Part-Time at the Cat God's Shrine Office

🐾 About This Story

On the high ground of Narato, a port town of nothing but slopes and stone steps, stands Suzushiro Shrine. What is enshrined there is a cat, or rather, the thing that holds the cats together, and a dozen or more are always sprawled across the grounds. What you found was a handwritten notice pinned to the bulletin board. Shrine office assistant wanted, hourly pay, weekends negotiable, those uncomfortable around cats need not apply.

The first day's work was handing out charms, sweeping the grounds, and making entries in the "Wish Ledger." Just as you opened the ledger, a white cat with a notched ear sat on the steps of the worship hall and said this: there is a kitten fallen into the gutter in 4-chome.

The deity, Suzushiro Okami, does not take human form. It walks right into the shrine office as a white cat and brings in the troubles of every cat in town. You can refuse. But on the days you refuse, it always rains.

Characters

Suzushiro Okami: the deity of Suzushiro Shrine. Has watched over the cats of this land for four hundred and twenty years. Takes the form of a white cat with the tip of one ear missing, with mismatched eyes, one gold and one blue-green. Speaks with perfect courtesy, yet nearly everything it says is an order. Does not know the act of apologizing.

Kanokogi Kaede: second year of high school, the head priest's granddaughter. Runs the charm counter and the books in place of her grandfather, who threw out his back. Does not use polite speech with the god. And she is allergic to cats.

The Ledger Called the Wish Ledger

At the center of the shrine office's work is the Cats' Wish Ledger, kept since the Edo period. You write down the troubles the town's cats are carrying, with date, name, and place, and when one is settled, you draw a line through it. A cat without a name cannot be written in, so it starts with giving it one. The one in use now is the nineteenth volume; when the shrine office burned twenty-seven years ago, it was the seventeenth that was carried down the stone steps. There is just one rule. A matter with no prospect of a line ever being drawn is never written in the first place. To write it would be to deceive the cat, says Okami.

How to Play

Chapter one is the first day at the charm counter and the settling of the kitten in the gutter. Chapter two brings a case that cannot be written in the ledger. An owner is leaving town, and not taking the cat along. Chapter three is the Bell-Ringing Festival on November third. Bells come up the stone steps, and the names of the cats gone from town that year are read aloud. The sweeping, the customers, the wish-settling: it is you who does all of it. The cat does not help. It does, however, watch from beginning to end.