Fatty's wife got out of bed too, drawn by the aroma just as the Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix Soup was nearly ready.
"You fellows really know how to eat. You've thrown every good thing into one pot."
"If we hadn't, all you'd get would be the water we rinsed the pot with."
She raised an eyebrow, and Fatty immediately backed down. Grinning, he hurried to ladle her a bowl. "Here, here. You've lost weight lately, working so hard inside and outside the house. Have some soup to build yourself up..."
Lost weight?
The four men looked Fatty's wife over from head to toe. That well-rounded figure was like a load-bearing pillar, and he said she'd lost weight?
"Does this leopard cat taste good?"
"Try it and you'll find out, won't you?"
Fatty's wife stirred through the bowl with her spoon. "The two children were crying just now, asking if we could please not eat the kitty."
"How can you listen to children? This is a wild beast, not a cat. How could we keep it? If we did, it would bite all our dogs, chickens, and ducks to death. We already have a dog we got from Dongzi's place. That's enough."
Ye Yaodong cut in. "What was your son doing? Couldn't bear to have the leopard cat killed?"
"When I was slaughtering it earlier, neither of them was asleep yet. They squatted there watching, tears and snot streaming down their faces, begging me not to kill it. They wanted me to keep it at home to catch mice."
A-Guang laughed. "I don't know whether it can catch mice, but it can certainly catch children. A wild beast like that is hard to tame. Better to stew it and eat it for nourishment!"
The days of going short of food and clothing had only