Home...and smelly???

8.38 last night I hear a little patter of feet and a squeak over the TV noise.
And in Chichi runs.
All wild-eyed and happy to be hooooome!


Very thirsty.
Not so hungry.
Clean?
Smells of....????? incense????


WHERE has he been? Locked in a shrine? A butsudan/house altar - with the spirits? Did he survive eating the altar food offerings, but couldn't open up the little jars of sake that Japanese families leave  for their ancestors on altars?


We'll never know.

*  Yujiro got to know our neighborhood a lot during this missing-cat saga - as he walked the area and talked to people. Yesterday he was talking to one kind woman, whose house is just the otherside of the subway line.

"No, I don't think I've seen this cat...where do you live? Over there? Oh...is there an old lady and a foreigner? A few days ago I brought the old lady home! I was worried. She was standing near my house - looking confused - and she told me she lived in a <white house on the corner> and I brought her back...."

Okaasan IS getting lost when she tries to come home via that road, but also she is getting help. So glad we live in an area with kind people.

We saw her coming home a few days ago and talking with a woman, but when we asked about it she just said it was someone she'd met in the street and was chatting to - already she'd forgotten the getting lost part.