Neko-nnection
Christopher Dedrick R. Conwi (Kagoshima, 2023-present)
As an animal lover, coming home to an empty apartment that didn’t allow pets was a bit of an adjustment. You don’t hear tippy-tapping on the floor getting louder and louder the moment you get home, you don’t get a hairball nuzzling your leg. Nothing. Living alone is not my cup of tea. And it wasn’t like in the Philippines, where I could just step outside and befriend a street cat or a stray dog; Japanese local governments are better at managing citizens’ safety than that, but at what cost? The crows and the falcons were not easy to befriend either. I needed an animal to care about soon or I would go crazy.
So I did what any sane person would do: swipe right on every Tinder profile with a photo of a pet and hope we matched so I could come over and pet their fur babies. Unfortunately, I don’t think I appeal to Japanese women, so that didn’t work at all. So I did the next best thing and looked for an animal shelter on Google Maps. I honestly just went to the closest one as soon as my free time matched up with their opening hours. I headed for Mauruuru, which was, thankfully, a short bike ride from my apartment. (And very close to Taniyama Station for anyone interested in supporting our cat café!)
I had no plan! I had enough Japanese to get me through konbini transactions and I could say Hai whenever I didn’t understand something. I thought of pretending to be interested in adopting, even though I knew my apartment wouldn’t allow it. (But honestly, I had already started looking for pet-friendly apartments and would move once my current contract came to an end.) When I got there, I met Kazuyo-san, a very accommodating Japanese lady who spoke very little English. I spoke toddler-level Japanese and we just managed to understand each other thanks to a charades-esque conversation and inaccurate translations from Google Translate. Nevertheless, she was very happy to hear that I wanted to volunteer and help out at the café-shelter on weekends when I was free. They did not have enough hands to pet all 25 cats and four dogs.
This article was published in partnership with AJET’s CONNECT magazine.
