Why This Tale
Among the numerous bakeneko legends scattered throughout Japanese folklore, this particular account from the Saga region has always struck me as unusually layered. Most cat-demon stories follow a predictable arc: a cat grows old, transforms, and terrorizes. This one doesn’t.
What drew me to this tale was its refusal to settle into easy horror. It’s a story about suspicion—the kind that poisons from within. A loyal retainer hears that his own mother is suspected of being a monster. The accusation is absurd. She’s been bedridden for years. And yet, as he walks toward her room, there’s that smell. Blood. Growing stronger with every step.
For English-speaking readers unfamiliar with the cultural context of Edo-period household dynamics and folk beliefs about possession, certain elements of the original account can feel abrupt or unexplained. In adapting this tale, I’ve worked to provide narrative bridges—clarifying the social stakes, the weight of a samurai’s loyalty to his lord versus his duty to family, the specific superstitions surrounding weakened elders as vessels for yokai. The core events and emotional trajectory remain faithful to the source material. What changes is only the connective tissue that helps modern readers feel the full weight of what these characters faced.
Honestly, it’s the corridor scene that haunts me. That slow walk through a house you’ve known your entire life, toward a truth you’re already beginning to sense. Horror doesn’t always come from monsters. Sometimes it comes from the moment you realize you’re afraid of someone you love.
The Setup
The incident begins not with the cat, but with an attack.
One night, the lord of a domain in the Saga region is assaulted in his private chambers by an unknown assailant—an elderly woman of impossible speed and strength. He fights her off, but not before noticing something disturbingly familiar in her features.
The following morning, an inquiry begins. One retainer was notably absent from the morning assembly. That man’s mother, it emerges, has been gravely ill for years—bedridden, frail, unable to walk.
And yet the lord cannot shake what he saw.
Meanwhile, the absent retainer hears the rumors: his mother is under suspicion. Outraged, he rushes home to prove her innocence. But as he approaches her room, an unexpected scent stops him cold.
The smell of blood.
The Tale Itself
The events unfold across a single night and the day that follows.
According to the account, the lord of a domain in Hizen Province (modern-day Saga Prefecture) was sleeping in his chambers when he was suddenly attacked by what appeared to be an elderly woman. Despite her aged appearance, the assailant displayed unnatural agility and ferocity. The lord, a trained warrior, managed to wound and repel the attacker, who fled into the darkness.
At daybreak, the lord convened his retainers. During the assembly, he noted the absence of one particular vassal. Upon inquiry, he learned that this man’s mother had been confined to her sickbed for several years, suffering from a prolonged and wasting illness.
The lord recalled a folk belief common in the region: that weakened or dying individuals, particularly the elderly, could become unwitting hosts for malevolent spirits. Their diminished vitality, it was said, offered no resistance to supernatural possession. A bakeneko—a cat that had lived long enough to acquire demonic properties—was thought especially capable of such possession, using a human body to move freely and pursue its desires.
Suspicion fell upon the bedridden mother.
The retainer, informed of these accusations, refused to believe them. He departed immediately for his family home, intent on clearing his mother’s name. The account describes his journey through the corridors of his own house with mounting dread: the familiar hallways seemed altered, and a metallic scent grew stronger as he approached his mother’s quarters.