Alarmed, the guard thrust his spear through the door at the shadow cat.
But the shadow disappeared, and the wife was nowhere to be found.
So do you know what happens when you keep a cat for too long?
It may turn into a vampire cat.
At least, if you believe in old Japanese superstitions.
Cats have a bad reputation for being greedy and untrustworthy.
And it is thought that the longer you own a cat, the more it would gain human knowledge,
and the more likely it would be for the cat to change into a monster that can hurt or
even kill people.
Today’s story involves such an animal.
It is the tale of the vampire cat of Nabeshima.
Lord Nabeshima liked playing Go, and he really liked playing Go with one of his subjects,
a blind man who owned a pet cat.
One day, the two were playing as usual, but Lord Nabeshima lost one too many games and
decided that the blind man ought to lose something too.
His head.
He didn’t see it coming.
When the blind man’s mother heard of what happened, she was devastated.
With tears in her eyes, she begged the cat,
“Your master has been killed, do something about it.”
The cat said…
“Meow,” and strode off.
It didn’t return.
Soon after, weird things started happening to Lord Nabeshima.
He fell ill, he couldn’t sleep, he lost weight.
No one could figure out why.
No one except a lowly guard.
Nabeshima had a loyal guard who always stood watch outside his door.
Sometimes the guard even slept there right outside.
He was distraught that his lord was dying and he didn’t know how to help.
But because he always guarded the door, he did notice something strange.
About Nabeshima’s wife.
Every time the wife entered Nabeshima’s room, he would hear his lord start to moan.
No, not the good type, it sounded painful.
The guard started paying close attention to the wife.
One night, after she stepped into his lord’s room, he saw the light inside cast her shadow
on the paper door.
But it wasn’t the shadow of a person, it was the shadow of an impossibly large cat.
Alarmed, the guard thrusted his spear through the door at the shadow cat.
But the shadow disappeared, and the wife was nowhere to be found.
Even more suspicious, the next day, the wife did not leave her room to see anyone.
She said she slipped in the tub and hurt herself.
Even more more suspicious, lately the wife had been eating fish everyday, but he remembered
that she hated fish before.
The guard started following her, keeping an eye out for feline-related weirdness.
And he wasn’t disappointed.
They said mustard seed oil was a cat’s favorite drink, and mustard seed oil was used in lamps.
One day, the guard snuck into the wife’s room and saw her on all fours licking the
oil from a lamp.
Now remember the superstition about cats who live with humans.
They tend to get smarter and even start to take on human behaviors like standing on their
hind legs and dancing with a towel on their heads, don’t ask me why.
But that’s why the guard was convinced that she was a cat in human form,
and attacked her with his spear.
He was right.
She poofed into cat form and leapt outside.
The guard immediately recognized it as the blind man’s cat.
Afterwards, the castle men tore up her room and, to everyone’s horror, found beneath
it a skeleton and clothing that belonged to Lord Nabeshima’s wife.
To understand this, we have to mention another superstitious belief.
A cat can actually kill a person and eat the body to assume the person’s form.
It seemed that was what happened to Lord Nabeshima’s wife.
It was a vampire cat.
It didn’t suck blood, it sucked life.
It was draining the life from Nabeshima to avenge its owner, the blind Go player who
was unjustly killed.
The castle men tracked down the cat to an abandoned temple.
The guard asked the cat why it was hurting their lord.
The cat said…
“Meow.”
That must’ve been cat for “Help” because at that moment, an army of cats appeared from
the shadows.
Seeing no other way, the two sides engaged in a huge kitty battle.
The guards had a tough time because they kept having to stop and pet the cute wil kitties,
but they pushed through it and killed the vampire cat that was hurting their lord.
Sure enough, in the days after, Lord Nabeshima recovered.
Okay want some more superstitions about cats?
A cat is said to have a supernatural attachment with its master.
Some cats even disappear upon their masters’ death.
There are many signs that a cat will change into a monster.
For example, the color.
Cats that have the three colors of white, black, and brown are good to keep.
They are lucky and not troublesome.
White cats are smart and old, and have a good chance of turning into a monster.
Old cats are not good, by the way, especially old female cats.
The older they are, the more likely it is that they have turned or will turn.
Black cats are thought to be evil.
Pinkish or red-brown cats are the most dangerous, they are very likely to turn into a monster.
You must not own this type of cat.
So what color is your cat, and does its personality match this chart?
Let me know in the comments.
One well-known sign of trouble is if the cat’s ears start to split.
That means it’s changing.
A cat’s tail can also split.
People would cut the tail of their cat short, because if it grows too long it may split
into two tails and that’s when you know it has morphed into a nekomata (猫また),
an evil type of kitty monster.
It’s interesting that this is similar to the idea of many tailed foxes.
However, a nekomata usually only has two tails.
However however, there are less common stories of cats with three tails.
And then there are the necromancer cats.
Never leave a cat alone with a corpse.
It may pull this move where it jumps over the corpse and turns it into a zombie.
How?
Well, each person has two souls or spirits.
Your superior spirit ascends to heaven after death, but your inferior, animalistic spirit
hovers around your corpse for a long time.
By performing the jumping move, the cat can make this animalistic spirit re-enter the
body, reanimating it.
Hey for more Japanese folktales, click on this stuff on the side here.
Alrighty, I really like this tanka from the previous video, thanks Anna Morimoto.
So we have a new Emperor patron this week, Empress Mermaid.
Long may she reign.
And we also have new patrons Dracchus and Fatcatgamerfood.
Thank you so much guys.
Alright much love, and spread the knowledge.