Late one spring night, while immersed in a tale, I heard a prolonged miaow. I looked up with a start and saw an extremely pretty cat. Where on earth was it from, I wondered. Just then my sister came behind the curtain. "Hush!" she said. "Not a word to anyone! It's a darling cat. Let's keep it!"

The cat was very friendly and lay down beside us. Since we were afraid that people might come looking for her, we kept her hidden in our part of the house. There she stayed faithfully, cuddled up between us; she never went near the servants' quarters and would eat only the daintiest food.

We looked after her with great care until one day my sister fell ill and in the confusion I decided to keep our cat in the northern wing of the house. She miaowed loudly at not being allowed into our rooms, but I had expected this and, pitiful though her cries were, I thought it better to keep her away during my sister's illness.

One day my sister suddenly said, "'What's happened? Where's our cat? Bring her here!"

"'Why?" I asked.

"I've had a dream," she explained. "Our cat came to me and said, 'I am the daughter of the Chamberlain Major Counsellor, and it is in this form that I have been reborn. Because of some karma berween us, your sister grew very fond of me and so I have stayed in this house for a time. But recently she has put me in the servants' quarters, which I find terrible.' She cried and cried, and I thought she looked like a very beautiful and elegant woman. When I awoke, I realized that the words in my dream were the miaowing of our cat. This dream has moved me deeply."

I too was moved by my sister's story and thereafter never sent the cat to the northern wing, but looked after her carefully in my own room.

Once when I was alone she came and sat beside me. I stroked her for a long time. "So you are the Major Counsellor's daughter!" I said. "If only I could let His Excellency know that you are here!" Hearing this, she gazed at me intently and gave a long miaow. It may have been my imagination but at that moment her eyes were not those of an ordinary cat; they seemed to understand exactly what I was saying.

In the fourth month of the following year there was a fire in our house and the cat whom we had tended so carefully as the daughter of His Excellency the Major Counsellor was burnt to death. Whenever I used to call out "Counsellor's daughter!" this cat had miaowed and come to me with a look of understanding on her face. "It really is extraordinary," Father used to say. "I must tell His Excellency about it." How pathetic that she should have died like this!

Source: As I Crossed the Bridge of Dreams by 'Lady Sarashina' (1971 translation by Ivan Morris of Sarashina Nikki by Takasue no Musume, c.1060; pp 58-61)

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