Da Qing tips his head into it, his purr stuttering back at the perfection of it. No one's scratched his ears right in forever. "It's home," he mumbles, not meeting lao Zhao's eyes. What he means, is it had been all he had left of him and their life together, and at least Lin Jing hadn't changed anything major. He'd even moved into the actual bedroom and left the old, broken down bed for Da Qing, and though lao Zhao's scent had eventually faded from the rumpled sheets he'd never let Lin Jing change them, even when you could barely see the sheets themselves for all his shed fur.

"How big a cat tree?" he asks, bumping his head up under lao Zhao's chin again, rumbling loudly and kneading at his shoulder as he lets himself imagine that.