Lucky Cat in Japan

One roasting Saturday morning in July, 2001 in Takadanobaba, Tokyo, I was rescued by a couple of New Zealanders who heard me, a kitten, give a pitiful meow in a nearby park. From their third floor balcony they saw me weak and struggling. They came out and found me all alone in the intense heat, trying to climb up some steps, as if to find some shelter or succour. They picked me up and took me home to the safety and security of their apartment. This rescue would prove to be successful, very happy for me, but costly for them.

They called me “Jinja”, as I was a ginger cat but also purposely using the same Japanese word meaning ‘shrine’. I recovered with water, food, attention, and a visit to the vet, who said I had a 50-50 chance of survival. After a few days I was a fixture, loving to race around and leap up the walls of the apartment. They knew full well that they weren’t allowed to keep pets but they saw that my need was greater than any wish to comply with rules, even in Japan.

In September, late summer, I was enjoying the outdoors on our apartment rooftop garden, and I noticed some grasses waving way below in the breeze. I decided to explore this and the open air more than usual by leaping through a space in the surrounding brick parapet. There was nothing to reach out to, nothing but air. My fall was long enough for me to look and pray for a soft landing. I have an abiding memory of how I spreadeagled myself in mid-air to slow my descent and cushion my landing – all cats, perhaps all creatures, do this naturally. I was a furry parachute! Six floors and four seconds later I plummeted into a garden below, landing in a bush. My owners rushed down the stairs to their friends’ apartment from whose balcony they could access the bush with me in it.

The Japanese landlady heard the commotion and appeared, asking whose cat it was, no doubt more than a little interested because of the no-pets rule. One of my owners managed to say, “wakaranai”, or “I don’t know”, with some conviction. I think she probably knew well not to believe my avowal. But this was Japan and tricky situations were often glossed over. After all, the Canadian couple whose apartment they used to rescue me, were somehow allowed to keep a dog.

My back leg didn’t look good. I was rushed to the nearby vet by bicycle, only about a five-minute ride. As they were waiting for the prognosis, a dark and silent “biker” type came in and sat with his ferret fossicking and frisking about his leathers. I could hear my owners ask him what the word was for ferret in Japanese, by way of making conversation more than anything. I think they deserved the reply in sombre tones: “Ferret-oh”. They might have guessed! Many English words are borrowed and given a Japanese pronunciation, with a vowel sound following each consonant.

The “vet-oh” said I would have to stay overnight for surgery on a broken leg. He would give a handsome discount on his work, under the circumstances. We weren’t quite sure what they were but we hoped it was something to do with the nature of my accident, a park cat, rather than that we were “gaijin”, or foreigners. Still, it caused my owner to recall a few years earlier how he had to have an operation on a broken cheek bone. The surgeon had charged half price, saying he had been made very welcome at a hospital in Dundee in Scotland, the country my new owner was originally from many years before.

I’ve always been a big fan of Japan – in fact, I sometimes pronounce it “Chatpan”, making sure it sounds like the French for cat there, so that’s “Shapang”. You see, that’s the way that “Nihonjin”, or Japanese people say their country in English. Of course, in Japanese it’s Nihon or Nippon, a word which means “origin of the sun”. You got it! – “Land of the Rising Sun”. Now I would like to tell you a few more stories and give you a few Japanese mementoes.

Did you know that school children in Japan still read a book by the name of “I am a Cat” by Natsume Soseki, published at the beginning of the 20th century? It’s on my book bucket list. Then there’s “The Guest Cat” by Takashi Hiraide, an accomplished Japanese poet. This is a novel of beauty about the passing of life and the depths of existing. A cat comes into the dull lives of a young couple and rejuvenates them.

So the Japanese really love their cats, even to the point of worshipping them – would you believe they have cat shrines? They know what’s what! They know how to treat us! That’s why I love Chatpan, where we are treated with such awe and reverence, Nihonjin kneeling at our paws. I love living here in Japan, my early life in the centre of Tokyo. The good people of the huge and heaving metropolis are known as Tokyoites, and they surely love cats.

There’s a “cat town”, an area called Yanaka, full of fine friendly felines, many of them strays. There are shops, cafés and even a gallery created to celebrate cats. In another central area called Harajuku, with its many fashion shops popular with young people, there’s a street called Cat Street. My owner used to live on this street a long time ago before it became commercialised.

I also know that “Hello Kitty”, the fictional cat character was created in Japan, and there are cat cafés where you can stroke and cuddle lots of cats. I have enjoyed that kind of affection because my owner is typically kind and does nice things for me. While I’m here extolling the virtues of Japan, I’ve also heard that there are cat shrines. Many people in Nippon almost seem to worship cats. I can feel and sense the reverence and the intensity of the good cat-loving Japanese people.

Let me tell you about a cat café that was recommended to me. Its name is “Temari no Oshiro” meaning “Temari’s Castle”. This is pure “kawaii”, the Japanese word for their culture of cuteness, something in a league of its own. The façade of this café is like something out of Disney World, promising a kingdom of cats within. Inside it there are over 20 cats for cuddling and photographing, or whatever way you like to treat us felines.

Let me tell you about the Catacombs … for obvious reasons! Oh, purrhaps you’re thinking of Paris! The Catacombs are underground ossuaries in the City of Light, but there’s not much light down there with all the skulls and bones. The City of Love, one of its other names, is easily another of my favourite cities, so I tend to call it Purris.

On this subject, in a huge cemetery in central Tokyo, known at Aoyama Reien, there’s a big columbarium housing all kinds of pets’ ashes, even rabbits and a tortoise! Aoyama is a very fashionable and well-heeled area named after a samurai family. I like to think of the ashes of the beloved creatures preserved in there behind their photos. There aren’t too many of us felines in Aoyama’s columbarium, so I won’t bother much with it, because it houses ashes mostly of the canine variety. In Japan it’s possible dogs are more popular than cats, although I’m not at all sure about that. It couldn’t be that dogs are more deserving of some memorial, could it? One thing’s for sure though: dogs don’t have a word connected to them connoting death and burial. Unless you count “doggone!” I wonder where that comes from – possibly a reversal of “God-damn”, eh? Still, it’s not something to be dogmatic about or even categorical.

I mentioned there’s a tortoise here. Something tells me he might have died a slow death. Oh, what a terrible thing to think! I do hope his death was quicker than his movements in life. (By the way, I call this monument a “mouseleum”!)

Having to stay in this Japanese apartment all day you’d climb up the wall like I do. It’s got a lot to do with the “no pets” rule of this Tokyo apartment block. I was a street kitten, meaning that my natural environment is out there on pavements, under houses, or in one of Tokyo’s huge parks if I were lucky. Hence I’m going up the wall in here. Actually, it’s just something I do for a few minutes after eating, which gives me a huge rush of energy. Then I get back inside my rubbish bin! Or stretch out in front of the sliding doors leading on to the tiny balcony with its flower pots.

Now, something about my kind of shrine, the sort I really like! It has a big red torii gate denoting it’s a shrine, as opposed to a temple full of Buddhist statues – you could say they are enshrined in a temple! The thing though about my shrine is there are dozens of cats around, not counting the real ones that we can’t see. There’s also a temple to cats in Tokyo – I mean, it goes without saying there would be a special place to worship cats here. It’s called Gotokuji Temple – no, not Catokuji! – and it’s said to be the birthplace of the “maneki-neko”, the “luck-inviting cat statue” you can see everywhere, welcoming you into a restaurant or bar. I was always intrigued by the cats’ hand positions, as if telling you to go away. You have to understand that the Japanese bid you welcome with the opposite turn of the hand – to foreigners the gesture looks like stop or stay out. I’ve been told by my owners that such a different way takes quite a while to get used to.

My owners had to leave Tokyo to go back to their own country after many years. I was very fortunate to be given to their friend who lived in a place called Dragon Bridge, deep in rural Japan, far from Tokyo’s dangerous apartment blocks. I was really happy there, with all the freedom and quiet. I knew I had landed on my paws!

If I had lived to 20 (like a ginger cat my owners got later in New Zealand), the cost of my surgery would have averaged out at 5,000 yen a year (a mere 50 dollars!). As it turned out, I managed to live almost 14 years, not too bad considering my lowly street cat start in life.

I constantly realised I was lucky to have survived such a big fall and have heard of other cat-astrophes. In fact, I once read about a young lass, only 14 years old, who found a kitten in the streets of Osaka as she was walking home one evening from “juku”, or cram school. Her mother told her that no pets were allowed in their apartment block. It was cat-aclysmic for her and she was so distraught that she attempted a double suicide, jumping out her bedroom window, holding the kitten. Incredibly they both survived! Like me! Maybe what they say about cats’ lives is true.

Anyway, I often recalled my “Great Leap” – I loved describing it as one great leap for cat-kind. I have had a lovely life; I was lucky to have been found lying in a Tokyo gutter in the heat of summer, lucky to have had such caring owners, and lucky to have lived in the beautiful Japanese countryside. I was a very lucky cat!