After the Princess Bound Herself to the Stray Cat Rescue System

Zhu Yuning transmigrates into the body of a princess being sent off for a political marriage. The emperor on the other side is said to be old enough to have fathered her, and cruel to boot. Marrying him would be a near-certain death sentence.

Zhu Yuning: ? Run for it. Now.

On the bridal sedan, she binds herself to a stray cat rescue System. Thanks to the good deeds she earned rescuing stray cats in her modern past life, the System makes an exception and grants her one chance to communicate with cats.

As luck would have it, there are some cats nearby.

She tells them about her predicament, and they swarm the bridal sedan.

The commotion causes an uproar, and both countries take it as an ill omen for the political marriage.

In the end, the marriage is called off, and Zhu Yuning is stripped of her title as princess.

She took advantage of the ancients’ superstitions a little, but that’s all right. She’ll make sure people here come to see things like this as signs of great good fortune.

With the System’s help, she sets up stray cat rescue stations throughout the country. The System provides the money to establish them, pays her a regular salary, and even helps her find cats in need of rescue. She can exchange the points she earns for all sorts of things, which she also spends entirely on cats.

She even opens a chain of rescue stations across the country.

As in her previous life, her goal is to make sure no stray cat in the world has to suffer, and to teach people of this era to love cats too. She doesn’t care much about anything else.

Gradually, the rumors among the people die down. She stays at her post, living a quiet and peaceful life.

She also opens a cat cafe, welcoming customers with a few gentle-tempered cats, and unexpectedly makes quite a lot of money.

The young woman smiles softly, able to tell you every cat’s name, background, and story.

But… a handsome young gentleman keeps coming to visit her. When they first meet, he looks pitiful and says his cat has gone missing. Could she please look for it? Once she finds it, he’d like to leave it with her. He’ll come by to see it often.

Why leave it with her?

Only later does she learn that the gentleman is a prince born to the emperor she was once supposed to marry. His mother consort hates cats. When he was a child, he rescued a cat, but she insisted he throw it away. He has spent all these years trying to find it.

Who would have thought she’d actually find it?

She also hears about the gentleman’s circumstances and is furious on his behalf. When she learns that he plans to seize the throne, it’s perfect timing: through her efforts, she has finally unlocked the ability to truly talk with stray cats. She sends the cats she has rescued to communicate with the palace cats, and they bring back all sorts of secret information.

Her motto is: How could anyone who treats cats well have bad intentions?

Hold on… Is this ruthless man who sweeps away every obstacle on his path to the throne, then makes her his empress, really the same pitiful fellow who used to trail around after her and do everything she asked?

[The author has never worked in stray cat rescue. All related information comes from online searches. Corrections are welcome.]

[Set in a fictional world. Please don’t nitpick the historical details.]

[A seemingly sweet and pitiful male lead who has actually endured for years before turning ruthless, vs. a genuine-hearted female lead who doesn’t care about anything except cats, which are her one hard line]

[Older woman/younger man romance, with puppy-like younger male lead. He is two years younger than her.]

[Thanks so much for reading!]

If you enjoy girls’ love novels, feel free to visit my author page and save my upcoming novel, After Falling for My Favorite Fanfic Author. Here’s the blurb:

As she prepares to enter her third year of high school, Ruan Qingguang gets a friend’s recommendation and becomes a fan of a female celebrity pairing that took the entertainment world by storm seven years ago.

There’s plenty of content and fanworks everywhere. Even now, they frequently trend online and are used as a benchmark by other pairings.

On a whim, she starts a fan account and begins making graphics for them.

But the account’s name happens to be identical to the title of a new fanfic by Nuanqing, a popular fanfic author who has been writing in the fandom for seven years. Her account becomes quite a hot topic in the community.

At the time, she just laughs it off. Later, she realizes that perhaps this really was where fate began.

She truly falls in love with her.

When she tells a friend as a joke, the friend replies: …Is there no more dignified way for you to launch an account in this fandom? Wait, are you serious?

How can she describe the words Nuanqing writes? Ruan Qingguang thinks they’re gentle, delicate, and perceptive. Perhaps only the moon in the sky could compare.

While organizing a cinema screening for one half of the pairing, she checks the attendees’ Weibo IDs and notices someone with a graceful figure and extraordinary bearing, whose eyes seem to hold all the lights of the world.

The visitor shows her their Weibo profile, then covers Ruan Qingguang’s mouth before she can cry out. A playful smile glints in her eyes. “It’s me. Don’t tell anyone.”

She watches the movie sitting right beside Ruan Qingguang, who is so startled that she spills the water she just bought.

Afterward, heavy rain begins to fall.

They walk side by side into the rain and exchange personal contact information.

“How can I ever forget her?”

Her feelings grow wildly, beyond her control, but how could Ruan Qingguang not understand reality?

Over and over, she rereads the fictional stories Nuanqing has written and their sporadic chat logs, piecing together a supposed “love” from scattered words, all the while knowing it exists only in her imagination.

Timid and cowardly, she looks at the moon and longs for the warmth she has imagined, but in the end she doesn’t dare approach.

She’s easy to satisfy. She can live on imagined love alone. She always has.

Reason and obsession battle in her mind every day. At last, she decides to just get through the college entrance exams first. Once they’re over, she’ll let go for good.

After the exams, Ruan Qingguang gets her phone back and sees someone running toward her with a bouquet of flowers. In a daze, she opens the chat she has pinned to the top of her WeChat list.

It’s a long confession.

She never imagined that such flawless writing could one day be used to describe her.

Sunshine from ten thousand miles away lights up her spirited, radiant face. She embraces the person standing within reach at her side.

It turns out she isn’t the only one who has been testing the waters over and over, imagining a love she thought was hopeless.

At the end of the downpour, the sun breaks through.

[A seemingly gentle and sophisticated, but actually a little spoiled (?) and adorable university student fanfic author, and a seemingly cheerful and outgoing, but inwardly sensitive high school reader and fan-account creator. Fourth-year university student and third-year high school student, four-year age gap.]

[The Ruan family is fairly well-off. This is a story about a very rich little girl and a very loving little girl.]

[Also known as A Senior’s Guide to Secretly Crushing, and What Should I Do If I Fall for My Favorite Fanfic Author?]

[Little Ruan’s personality may be a bit extreme at first. I can’t give away too much. If it’s not for you, feel free to drop the story without telling me.]

[A story about loving yourself before loving someone else.]

[And, little angels, please don’t waste your senior year of high school pining for someone like Little Ruan does!]

Theme: May every cat find a home