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When I was nine, my family (four boys, two girls) moved to Yokosuka, Japan where my father had orders to report.

Sometime after we arrived, the family station wagon finally made it over (1964 Chrysler New Yorker station wagon...white exterior, red leather interior, fit ten people, and had pushbutton gear selection!)

My mother took us off base on a drizzly, grey, rainy day, and as we drove along some Japanese highway, we saw it.

My mother said later when she saw it, she prayed silently all of us kids would not see it.

A small, filthy, calico kitten with a bob tail, in a puddle beside the road. We all saw it at the same time, and the entire car (except for my mother) erupted in tearful pleas to save the kitten.

That poor woman. She was helpless there. So she pulled the car over, my mother splashed back, scooped up the kitten, and deposited her in the back seat. When we got back, my mother filled the kitchen sink with lukewarm water, and immersed the cat in it. The surface of the water in the sink looked like someone had shaken a pepper shaker all over it. I did not comprehend what it was until my mother snapped “Get away from the sink. Those are fleas.” Hehehe...my eyes must have looked like saucers when I realized it wasn’t pepper on the water.

Wonderful cat, and our dog that was given to us by Seabees living in a barracks next to our new home. We named that cat “Chi Chi”, and took her to the Philippines with us a few years later, along with the dog.

Kewl! your own personal Makeki-Neko. Likely with the lack pf a tail it was a purebreed known as a Japanese bobtail. The japanese are a bunch of cat-crazy people. Look up “Maru” on youtube theres a series of videos of this japanese apartment kitty. He’s an absolute scream.