Japan: Crazy cat ladies

While on holiday in Japan, I kept a detailed series of notes in honour of Nanowrimo.  All posts about Japan comprise excerpts from my journals. 

"... This morning, I wake up thinking that I must have had a terrible nightmare.  The misty sky is slowly lifting over the city to reveal a helipad and spiral staircase on the roof of the building next to us.  My mother is sitting by the window, taking it all in.  My throat feels dry, but I am more well-rested than I have been in a while.  I slide around under the sheets a little more, then tumble into the showers and out onto the streets.

The air is cool but not too crisp and the plaza where we walked last night is bright and soft with the sound of trickling water.  In the autumn, the leaves are a delicate yellow-green.  We eat at Cafe Doutor - coffee over a marble cake and Baumkuchen.  I love the Baumkuchen, I would eat it every day for the mild fragrance of its sweetness, the fluffy way its layers peel apart.  The coffee is simple and delicious.  We eat in silence, watching men in suits go past; a boy in plaid and jeans slowly pick his order off a laminated menu.

After breakfast, the first place we go is the Calico Cat Cafe.  

I've been secretly dying to go to a cat cafe, so secretly that I didn't even know it.  I read about one somewhere online a long time ago, but the memory stayed with me.  Today, I woke up announcing, suddenly, that it was on the itinerary.  My mother is nonplussed, but agrees.  After all, we didn't make any plans this holiday and the only rule was that nothing was off limits.  

We walk down the road to the nearest cat cafe.

The whole time, my mother is grumbling about the plan.  "Fur is going to get on my clothes, so you pet the cats okay?  I'll just sit in the corner."  We get there and recognise it from the drawn silhouettes of cats plastered on the 6th floor window.  Apparently, this is one of the more popular cat cafes in town - we jam into a tiny lift with two other Japanese people who are on the same mission.  A third lady, pressed up against the wall, rolls her eyes at us and mutters something about "Neko".

On the sixth floor, we are given a rapid fire introduction by a man at the counter.  Do not wear your shoes in.  Do put on slippers.  Do wash and sanitise your hands.  Do not use flash when taking the pictures.  Do not wake up sleeping cats or drag them into your lap.  And see that black and white one?  He points to a "Wanted" poster.  Of a cat.  Do not touch her.  She bites.

My slightly asthmatic mother is already freaking out.  She grabs a mask and slaps it on.  We get ourselves cat-ready and someone opens the door to the two-storey cattery, and that's when, hoping to make a break for it, a massive grey and black cat with beautiful markings all over its back bounds out of the room.

Several things happen at once.  The cat unconcernedly sits down and starts washing itself.  The staff clap and laugh - "Oh that mischievous one!  Always trying his luck!".  But the most amazing thing that happens is that my mum goes nuts.  "Oh!  He's beautiful!  Oh, look at him, Shu!  He's beautiful!  You're so beautiful, yes you are!"

And one of the most blissed out hours I've ever spent with her commences.

I love animals, yes, but I've never quite gotten the concept of a cat cafe.  Looking around now, though, I am starting to.  The two floors are filled with all kinds of awesome ledges and boxes and cubby holes and although I only see a few cats at first, I am starting to realise that there must be more than twenty.  And they're all exceptionally good-looking from the grey short-haired tom and a permanently surprised-looking Scottish fold to the fluffy, tri-coloured beauty draped over a hollow box and a sleek, almost Egyptian feline with bright eyes.

There are shelves of books and magazine and comics, and cat toys to use on the inhabitants.  Some people clearly come here all the time to relax.  One girl totally has it down.  She's brought her own blanket, books and iPod.  As she reads, a slim, tawny cat actually snoozes in her lap.  I feel myself starting to calm down.  Every corner is a new surprise cat - a rusty tortoiseshell or a grumpy-faced Crumbs lookalike, but everyone talks in hushed voices.  The cats are beautifully clean.

My mother is going to town.  "Oh, look at you!" she is crying at a leopard-stippled grey beast.  We find a spot near the sunny windows and start taking stock of all the cats around us.  They all have names.  The little Singapura cat curled up in a basket is called Asari and it likes its paw stroked.  On the floor, there's an enormous ginger Siberian cat, twice the size of my Jack Russell, Chip.  It is raggedly majestic.  My mother finds out it is called Hatoro and starts patting it and cooing at it.  It starts purring like a phone going off and my mum looks as if she's won the lottery.

Over the hour, she keeps ripping off her mask and making me take pictures of her with various cats saying, "Quick!  Quick, this one!  I am going to make it my Whatsapp profile!"  She tells each one, "You're beautiful," and then as if afraid the others will get jealous, continues, "You're all beautiful."

I spend the last twenty minutes gently ruffling the fur of a snoozing cat of an indeterminate brown colour.  Every time I rest my hand on his flank, he sighs and sleeps deeper.  Eventually, we leave and my mother muses, "This could work in Singapore, you know."

As we step out into the sunshine, she seems to shake herself and snorts at me, "The things you make me do!"

I smile to myself.  After all, she petted more cats than I did."