YOKAI.JP

Cat Maiden

NEH-koh-moo-SOO-meh

Cat Maiden

Cat Maiden

Their soul is listening — speak, and they will answer.

Basic Description

Cat Maiden is a label given to women who display feline habits or tastes, appearing in early modern eyewitness notes, sideshow bills, and yomihon fiction. It lacks a fixed image as a supernatural being; most references use it as a nickname for eccentric people or performers. It turns up in Edo and Kamigata sideshows, in the odd-woman tale of the yomihon Ehon Sayoshigure, and in anecdotal miscellanies. Rather than a shape-shifting monster, it is best understood as a human eccentric compared to a cat.

Folklore & Legends

During the Horeki–Meiwa era in Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, sideshow tents exhibited women billed as “Cat Maidens.” A kansai-era yomihon records a woman with a rough, catlike tongue who licked men, earning the nickname “Cat Maiden,” while comic-verse books mention similar “licking women.” An Ansei-era miscellany tells of a girl in Edo’s Ushigome who ate fish offal and mice and ran over rooftops; neighbors valued her as a mouser. These are human oddity tales, with little development into full-fledged supernatural lore.

Yokai Cards3

Cat Maiden across multiple art-style decks

Card gallery

Detailed Analysis

The cat-girl refers to accounts of human oddities in early modern urban sideshows and reportage, describing feline tastes (fondness for fish entrails, chasing rats), movements (traversing walls and rooftops), and mannerisms (likened to a rough, tongue-like texture). In the Horyaku and Meiwa eras, she was occasionally billed in Asakusa and similar venues, but her fame was short-lived, and even amid the An’ei and Tenmei vogue she never became a major headline act. In yomihon and kyoka collections she appears as a curiosity under labels like “cat-girl” or “licking woman,” not as a transforming yokai. Late Edo miscellanies include an anecdote of a girl near Ushigome praised for catching rats, material that reflects community responses to rodent damage, a taste for spectacle, and the gaze cast upon the strange.

Character Profile

This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.

Rarity
Uncommon
Personality
friendly yet wary, quick to hunger, alert and curious
Compatibility
aligns with those who value cleanliness, beneficial to households plagued by rats, conflicts with people who tease or mock
Abilities
agile movement along walls and rooftops, keen sense and fixation for sniffing out and catching rats, preference for fish heads and viscera, figurative depictions of a rough tongue and habitual licking
Weaknesses
shy under public scrutiny and mockery, repelled by strong-smelling smoke or incense, constrained in strict or highly regulated settings
Habitat
Edo urban quarters, Kamigata sideshow booths, legendary tales of wealthy estates in Awa Province

🔮Yokai Compatibility Test

For more detailed information and diagnosis results about Cat-Girl of Early Modern Sideshow and Eyewitness Reports, please click here.

Interested in this type of yokai?

Discover the yokai most similar to your personality with our yokai diagnosis

Start Yokai Diagnosis

Meet your guardian yokai at the shrine

Draw an omikuji fortune and discover the yokai watching over you today.