As everyone knows, cats are carnivores. Note, cats are pure carnivores. Things like vegetables and staples, although they can eat them and won't be harmed, they can't provide enough nutrition for house cats.
Many people feed their cats these things, and some cats love eating them, but the main nutrients their bodies need still come from meat, and preferably red meat. And some people only feed them these, and the cats still grow well, which is actually because the cats supplement their meals on their own.
Even in the city, there are quite a few things cats can eat, and even more so in the countryside—mice and birds can be caught and eaten, while other things are just snacks, at least providing some sense of fullness.
Since arriving in the jungle, the cats have been eating meat constantly—first bird meat, then centipede meat, and then lamb and turtle meat. The nutrition is fairly adequate. So the current task is to get some food to replenish their physical strength. Without considering long-term nutrition planning, these red fungi are actually edible too.
Of course, mushrooms might not fill a cat's stomach, but coincidentally, these aren't ordinary mushrooms. They're a kind of carnivorous fungi, and they differ greatly from other fungi; mushrooms on Earth not being edible doesn't mean these can't be eaten.
This thing, although very aggressive, can be peeled off a little if one skirts around the edges. Before, when they climbed up, mycelium tried to attack them, and they pulled off quite a bit. The pulled-off parts, like severed limbs, quickly became inactive, and it seemed they could be eaten.
Of course, they can't eat too much at once, so they only pulled off a little, with Shiller trying it first. It's not that he likes to take risks, it's just that among the four cats, he doesn't seem like the pedigree cat, so his digestive function might be better, hence he tried it.
Shiller certainly left nothing uneaten. Frankly, even if this stuff were a protected species, Outer Gods wouldn't dispatch the police to catch them. Even if they did, they were in emergency survival mode, eating whatever they could.
In reality, he doesn't really like mushrooms, but now, because he was so hungry, he found them delicious. These red mycelia indeed have a bloody taste, but that's precisely the flavor the cats like.
After Shiller finished eating and took a nap, he was surprised to find his energy recovered quickly, and he wasn't hungry at all anymore. This suggested that this fungus can even be a part of their diet. In other words, it's a carnivorous plant and the red meat most loved by cats.
With this situation, Constantine and Little Superman devoured it ravenously, they were truly starving. Every morning as they open their eyes, they face dozens of sets of fasting aerobics, utterly tiring the cats out.
However, Peter wasn't eating. Constantine carried some to him, and he kept shaking his head. Shiller went over to nudge him, and Peter weakly laid down. Clearly, he's not just physically exhausted now; he's also mentally burdened.
Shiller licked Peter's fur, gently nibbling on his ear, and said:
"If the owner died in the house, would he hope his pets ate his corpse to survive until discovered, or starve to death trapped inside?"
Peter suddenly lifted his eyes, staring straight at Shiller, his eyes incredibly bright in the dim light. His whiskers trembled, looking as if he wanted to say something but ultimately just wiped his face with his paw, then touched his ear before lying down.
Peter buried his face in the ground like an ostrich. Shiller laughed at his posture and said:
"It seems a Thousand Cats Dream sees further than us; the beast form also has its perks. If you can pretend to be a Spider, why can't you pretend to be a cat?"
"I haven't pretended to be a Spider," Peter's front paws kept scratching the ground, "If the spiders in the world caught thieves, humans wouldn't be bothered by crime."
So Shiller realized that persuasion wouldn't work this way. As an experienced psychiatrist, he quickly shifted his approach.
"Don't you want to scare Stark a bit after saving him?"
Peter's whiskers twitched. Shiller also laid down, tucking his paws under his front, lightly patting the ground with his tail.
"Have I ever told you about the time our cosmos made a movie? The process was quite interesting. Most importantly, you definitely don't know what young Tony Stark was like."
"I can probably imagine," Peter said, "A genius young millionaire, what else could he be like?"
"No, it's probably nothing like you imagine," Shiller chuckled again, "If you'd seen him when he was young, you'd know he'd absolutely be terrified of psychos."
Peter gave him a look, as if to say, "Where's this coming from?"
Shiller said:
"In the eyes of a psychopath, there are only two kinds of people in the world: the same kind and prey. Anyone who doesn't fit these two categories is like air to them; they don't care and won't put in any effort. Which do you think Stark would be?"
"He's not a psychopath," Peter said. "Overall, he's a good person, even to the point of having stringent requirements for himself in terms of both ability and morality. Sometimes he may seem immoral, but that's only because his self-imposed moral standards are different from worldly standards. He's already doing well enough."
"Exactly, so he's the latter," Shiller said.
"You mean, he's the kind of prey that would be targeted by psychopaths, so he's afraid of them?"
"You've got it the other way around," Shiller shook his head. "It's because he's afraid of them that he gets targeted. Psychopaths love this kind of prey the most."
"Then why is he afraid of them?" Peter was puzzled.
"Because he's a good and normal person; he can't understand the madman's world and can't predict their actions. It's a blind spot that even his wisdom rarely touches. Can you imagine him taking on the Joker?"
Peter's ears twitched; he couldn't imagine such a scene. The Joker spouting about human nature while Iron Man would probably just fire two blasts at him. It's not that Iron Man isn't interested in discussions of human nature, he's just not interested in madmen like the Joker.
Iron Man is the kind who, if he denies someone, won't listen to a word they say. Batman is the opposite; even if someone is his enemy, he's willing to hear their theories. The former is less likely to be swayed by villains, thereby delaying his objectives, while the latter can gather more intelligence for behavioral analysis. Each has its pros and cons.
The people Iron Man deals with are mostly normal; they have typical motivations, like Whiplash wanting revenge, Kingpin running the mob, Roxsen and Osborn's businesses, Mandarin wanting to rule the world. Lady Mask is a psychopath but appears infrequently; Iron Man doesn't pay much attention to her.
Thus, Iron Man doesn't like playing games with madmen. He lives in the secular world, not the philosophical world, and steers clear of psychopaths. But ironically, Iron Man is quite an emotional person, and such emotionally rich people naturally attract psychopaths, who love a challenge. In short, he easily gets targeted.
"What I'm saying is, certain psychopathic behaviors can frighten him more easily; it's a normal person's fear of the unknown beyond the normal world," Shiller said, smoothing his whiskers with his paw. "Seeing him scared is rare, isn't it?"
Peter began to grind his teeth. Clearly, some negative emotions had been accumulating in him for a long time, but his maturity forced him to process them on his own rather than complain. But he held it in for too long, and even the most good-tempered person would reach their limit.
He suddenly stood up, his claws gripping the ground, back arched, fur bristling. In just a few steps, he leaped over Constantine and Little Superman's heads, directly snatching away the mycelium they were chewing on.
"Hey! My food!" Little Superman roared in discontent, scratching the ground a couple of times with his claws, and chased after Peter.
But Constantine bit his tail to stop him.
"Don't act like that's all we have; isn't the wall full of it? I'll go get some more."
Constantine had seen grander situations. Although retired now, he was still more mature than Little Superman. He quickly found more for Little Superman, but the latter still seemed agitated, backing away while hissing at Peter, ears pressed low.
Peter ignored him, pressing the mycelium with his paw and tearing at it with his fangs, eating voraciously. After finishing this piece, he went for another until his belly was full, then lay down in a corner to sleep.
The cats rested here for a few days; they had been too exhausted before, and could only replenish their physical strength in this way. Once fully recovered, they resumed their journey. However, during this time, the mycelium had evolved into something increasingly horrifying.
Having climbed a few more floors, the cats heard unusual friction sounds, indescribable, but resembling the noise of cans dropping on the floor, coming from upstairs.
Going up another two floors, they finally saw what it was. It was a pile of pipeline fragments connected by mycelium, now inching like caterpillars on the ground, producing can-like sounds.
Overlooking this scene, the cats felt a bit creepy. Logically, fungi should have instinct but no wisdom, much like other plants, expanding and hunting according to their foraging instincts to obtain nutrients. But a plant's structure seemingly precludes the possibility of tool usage's wisdom.
But what's going on now? What exactly is this fungus doing?
Fortunately, this thing had no senses and seemed to move blindly; even moving is inaccurate, as there's no pattern — sometimes combining, sometimes separating — as if it doesn't really know what it's doing.
Yet for this very reason, it's even more terrifying. Humans are all too familiar with such a learning process. The infancy of the human race involved exploring the world this way, touching everything, combining or throwing things, progressively building in their minds an impression of things for future use.
It's not hard to imagine that human ancestors learned to use spears by repeatedly throwing different branches and selecting the one that flew the most steadily and the farthest to strike enemies.
If they were still human, they certainly wouldn't worry about a bunch of mushrooms surpassing them. But now they were cats, and when it comes to using tools, cats might not necessarily surpass a bunch of mushrooms.