One of these is the Lucky Cat legend familiar to some Westerners-the story of a samurai, Lord Naotaka li, an actual historical figure who lived at the beginning of the Edo period.  as the story goes, the lord and his entourage were returning from battle to their home district of Hikone, near present-day Tokyo.  (In some versions of the tale, the lord is simply a wealthy man out hunting.)  As it began to rain, the group came upon a small, run-down temple in the woods inhabited by a monk-who, though nearly destitute, kept a little white cat named Tama.  As Naotaka took shelter under a tree near the temple, he noticed Tama sitting in the temple's gateway.  To his suprise, the cat raised her paw and seemed to beckon him inside.  Enchanted, the lord dismounted from his horse and entered the temple grounds, whereupon a bold of lightning struck the tree under which he had just been standing.  Tama had saved his life.

     In gratitude, Naotaka proclaimed that the temple would henceforth be his family temple.  From that point on, the Gotoku-ji temple enjoyed the patronage of the feudal lord, as well as a considerable rise in fortune.  When Tama finally died, she was buried on the temple grounds and the first Maneki Neko statue was created to commemorate her.

     Whether or not there actually was a Tama, there is a Gotoku-ji temple, in what is now the western Tokyo suburb of Setagaya, and hundreds of cats are buried on its grounds.  People who wish to petition for the well-being of their cats, or for other personal causes, come to the temple with ema (prayer boards).  It is also possible to buy a Maneki Neko statue there, and the grounds feature wooden shelves lined with them as offerings.  And perhaps because some versions of the story make the additional claim that Tama was in fact Kannon (the Japanese name for Kuan Yin, the popular Goddess of Compassion) in cat form, the Gotoku-ji temple contains a statue of Shofoku Kanzeon (Fortune-Beckoning Kannon) within its cat shrine.

     The second temple-based Lucky Cat legend centers on the Shonenji temple in Kyoto, which is popularly known as the Nekodera, or Cat Temple.  Again, a poor monk kept a cat; one day, feeling discouraged, he asked the animal why it never did anything to help him.  The cat disappeared, and the next day the monk was suprised by a visit from two representatives of a wealthy nearby family, who told him the lord's daughter had died in the night and had asked, just before her death, to be buried at the temple.  Apparently, the cat had entered her soul and inspired her to make the request.  From then on, the temple, and the monk, enjoyed the patronage of the family.  The Shonenji temple now contains a popular pet cemetery.

     A different and more macabre Maneki Neko legend, purportedly dating to about 1800, is recounted in Amaury Saint-Gilles's Mingei: Japan's Enduring Folk Arts.  In this account, two rival teahouses outside the gate of the Eko-in temple in Ryogoku, Tokyo, each placed a porcelain cat statue-one painted in gold, the other silver-outside its front door in an attempt to attract business.  Nevertheless, the owner of the Golden Cat Teahouse still found herself short of cash, and she convinced a merchant patron to lend her a large sum of money.  Unfortunately, the money wasn't really his to lend-it belonged to a friend, and when his friend asked for the money back, the merchant was unable to repay.  He resolved to express his remorse by committing suicide.  Just as he was about to throw himself off a nearby bridge, the teahouse owner happened to pass by, and when he explained the situation, she decided to join him in a double suicide.  The resulting notoriety ensured the financial success of the Golden Cat Teahouse, and the public became convinced, despite the body count, that this was proof of the fortune-beckoning talents of the porcelain cat statue.  Sensing a business opportunity, local manufacturers began selling copies of the statue, and Maneki Neko was born. 

     In a less dramatic variation on this tale, the two cats stood outside rival ramen shops in Asakusa.  At first only one of the shops had a cat, and all the customers went to it until the other shop got a cat of its own.  The power of the Lucky Cat was demonstrated by his ability to balance the equation.

     Perhaps the original model for Maneki Neko was the pet cat of a nineteenth-century money changer, one of whose regular clients was a fishmonger.  The fishmonger liked the money changer's cat and always brought it a piece of fish when he visited.  Unfortunately, the fismonger got sick and eventually became so ill he couldn't work.  One day, on the brink of starvation, he opened his door and found two gold koban (coins) outside.

      With the money he was able to afford a doctor, and eventually he recovered.  But when he returned after his long absence to see the money changer, the cat wasn't there.  Asking after his little friend, the fismonger was told that after the apparent theft of two gold koban, the only suspect, the cat, had been put to death as a thief.  Sobbing, the fishmonger told his story.  All were overcome with grief, and to commemorate the good-hearted cat, they crafted the first Maneki Neko statue.

     The Beckoning Cat's true historic association with the culture of the Pleasure Quarters (red-light districts) of Edo and other towns expressed in still another, somewhat more gruesome Maneki Neko legend.  In this story, set in the mid-Edo period, a courtesan named Usugumo owned a pet cat she loved very much and which, in return, was extremely loyal to her. 

     One evening, she and the cat were walking through the garden of the geisha house to the bathhouse; suddenly, at the doorway to the bathhouse, the cat lept in front of her and blocked her path, hissing and raising his paw to claw at her robes if she dared step forward.  (In another version, Usugumo is taking a bath, and the cat keeps trying to climb into the water.)  She screamed for help.  Bystanders took this apparent attack as evidence that the cat had become possessed by evil spirits, and the owner of the geisha house (or someone else who just happened to have a sword handy) lopped off the animal's head. 

     Magically, the cat's head flew up into the rafters of the bathhouse to bite and kill a poisonous snake that had been lurking there, ready to strike Usugumo.  The loyal cat, by refusing to let her enter th building, had been doing all it could to save her life.  to try to ease Usugumo's grief, a customer gave her a wooden statuette of a cat; this, too, is supposed to be the original Maneki Neko.