One day, I opened a secondary account on Xiaohongshu. It was an account I had once made for Mimi.
At first, I only wanted to save a few of her cute little moments there. But back then, I always felt there would be plenty of time. The ordinary scenes of everyday life seemed as if they would keep happening forever. Because I was lazy, and because I kept thinking those details were too trivial to be worth posting, the account ended up with only six scattered notes.
After Mimi passed away from illness, the account stopped too. Its last update is fixed forever on 2023-11-25.
That abandoned page now feels like a small digital gravestone for her. It sits there quietly, reminding me that the daily moments I wasted through laziness—the ones I thought were too ordinary to record—were actually the memories I would later want most.
Recently, I made a new Douyin account for Xiao Huang. This time, I want to take it seriously. In a way, the account is my apology for the regret I still carry. It is also a small wish: that every day I spend with him from now on will leave some kind of trace.
People may ask whether anyone will really watch these posts.
Honestly, it does not matter much whether anyone does. I just want to record Xiao Huang’s silly moments. I know very well that an adopted orange cat with a slightly crooked-looking mouth pattern is not exactly rare on the internet. He does not have the polished beauty of a ragdoll cat, and he is not as clever as those cats that can open doors. Most of the time, he is only mischievous, unruly, and far too confident for his position in the household.
But in my videos, he is not a product waiting to be judged by strangers. He is a living little creature, a cat son who is keeping me company.
Maybe the account will have no traffic. Maybe it will gain no followers. That would be completely normal. The point of the account was never to please an audience. It is simply a place to keep the footprints of a furry family member.
I used to wonder whether there was any real need to upload photos and videos to a social platform. Wasn’t keeping them in my phone album basically the same thing?
After updating the account for several days in a row, I realized that “storing” and “running” an account create two very different states of mind.
When you begin to manage an account seriously, even in a tiny and personal way, the way you look at things changes. Because you feel the pressure to update, you pick up your phone more often. You become more intentional about catching the moments you would normally let slip past: the way he moves when he yawns, the cuteness of his head squeezing out from a corner, the texture of sunlight falling across his fur.
What looks like “content operation” from the outside is, in fact, a deeper kind of observation.
There is also a little extra encouragement that comes from social platforms. Even a like from someone you have never met, or a casual comment left in passing, can become a small positive signal. It makes the act of recording feel interesting and affirmed. Then, almost without noticing it, you gain more energy to capture those fragmented details of ordinary life.
In that process, you end up leaving behind a richer sample of life—for him, and also for yourself.
Creating this kind of account is also a way of creating emotional ritual. When you keep posting every day or every week, that frequent act of recording quietly reminds you: I am here watching you grow, and you are here accompanying me through these happily wasted hours. Every day we spend together is worth remembering.
Without meaning to, the bond between you and your pet becomes deeper. The connection grows firmer.
Opening an account for a pet has never been about making them famous. It is not about fighting for a share of attention in an internet world that is already crowded and exhausting.
I only hope that every painfully ordinary day while Xiao Huang is here can, at some future moment, shine because these records exist.
