Tama, Japan’s Most Famous Cat, Gets Goddess Status At Shinto-Style Funeral Attended By 3,000

Tama, the most famous cat in Japan, was buried on Sunday with a big bang. The feline, which died of heart failure, was 16 years old in human years or 80 in cat years. She was buried with 3,000 people attending the funeral rite wherein the honorary stationmaster was declared posthumous a Shinto goddess.

The former stray animal, which was credited with saving a Japanese rail line from financial ruin, was known for wearing a specially made stationmaster’s cap and cape. After Tama was appointed honorary stationmaster in 2007, word spread around of the cute feline, causing thousands of tourists to flock to the station and ride the Kihigawa line which was then mired in debt, reports The Guardian.

Her post was at the line’s Kishi station in the western prefecture of Wakayama, a rural area. The 14.5-kilometre line was losing $4 million a year as passenger volume drastically dropped to as low as 5,000 riders a day when Tama came in. There were days when the train arrived at the station empty, reports The Washington Post.

A year before she became a fixture at the Kishi station, the last employee was laid off in 2006 to cut cost. However, with Tama just 12 months on the job, passenger volume went up 10 percent to 2.1 million a year while the local economy grew to $8.9 million because of the so-called Tama effect. Besides the ticket sales, there were also sales of T-shirts and stuffed toys with the cat’s image which was also found on the train’s exterior.

Wakayama Electric Railway President Mitsunobu Kojima said that Tama’s corpse will be placed at a nearby shrine for cats in August. Her being made a Shinto goddess is part of a practice of the indigenous Japanese religion in which animal deities are honoured.

During her eight years of working for Wakayama, Tama was promoted twice to ultra-stationmaster and vice president. At her burial, Tama was further elevated to honourable eternal stationmaster. Before the cat died, she was sick with sinus infection. The railway has hired Nitama, which belongs to the same breed as Tama, a tortoiseshell cat, to serve as apprentice stationmaster.

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