February 9, 1874

 

Amy Lowell was born on February 9, 1874. She was descended from the historically significant Lowell family, and this fact may have prompted Amy to write the introduction to a book called Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Published in 1920, the introduction Amy wrote tells us that the author of the following excerpt was born in 1009 AD and that we do not know the author's name. I am quoting at length this episode involving a cat in an aristocratic household, in Japan, a thousand years ago.

"Once in the Rice-Sprout month, when I was up late reading a romance, I heard a cat mewing with a long- drawn-out cry. I turned, wondering, and saw a very lovely cat. "Whence does it come?" I asked. "Sh," said my sister, " do not tell anybody. It is a darling cat and we will keep it."

The cat was very sociable and lay beside us. Some one might be looking for her [we thought], so we kept her secretly. She kept herself aloof from the vulgar servants, always sitting quietly before us. She turned her face away from unclean food, never eating it. She was tenderly cared for and caressed by us.

Once sister was ill, and the family was rather upset. The cat was kept in a room facing the north [i.e. a servant's room], and never was called. She cried loudly and scoldingly, yet I thought it better to keep her away and did so. Sister, suddenly awakening, said to me, "Where is the cat kept? Bring her here." I asked why, and sister said:'In my dream the cat came to my side and said, 'I am the altered form of the late Honoured Daughter of the First Adviser to the King... Your sister has been thinking of me affectionately, so I am here for a while, but now I am among the servants. O how dreary I am!' So saying she wept bitterly. She appeared to be a noble and beautiful person and then I awoke to hear the cat crying! How pitiful!"

The story moved me deeply and after this I never sent the cat away to the north-facing room, but waited on her lovingly.