Vanishing Into the 100% Dark (Bean to Bar Mysteries)by Amber RoyerI am delighted to welcome Amber Royer to Escape With Dollycas today!Calicos in Japan, or Why Felicity Hangs out with a Cat in This Book In each of my Bean to Bar Mysteries, my protagonist hangs out with a different animal. She has babysat an octopus, in a book focused on marine life. She unraveled the clues hidden in the cryptic phrases repeated by a cockatoo in a story that dealt with shipwreck treasure. She hung out with a tuxedo cat in A Study in Chocolate. So why is she spending time with a cat again in Vanishing into the 100% Dark?The Bean to Bar Mysteries are set in Galveston. Felicity, my protagonist, is a bean to bar chocolate maker who loves to travel. We’re at the eighth book in the series and I decided it was finally time to show her traveling. In Book 7, I had a character invite her to a chocolate festival in Tokyo. One reason for this is that I’ve visited Tokyo a couple of times, and it felt like a place my characters would enjoy. I also try to highlight something about Galveston in each book in the series. And Galveston just so happens to have a sister city in Japan. It wasn’t practical to have the characters actually travel to Niigata, which is four hours from Tokyo by car. I had to settle for introducing a character from Niigata.Calico cats are popular throughout Japan – and in Niigata Prefecture, there’s even a cat mascot for one of the villages. Nyankichi, a cat with a snake on his head, started out as the mascot for a local walking tour, but was eventually adopted as the official mascot for the village of Sekikawa.In another town in the same prefecture, there was a fire in 1931 which destroyed much of Shirone City. There was a festival to help revive the city called the “Shironeko Koushinkyoku” (“Shironeko Parade“). Ko added to the end of the city name referred to the children of the city – but it turned the pronunciation into the same as, “shiro neko,” or “white cat,” so participants wore white cat masks in the parade. There have been some attempts to revive this festival in recent times.When cats first arrived in Japan, only wealthy individuals were allowed to own cats, which are believed to have been imported from China. But cats proved too useful to limit. Cats have historically been important to the Japanese silk industry (alongside other businesses) for controlling rodents and other pests.Even where it is less practical, cats are enjoyed for the stress reducing effect they provide. Today, cat cafes are popular for those who can’t have pets at home. (This trend has been around for a while. The first cat café in Japan opened in 2005, and there was a boom in openings through roughly 2010. An episode in the first season of Samourai Cat, which aired in 2014, reimagines history to allow for an explanation of the benefits of cat cafes.) February 22 is cat day, because in Japanese, cats say, “nyan,” instead of, “meow.” And the number two is pronounced “ni.” So when you say that date quickly, it kind of sounds like meowing. For the past several years, convenience stores including Family Mart and 7-11 have produced special cat-themed snacks available only for a couple of weeks at the end of February.There are even roughly a dozen islands off the coast of Japan where significant feral cat populations exist. In Aoshima, the most famous of the cat islands, the cats are estimated to outnumber people 6 to 1. A recent influx of tourist visits to the island has overwhelmed the permanent residents (as there isn’t infrastructure to handle numerous visitors). Attempts have been made on Aoshima to spay and neuter all the feral cats to reign in the population.Station Master Tama was a cat mascot for the then-failing Wakayama Electric Railway Co, a private railway that runs from Wakayama city to Kishi in Kinokawa. Not only did having a cat in an official hat draw enough people to the line to save the station, it also turned the area into a tourist destination. You can ride a train decorated with images of Tama and even visit with successor station master cats, Nitama and Yontama (Tama 2 and Tama 4).Tama was, of course, a calico. If there is a cat in a folktale in Japan, chances are it too is a calico. Japanese sailors are said to have kept calicos as their ship cats because of a belief that they would bring good fortune. (Probably the same reason that the popular “beckoning cat” statues are also calicos.) Even the cat seen in the giant billboard in Shinjuku is a calico.While in my books Felicity isn’t particularly superstitious, I introduced a calico because of their popularity in Japan. In Vanishing Into the 100% Dark, Honda the Calico belongs to the director of a movie being filmed across the street from where Felicity and her friends are exhibiting at the chocolate festival. When the studio is unexpectedly closed as a crime scene, Felicity winds up in charge of the cat. She gets to learn a few things about cat care and experience the stress-relieving factor of cat purring along the way.Because the movie being filmed is a kaiju (giant monster) film, it seemed appropriate to name her Honda, after the guy who wrote the first Godzilla movie. It also gave me the opportunity to have one of the characters make a, “Like the car?” joke. (If you know my work at all, you know I’m always going to go for the joke.) I hope you check out Vanishing into the 100% Dark, and get to meet sweet little Honda yourself.Thank you, Amber, for visiting today!Keep reading for more information about Amber and her new book! Read the full article
