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A carpenter and a calico cat

(Japanese classical stories)

Translation　ちいさな翻訳屋さん

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　A long time ago, there lived a carpenter at Kanda in Edo.

　Because his wife died, he was so lonely that he loved one calico cat very much.

　Every morning he prepared her food and went to his work.

　And when he finished his work, he bought her favorite fish as a souvenir.

 The cat also loved the carpenter. On hearing his footsteps, she properly went out to meet her master.

　One day, however, the carpenter got a disease of his eyes.

　When he went to see the doctor,

“You have terrible eye disease.

　I am sorry to say, but there’s no way we can cure your disease.“

　the doctor told him.

　Since then, he could not work so much and it made him very poor.

　Of course he could not afford to buy any fish for his cat.



　At one night, the carpenter talked to the cat,

“Hey Mike, my eyes will get cloudy and they won’t get well.

　I cannot work and we are worse off. I think I may not be able to take care of you anymore.

　What should I do?”

　As he was talking to the cat, he nodded off to sleep.

　Then she cried a little as if she understood his story,

“Meow.”

and she snuggled up to him to start to lick his eye eagerly.

　She licked his right eye and then licked his left eye.

　When he noticed that,

“What is she doing?”

　he thought, but when his eyes were licked, it felt good. So he let her do as she wanted.

　Since then, the cat kept licking his eyes when she found time.

　Oddly enough, the cloudy eyes of him were getting clearer.

　Around 10 days later, his eyes were all cured,

and he got much better view of everything.

　However, from that time, the eyes of the cat began clouding and she lost her eyesight at last.

　But there was nothing to worry about.

　The carpenter whose eyes were cured loved the blind cat much more than before,

and the cat lived with the carpenter happily ever after.

The end

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