By CJ Fentiman

From Chapter 3: A Cat’s Resentment (toward those who help it)

(猫の逆恨み / Neko No Sakaurami)

I’d had kittens before, but none with such a destructive nature. Finally, I decided it was time to take him to the vets and get some advice. Maybe there was something physically wrong with him that was causing this outlandish behaviour, or maybe the vet could help with advice on how to change such a war-mongering
attitude.

To my astonishment, when I took him to the vets, the kitten switched personalities again. He was completely well-behaved during his first consultation and
exam, and with a complete stranger, too.

‘Amerika no short hair desu ka?’ the vet asked as he picked him up to examine him.

I shook my head. Kawaii, he most certainly was, but an American shorthair he most definitely was not.

Still, it was true that he did look more exotic than the traditional Japanese bobtail, which has a stocky build with brown patches and a short tail. The kitten’s
pricked over-sized ears, extremely long back legs, and triangular face gave him an alien-like appearance (something we both had in common).

I described the kitten’s aggressive behaviour.

Dr. Iguchi, the vet, nodded. ‘Hai-tenshon. Violento kitten desu yo.’

‘Yes, very bad,’ I said showing him some scratches on my hand.

‘Sou desu ka?’ (Is that so?) He said with a smile.

It turned out that the kitten had nothing physically wrong with him. The aggression was in his nature. Dr. Iguchi gave him a full bill of health and we were sent home with the singularly unhelpful recommendation to feed him a more nutritious brand of cat food.

When we got home, I let the kitten out of his carrier and we regarded each other. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ I asked.

He looked at me as if to say, ‘Why should you do anything with me? I’m perfect the way I am.’

He had the most personality I’d ever encountered in a cat. This small silver tabby could express more emotion and more comments with his black-rimmed green
eyes than many people could with words. He was a human in a cat suit: a soul who had once had the ability to speak with words and now could only communicate with eyes, body, and tail.

And express himself he did. When not engaged in battle, he always held himself with a superior air: an emperor in kitten’s clothing, noble in appearance and
attitude.

Ryan and I had posted flyers trying to find the kitten’s original owners, but no one had responded. We couldn’t keep calling him ‘the kitten’ and ‘hellcat.’ He needed
a name. Because of his skillful ping pong ball work, we considered the names Beckham and Pele, but they seemed too obvious. Later we thought of Hirohito,
because of his establishment of his imperial reign. But nothing felt right for this charming little terror.

Then one day, quite by chance, the peaceful chords of a cello filled our sparsely decorated apartment. Ryan and I were watching the Japanese television
network NHK, which was airing a documentary about the work of famed German composer Johannes Sebastian Bach. To my amazement, the lovely music had an
almost instant impact on the kitten. His high-octane nature reversed itself, his usually tense body relaxed, and his green eyes slid half shut.

That music could have such a dramatic impact on the kitten led Ryan and I to discuss all sorts of musician, singer, and composer names for him. We finally settled
on Gershwin, ‘G’ for short.

And now, besides a name, we also had a new strategy to calm him down whenever his energy or aggression were dialed up too high. We tuned the radio to the
classical music station, to be turned on when needed.

‘This is only a temporary solution,’ Ryan warned, and I agreed. It didn’t matter that it was the idea of living with cats that had helped lure me back to Japan in
the first place. It didn’t matter that I was crazy in love with Gershwin and Ryan loved him, too. The apartment was meant to be a two-cat household, not a three-cat
household. The responsible thing to do was to find Gershwin a permanent home, preferably as a single cat.

After a couple of weeks, when no one responded to the flyers we’d posted for the Ninja Kitten, Ryan and I approached our friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.
But no one wanted a rambunctious cat.

So, I turned to the Internet and, after an exhaustive search, I found just one Japanese animal charity run by a British woman. But it was far away in Osaka. So, I
emailed her to see if she knew of any cat animal shelters, humane societies, or sanctuaries in Gifu. Sadly, to her knowledge, there were none.

‘What do the Japanese do when they find strays and they don’t have an RSPCA or animal welfare group to help them?’ I demanded of Ryan.

‘They probably try to rehome them through friends or leave them on the streets, or in a forest,’ he said sadly.

If there was an animal shelter out there, I couldn’t find it. The Osaka charity kindly offered to put a photo of Gershwin on their website, and suggested that I try advertising with vets and in the local newspaper. I took her advice but, again, we had no response.

‘Try not to worry too much,’ Ryan said reassuringly that evening. ‘We’ll find Gershwin a home. Maybe one of the vet adverts will work.’

On the following morning, I was rudely awakened by a sharp pulsating pain in my abdomen. I cursed and opened my eyes to be met by a piercing pair of unblinking
green eyes. Gershwin placed his paws atop my full bladder and began to knead it. He was already developing ways to manipulate humans. In the morning, every morning, he wanted his breakfast, which meant he needed me to get up.

This feline routine had been happening with greater regularity. Ryan called it ‘the bladder stomp.’

I had never been known for my love of mornings. With such a determined furry alarm clock, though, it was becoming impossible to lie in and be lazy and avoid
the day. Gershwin’s new morning ritual was breaking me from a bad habit I’d spent far too long indulging.

On this particular morning, however, he was unusually persistent, even for him. Then all three cats began running around the bedroom agitatedly, meowing
incessantly. I pulled the covers over my head, turned on my side to protect my bladder, and tried my best to ignore them.

But their meows grew more ferocious. The three of them were making sounds I had never heard out of a cat before and Gershwin, who had got back on the bed, was digging his claws even deeper into my easily-pierced flesh.

Reluctantly, I crawled out of bed to see what in hell had turned my cats into psycho-kitties. No sooner had I pulled on my dressing gown, than the old clinic
windows began rattling loudly, sending the cats scurrying for cover under the bed. I had no idea what was happening until I heard the city’s warning sirens.

Earthquake!

I was home alone and I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Panicked, I crawled under the bedroom table like I’d seen people in movies do and huddled there
waiting (and praying) for the tremors to pass. I wrapped my dressing gown tightly around my body as everything in the apartment shook. Books flew off shelves. Chairs hopped across the floor. The windowpane shook so violently, I was sure it would break. The very floor I clung to pulsated.

In the midst of my fear, I realised that Iko, Niko, and Gershwin’s harassment this morning had been their desperate attempts to warn me that an earthquake was
coming. They had known long before the humans’ seismographic sensors had known what was coming. In the midst of my fear, I felt my love for that feline trio triple.

Thankfully, the earthquake passed in a few minutes. I cuddled the cats to reassure them (and me), and thank them for their early warning.

Though it had scared me to death, the earthquake really hadn’t been terribly strong by Japanese standards. No buildings had been levelled and my home was
relatively undamaged. The country’s propensity for earthquakes was something Ryan and I had not considered when deciding to come back to work in Japan.

According to Japanese mythology, the Namazu, or giant catfish, lives under the islands of Japan. Whenever it moves, the ground shakes. Being a fish, it moves a
lot. I told myself to learn much more about earthquake safety procedures, should the Namazu decide to make itself known again, and to pay much more attention to the cats’ warnings of changes in atmospheric pressure.

On the evening after the earthquake, I gazed fondly over at Iko, Niko, and Gershwin, who were eating their dinners contentedly while Ryan and I prepared our own meal. With no response to our flyers, Ryan and I had decided to put the idea of re-homing Gershwin on a back burner. We truly had done all we could to find him a new home. It seemed – to our secret joy – that he was meant to be a permanent member of our temporary Japanese family.

Because of these three cats, I was learning truly, deeply, and for the first time in my life the importance of trust and companionship, commitment and caring.
Because of them, I was shedding a lifetime of loneliness and rejection.

And yet . . . Ryan and I had never intended to stay more than a year in Japan.

When our contract at the school was up, we would leave. We would leave Iko, Niko, and Gershwin and then, even with Ryan, my life would be lonely again.

About the Author:

Carla Francis is the author of the 5th edition guidebook (and blog) Travelling with Pets. Her work has been featured in publications in Australia, the UK, and Japan.

The Cat With Three Passports is available from Bookshop.org (US) or Amazon (international) or via Angus & Robertson (Australia)