Good friends recently passed on an obituary from The Economist of an unusually famous calico cat who served as stationmaster of Kishi station and vice-president of the Wakayama Electric Railway in Japan (“The cat’s miaow“).

The article appeared in print back in July, and I somehow missed seeing it. More mysteriously, no one sent it my way at the time.

Perhaps it’s because we don’t currently live with a calico. And they are special.

From the wonderfully written obit:

AS SOON as she was born, Tama-chan (“Little Treasure”) knew she was divine. Most cats presume it; she was sure of it. Her immediate situation—whelped by a stray in the workers’ waiting room at Kishi station, on a rural railway line in western Japan—did not augur brightly. But as soon as her eyes opened, she saw what she was. Rolling languorously on her back, she admired her white underside; delicately twisting her neck to wash, she noted the black and brown bars on her back. She was a tortoiseshell, or a calico cat to Americans. They had been four in the litter; only she carried the propitious marks.

Tortoiseshells had long been prized in Japan. In another age she would probably have been a temple cat, leading a contemplative life among maple and ginkgo trees, killing mice and, in exchange, earning the regard of monks and pilgrims. Tales were legion of poor priests or shopkeepers who had shared their few scraps with the likes of her and had, in return, found riches. Or she might have been a ship’s cat, since tortoiseshells had the power to keep away the ghosts of the drowned, whose invisible bodies filled the sea and whose flailing, imploring hands were the white crests of the waves. But Tama, being modern, preferred trains.

In 21st-century Japan the mystic power of her breed was still invoked everywhere. Children wore tortoiseshell charms as amulets to keep them well. Nervous students cramming for exams put pictures of cats much like her on their bedroom walls. Most ubiquitous of all, the Maneki-neko, or beckoning cat (almost always a tortoiseshell), waved outside shops, restaurants and gambling parlours to draw customers in. These plastic cats stared rudely at one and all, where she appraised people with a green-eyed and sleepy gaze; their paws sawed up and down, where she made a virtue of curled immobility. In betting places they held up big gold coins to show they could bring good fortune. With a combination of punctuality, divinity and good manners, she achieved the same.

On this feline friday, I’m again short on photos for another update on the cats’ transition to their new space and setting.
Things have been chaotic, due to the unusual physics of moving after decades in one place. In this strange universe, moving or otherwise displosing of the last 5% of your worldly possessions from the old space is as difficult as the handling the other 95%. We’ve mentioned the problem to others, and acceptance of this thesis seems to be universal.

So we’re somewhere in that final five percent space, while the closing date for the sale of our former Kaaawa home is just 10 days away, with all the anxiety that brings with it.

Anyway, one of the things that was among the final five was this poster size print of our calico cohort, somewhat faded and discolored, but still a prize. Removing it from the wall was a bit emotional, despite it’s relatively poor condition at this point.

Miki and Kua weren’t related, but they might as well have been. We rescued Miki as a kitten on Christmas Day in 1986, and adopted the next kitten, Kua, some six months later. Miki took on the challenge of socializing Ms. Kua, and they lived happily ever after, more or less.

They made the transition to Kaaawa in 1988 and lived lived out their lives there.

So we know well the charms of the calico, and agree whole heartedly with the Japanese assessment of these wonderful cats.

For more about this pair, there are more stories and photos in this short obit for Ms. Kua written after her death in 1998.