A woman asks about cats. She would like to do something to help them. She doesn't tell us what kind of help she would like to provide, but it is a reasonably safe assumption to think she wants to help homeless cats, the ones that gather in any neighborhood where residents will give them food. Mine is especially popular. We have many cat lovers and the wild, scraggly strays eventually are transformed into clean, well-kept cats that can be counted on to produce the next generation of kittens without a home of their own, dependent upon charity.

Authorities, as well as sincere cat lovers, do not want people to extend this kind of care to homeless cats. It only leads to increased problems down the genealogical line. They want concerned cat lovers to catch these cats and take them someplace to have them neutered. This can be a financial drain because vets charge high fees for this service. There are times when public concern results in bargain neutering being made available, and often ward offices will have a list of cooperating vets. Then the problem may well be how to catch a cat that does not want to be caught and get it to the cooperating vet.

Since we cannot be sure what she wants to do, I would suggest that she buy a copy of a magazine called Cats. Only the title is in English so if her Japanese and imagination are not good enough, she must find a friend to help with translation. There is much information about cats including cat clubs and organizations.

She might find the Sunflower Cat Club, at (03) 3401-4635, to be just what she wants. One of the club's study programs concerns stray cats. They hope to raise the awareness of people who feed strays and to encourage them to expand their area of interest since just feeding them leads, as we have seen, to increases in the number of these homeless, unhappy creatures. Their goal is neutering and they work to raise neighborhood awareness of what can be done. There is information in Cats about this and other clubs, what they do and how to join.

Perhaps when she asks for a copy of Cats, she should call the magazine Neko. That is because she is a foreigner and there is some sort of automatic translation that occurs with some Japanese words. I once had a cat. I called it Neko-chan. Gradually I realized she was staying out late and sometimes not coming home at all. I finally found out why. She had adopted a neighbor. I could see her through the window, sitting on the kotatsu (it was winter) and being fed choice bits of fish or chicken. She didn't have a kotatsu at my apartment and she certainly didn't have choice pieces of food fed to her by hand, at least not very often. This went on for several months and while I missed Neko, I finally accepted the inevitable and went to see my neighbor with whom I had a bowing acquaintance. I explained that since my cat seemed to prefer them, I thought we should make it official so she would be relieved of any obligation to return home. They were pleased. And I was too. I wasn't providing a good home. I was away all day and I traveled a lot. As I left, they asked what my cat's name was. I told them: Neko-chan. The next day I heard them calling my former pet. Cat-chan, Cat-chan, they called.

Cats have appeared frequently in this column. Earliest entries concerned kitty litter. It was not available. One woman called a leading supermarket and was told they had it. Further questions revealed that they thought she had asked for liver. Language has always complicated communications. You couldn't buy scratching boards either and one column dealt with how to make one, which only involved nailing a piece of carpet to a board and adding a bit of catnip. Catnip? That word was not familiar here but matatabi was and it did the same thing, attracted cats to a scratching board rather than to the shoji and tatami. One reader, distressed at the number of complaints about cats, urged us to try to view annoying situations from the cat's point of view; then solutions would be easy to find. And finally, there was the man who wondered if Felix the Cat gum used squid instead of chicle as its base -- it was white and seemed to have the consistency of dried squid. The manufacturer, not amused, assured us it was chicle.