The Chinese Zodiac

The zodiac pairs each passing year with an animal, and it counts twelve official members: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar. Two figures fall outside that circle yet stay bound to the Sohma curse, namely the Cat and God, and anyone holding one of these spirits turns into their animal when hugged by the opposite sex or worn down by weakness and stress.

Within the family, each spirit has a bearer. Yuki carries the Rat and Kyo the Cat, Hatsuharu the Ox and Kisa the Tiger, while Akito occupies the singular place of God at the center of them all. The remaining beasts fall to Momiji, Hatori, Ayame, Isuzu, Hiro, Ritsu, Kureno, Shigure, and Kagura.

The best-known telling of the tale explains why cat and rat are foes. God announced a banquet and warned the animals not to arrive late, but the sly rat convinced the neighboring cat that the feast fell a day later than it truly did. Every creature gathered on the correct morning, the rat riding in on the ox's back, while the cat slept at home dreaming of a celebration he would miss. From that deceit onward the cat chased the rat, forever trying to win back a place among the others.

The deeper story opens with a lonely man of a thousand lifetimes and powers who feared ordinary people because he was so unlike them. A cat came to him one day and vowed never to leave his side, and that devotion drew the other animals until thirteen creatures feasted with him beneath every bright moon. When the cat suddenly collapsed and died, the group grasped that all their joy would someday end, so the man drew a ring on a sake cup and had each of them drink a vow of eternal reunion, the rat going first.

The cat briefly woke to find the drink forced on him and, with his final breath, pleaded for endings to be accepted rather than denied, wishing only to meet his friend again beneath sunlight amid a ring of people. The others heard nothing but betrayal in his words. One by one they too passed on, the man last of all, unafraid because he trusted the promise would reunite them. Across the ages that vow curdled from a gift into a burden, its first tenderness forgotten, until at last, generations later, the cat's dying wish was quietly fulfilled.