What he discovered upon opening that door varies slightly between tellings. Some versions describe finding his mother dead, her body marked with the wound the lord had inflicted. Others suggest she was alive but changed—her eyes holding an awareness that was no longer entirely human. In either case, the implication remains consistent: something had been using her body, and that something was connected to a cat the household had kept for many years.
The account concludes with the destruction of the cat, though the circumstances differ across regional variations. In some, the cat is found beside the mother’s body, covered in blood. In others, it reveals itself only after being cornered, transforming before witnesses into something far larger than any ordinary feline.
Points of Interest Beyond the Tale
The “Possession of the Weak” Motif
This tale draws on a specific strand of Japanese folk belief that distinguished between cats that transformed and cats that possessed. Not all bakeneko became monsters themselves—some preferred to work through proxies. The elderly, the ill, and the grieving were considered particularly vulnerable. This belief may have served a social function: it provided a supernatural explanation for the erratic behavior sometimes exhibited by those suffering from dementia or delirium in an era before such conditions were medically understood.
The Saga Connection
Saga Prefecture (formerly Hizen Province) is unusually rich in bakeneko lore. The most famous is the Nabeshima Cat Disturbance, a sprawling tale of political intrigue and supernatural revenge. This particular account, while less well-known, shares thematic DNA: both involve cats infiltrating households through vulnerable women, both feature samurai torn between loyalty and horror, and both end with violent exorcism. Some folklorists suggest these tales reflect anxieties specific to the Saga domain’s turbulent political history.
The Blood-Trail Detail
The motif of following a blood trail to discover an uncomfortable truth appears across multiple Japanese supernatural accounts. It functions almost as a narrative device—a physical manifestation of the protagonist’s growing certainty that something is wrong. The smell of blood serves a similar purpose in this tale: it transforms the son’s righteous anger into creeping doubt before he ever opens the door.
Why an Old Woman?
The choice of an elderly female form for the attacking entity is significant. In Japanese folklore, aged women occupy an ambiguous supernatural space—they can be wise protectors or terrifying monsters, sometimes both simultaneously. The yamamba (mountain witch), the onibaba (demon hag), and various ghostly figures all take this form. An elderly mother possessed by a cat-demon draws on multiple layers of folk anxiety: fear of aging, fear of losing loved ones to illness, and fear that the familiar might become monstrous.
A Final Thought
There’s a question this tale never quite answers, and perhaps that’s the point.
Was the mother aware? During those years of illness, confined to her bed while something else borrowed her body at night—did some part of her know? Did she wake to blood under her fingernails and wonder? Or was she simply… absent, a vacant house through which something else moved freely?
The son walking down that corridor wasn’t just afraid of what he might find. He was afraid of what it might mean. That his mother had become a monster. That she had perhaps been a monster for years, lying in the next room while he went about his life. That every visit to her sickbed, every dutiful greeting, had been received by something wearing her face.
We like to believe we would notice if someone we loved became something else. This tale suggests otherwise. It suggests the change might be gradual, might hide behind closed doors and familiar features, might only reveal itself through small wrongnesses—a strange smell, an unusual absence, a look in the eyes that doesn’t quite fit.
The real horror isn’t the cat. It’s the corridor. It’s the walking toward something you already know but haven’t yet admitted.
And it’s the door you have to open anyway.
This tale is one of many regional accounts of bakeneko activity recorded in Japanese folklore, particularly prevalent in the former Hizen Province. Variations exist across multiple sources, with details differing according to local tradition.