naturally impossible for the cats to understand the rules.

But with the little fish around, communication is no longer a problem.

The way these stray cats went to great lengths to please customers amazed Li Qiqi and Hu Tian. They couldn't imagine how these creatures had been trained to behave this way.

These cats' unique begging skills have been filmed and posted online, attracting visitors from other places who have traveled long distances to see them.

If last month's cat cafes were just a wildly popular start, then this month's cat cafes have truly capitalized on this wave of traffic and are now experiencing a surge in popularity.