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merchant whose cat attracted clients by his sole presence, and made
his master’s fortune -the one donated in the eighteenth century by
a Beautiful Lady of whom you remain unsure even today whether she
had a cat, was a cat, or what exactly she had to do with this story.
But you learned not to ask. What the tale tells is true, for the tale
tells that what the tale tells is true, as would be told by the Damsel
at the crossroad of your travels.

When you returned for the first time to Europe with your cat stories,
your friends saw proof that a maniac always finds fodder for his mania.
You had to show them images of Ji Cho In, of the feline cemetery
at Go To Ku Ji, with its dozens of tired maneki neko, you had to
prove that the children of 1-16_1 block in Ginza Cho-ku had drawn a
hopscotch game for cats, and that a real kitten came to take its siesta
there, you had to swear that a cat had left its initials in the concrete
of Shimbashi. But only when you opened the book published in 1980
by Keibunsha, and showed them the methodical inventory, complete
with maps, of all the places in Tokyo connected to the Cat, did you
finally feel them getting a little shaken up. To see printed on glossy
paper, with a geographer’s precautions, the surest way to find the
Iriya restaurant where one can dine among free-stalking tabbies, that
makes an impression. Then you had more leeway to tell of your other
adventures, the one of the twins in the train bringing you precisely
to Go To Ku Ji (it was raining, just like in Rashomon, you didn’t yet
know where the temple was, you stopped the passers-by saying
« neko » and joining your hands in the gesture of Buddhist prayer.