II

The New Year's cards have been pouring in, so many that one cannot help but be impressed. To be accurate, most of them are addressed to my master rather than to me — but a handful are clearly sent in my honor, inscribed to "I Am a Cat" by name. It seems those four words have been making quiet rounds somewhere in Tokyo, which is mildly gratifying.

　Kangetsu came to call. One of his front teeth, I noticed, was chipped. He explained that he had cracked it on a shiitake mushroom on New Year's Day. My master received this information with some skepticism — what sort of man eats dried shiitake at New Year's? — until Kangetsu clarified that it had happened at a year-end party at a house on Mukōjima. A piece of Kūya-mochi had wedged itself into the gap and remained lodged there, visible whenever he smiled.

　My master and Kangetsu went walking together, taking an extended circuit through the city. The following day, my master wrote in his diary: "Encountered a geisha today. Remarkably beautiful. If one were to take such a woman for a wife, life might take on an entirely different character." Such scandalous sentiments are evidently only safe when committed to a diary.

　One morning the household gathered noisily for the New Year's ozoni feast. I, too, had designs on the rice cakes floating in the broth, and managed to seize one when no one was looking. Unfortunately, the mochi had a ferocious adhesive quality and clamped itself between my upper and lower jaw with extraordinary tenacity. I danced around the kitchen on my hind legs, shaking my head violently, performing what must have been a most extraordinary exhibition. The entire household burst into laughter. It was O-san the maid who finally intervened and extracted the confounded thing.

　I went to call on Miké. She wore a new bell around her neck that chimed delicately with every movement. "It's the finest quality," she said. "My mistress bought it especially from the Ginza." Miké carried herself with a refinement that made me feel rather inferior. I asked about her mistress's age and was told sixty-two. When I inquired how Miké had come to live with this household, she traced the connection with elaborate precision: beginning from the chief attendant of Tenshō-in, through that attendant's younger sister's daughter's husband's family's nephew's daughter — who happened to be the present mistress. By the time she finished, I had quite lost track of the thread.

　On my way home I encountered Kuro, the blacksmith's cat — a rough, heavyset fellow with the manner of a back-alley brawler. He had a salmon in his mouth and didn't trouble himself to look up. "Well, if it isn't the schoolmaster's stray," he muttered. I declined to dignify this with a response and continued on my way.

　One afternoon my master picked up a letter from his desk. It was from Meitei. The letter described how Meitei had gone to a Western restaurant, ordered "Tochimenbo" — a dish that does not exist in any cuisine known to man — and watched with great satisfaction as the waiter consulted his colleagues and returned to report that, regrettably, the Tochimenbo was sold out for the day. The letter was written with such flamboyant self-congratulation that it served as a small monument to human absurdity.

　Another letter followed, containing Meitei's researches into the Roman practice of using a feather to induce vomiting between banquet courses, allowing one to eat indefinitely. Meitei had christened this the "Secret Method for Sustained Feasting" and was generous enough to offer instruction to my master. My master read the letter with the expression of a man who has been offered something he cannot quite categorize as a gift.

　Tōfū arrived — Ochi Tōfū, the poet, forever involved in haiku circles and literary societies. He had attended a poetry recitation gathering where he had been assigned the role of a ship's captain. His dramatic declamation had apparently caused the female students in attendance to laugh uncontrollably until the session dissolved in chaos. "I genuinely cannot understand what went wrong," Tōfū said, looking bewildered. My master offered a noncommittal grunt.

　Meitei arrived soon after and launched into the tale of his New Year's Eve excursion to the "Hanging Pine" — a notoriously melancholy tree where someone had, according to legend, once hanged themselves. Meitei announced that he had gone there in the spirit of ancient Greek philosophical experimentation, to contemplate mortality in the manner of a sage. Upon arriving, however, he discovered that someone had already taken up the position — hanging there, so to speak, in advance. "Just one step too slow," Meitei said with serene composure. "Truly a pity." My master chewed his Kūya-mochi in silence, aware that he had been played for a fool again.

　Kangetsu followed this with his own story. At the year-end concert at a house in Mukōjima, he had heard that a young woman — referred to only as ○○-ko — had fallen suddenly ill with a raging fever, and that her delirious ravings occasionally cried out his name. He walked home in agitation and found himself on Azuma Bridge, staring down at the black water below. From somewhere in the darkness — or from the depths of the river itself, he could not be certain — he heard a voice calling his name. He answered. He answered again. On the third call, his knees began to tremble against the railing. He cried back: "Yes — I'm coming now" — and leaped from the railing. The leap deposited him neatly back onto the bridge deck rather than into the river, owing to a miscalculation regarding the direction of "down." He came to his senses with perfectly dry clothing and an uninjured body. "When I went to pay my New Year's call a few days later," Kangetsu added, "she was in the courtyard playing battledore and shuttlecock with the maid. Fully recovered, apparently." Everyone laughed.

　My master, not to be outdone, offered his own tale from the close of the previous year. He had repeatedly declined to take his wife to hear Settsu Daijō perform, citing various procedural objections at each attempt. When he finally relented, he was immediately struck down by chills and dizziness and could not rise from his study. He lay prostrate, genuinely wishing to fulfill his promise, watching the clock as the appointed hour approached. Doctor Amagi arrived barely in time and prescribed a restorative. The chills cleared at the stroke of four — which was, as his wife had firmly established beforehand, the very latest one could possibly arrive and still find a seat. "Just fifteen minutes more," my master said with a heavy sigh, "and I might have managed it." Meitei remarked that any wife should count herself fortunate to have such an attentive husband. From behind the fusuma screen, my master's wife produced a quiet but pointed cough.

　I made my way around to the music teacher's house to look in on Miké. The garden was bright with late-winter sunlight. A cushion sat on the veranda, but there was no one visible, and all the shoji screens were shut — the teacher must have gone to the bathhouse. I climbed onto the veranda cushion and dozed pleasantly in the warmth. I was drifting in and out of sleep when voices began from behind the shoji.

　"Thank you for your trouble. Has it been finished?"

　"Yes — the carver's workshop said it had just been completed — here it is..."

　"Oh, how beautifully made. Miké will be at peace now. Will the gold leaf hold?"

　"The carver said they used the finest grade — it will last longer than a human's memorial tablet... He also said he altered the character for 'yo' in Byōyo-Shinnyo — said this style of stroke looks better."

　"Then let us place it on the altar and offer some incense."

　A bell chimed. — Namu Byōyo-Shinnyo, Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu.

　I rose slowly from the cushion and stood without moving, like a carved wooden cat, not even blinking.

　"What a shame. It started as just a little cold..."

　"If Doctor Amagi had only given her medicine sooner, she might have..."

　"That Doctor Amagi is really too much — treating Miké as though she were nothing..."

　"Now, you mustn't speak ill of others. This was simply her time."

　So Miké had seen Doctor Amagi too.

　"When all is said and done, it was that stray from the schoolmaster's house across the way who tempted Miké outside and caused all this."

　"That creature is to blame for Miké's death."

　I very much wished to defend myself, but discretion seemed wiser. I swallowed quietly and continued to listen.

　"The world really is terribly unjust. A beautiful cat like Miké goes before her time, while that worthless stray continues to roam about in perfect health..."

　"Exactly so. A lovely cat like Miké — you could search with a lantern for a hundred miles and never find her equal..."

　The maid said "never find a second one" using the word for human persons rather than animals. Her face, I noticed, bore a marked resemblance to the feline species.

　"If only that stray could die in Miké's place..."

　"If the schoolmaster's wandering cat would just drop dead, that would settle everything nicely."

　Settle everything nicely. That would be considerably inconvenient for me personally. I had no particular opinion about death, having no experience of it. But I recalled an occasion when I had crawled into an ash-smotherer jar for warmth and the maid had unknowingly sealed it shut — the sensation of that ordeal still makes my fur stand on end even to think about. Shirōkun had explained that a sustained exposure to that sensation is what death actually is. I would not object to dying on Miké's behalf, but not if it requires enduring that particular experience to get there.

　"With a proper monk's sutra and a proper posthumous name, there should be nothing left undone."

　"The sutra was rather brief, though..."

　"I asked about that. The priest from Getsukeiji said he had recited the essential passages, and that for a cat, that is quite enough to reach the Pure Land."

　I do not know how many more times the words "stray cat" were applied to my person before that conversation wound down. Eventually I slid from the cushion, dropped silently from the veranda, and at the moment my paws touched the ground I caused every one of my eighty-eight thousand eight hundred and eighty hairs to stand on end simultaneously in one long shudder. I have not set foot near the music teacher's house since that day. By now the teacher herself has probably received her own abbreviated sutra from Getsukeiji.

　I have hardly ventured outside since then. The world has grown to feel heavy and tedious. I have become as slovenly and disinclined to move as my master himself. When people say that his habit of shutting himself in his study day after day must be due to a broken heart — I'm beginning to think they may not be entirely wrong. I have never once caught a mouse. There was even a period when O-san formally proposed my expulsion from the household. My master, however, has always known that I am not an ordinary cat, and so I continue to reside here in relative security. For this I am genuinely grateful, and I harbor no hesitation in expressing my admiration for his perceptiveness. The day will come when an artisan of Hidari Jingorō's caliber immortalizes my image at a temple gate, and Japan's equivalent of Steinlen takes pleasure in painting my portrait on canvas — and then those who have failed to recognize me will understand their error at last.