About Me

My photo
Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

tama the cat: stationmaster to goddess

vintage spot PD

There's sad and yet pretty wonderful news from Japan as of yesterday, where a special train employee's funeral had 3000 attendees.  Tama the stationmaster cat - who singlehandedly kept a rural Japanese train line afloat by attracting tourists -- died recently at the age of 16.  She was given a fabulous sendoff, and to top it off, she's been given the new post of Shinto goddess.  Her apprentice Nitama has stepped in to keep the trains on time.
Here's the Guardian on Tama's farewell with loads of fine images.
She worked for the Wakayama Electric Railway, and you can imagine she's all over their site today (note: in Japanese, understandably)

2 comments:

A few Good Cats said...

Silly humans, thinking *they* were elevating Tama to the status of goddess.

curator said...

Ha! I certainly agree with you there, as does most of the "staff"!