A Bakeneko ("monster-cat") is, in Japanese folklore, a cat with supernatural abilities akin to those of the fox or raccoon dog.
Bakeneko almost always has the appearance of a cat of uncommon size, but in rare cases it can be confused with the Nekomata form.
Biography[]
A cat may become a bakeneko in a number of ways: it may reach a certain age, be kept for a certain number of years, grow to a certain size, or be allowed to keep a long tail. Regardless of the circumstances, the cat will transform into the bakeneko and gain paranormal powers soon after. They also have the ability to eat (bigger or smaller) anything in its way, no matter what it is. Poison is its main food.
A bakeneko will haunt any household it is kept in, creating ghostly fireballs, menacing sleepers, walking on its hind legs, changing its shape into that of a human, and even devouring its own mistress in order to shapeshift and take her place. When it is finally killed, its body may be as much as five feet in length. It also poses a danger if allowed into a room with a fresh corpse; a cat is believed to be capable of reanimating a body by jumping over it.
Stories[]
Nabeshima bakeneko disturbance[]
Nabeshima Mitsushige, the second lord of the Saga clan in Hizen province, and his Go partner Ryuzouzi Matashichirou are murdered when Mitsushige's mood is offended. Matashichirou's mother commits suicide by telling her grieving heart about her son's death to her cat. When the cat licked her mother's blood, it turned into a bakeneko and entered Mitsunari's castle, tormenting Mitsushige with a curse every night. Eventually, Mitsushige's loyal retainer, Hanzaemon Komori, vanquished the bakeneko.
Arima bakeneko disturbance[]
The handmaiden Otaki, who was favored by Arima Yoritaka at the residence of the Arima family of the Kurume clan, became the envy of the feudal lord's wife Otoyo no Kata. Fearing that her husband may abandoned her and marry Otaki, she and her maids plot to make the handmaiden's life miserable, which eventually culminated in her suicide. Since then, there have been a series of suspicious deaths of the people involved in the bullying. Otoyo was the last to be killed, her stomach ripped open and slaughtered along with her unborn child. The first person to discover this was the security guard Yamamura Norizen, who guessed that the culprit of the previous incidents was a cat that had licked Otaki's blood and took a sword between the eyes of a nearby bakeneko. Later, Norizen saw his mother had made a wound in the same spot, so he deduced her identity and finally managed to kill the bakeneko.
