On a nice saunter down to the Tama River today–the weather has been beautiful lately, I couldn’t pass up the chance–I found something which is quite rare in Japan: friendly cats.

By “friendly,” I mean ones that you can walk up to and pet. Living in Japan for a while, you tend to get used to the fact that neighborhood cats never let you get near them; they get skittish at anything less than 20 feet at least. I used to wonder why this was, and I think I found the answer some years back. There was a cat once I saw in the street, and was having some success approaching it. But then, about 100 feet down the road, a child darted out into the street. Despite the distance, the cat bolted. Ah. In addition, I’ve seen cats getting treatment not exactly in line with cat protocol, for instance people picking up poor felines by their front legs.

So when I saw two cats lazing in the grass on the banks of the Tama River, I did not expect to be able to get close. Instead, I got out my camera so I could take some pictures. To my surprise, when I looked up, I found that both cats were approaching me. I let them sniff my hand, let them see where I was going to pet and scratch, and both cats were cool to it. As a number of adults walked by, the cats paid no heed. But as I expected, when a group of young boys walked by, both cats ran for cover–not too far though, and they came back. So I snapped my pics and enjoyed some tame, friendly cats for a bit in the warm, late afternoon.

To see some of the photos, I’ve posted them here.