First published in the Space Ink, December 31, 2022

1.
This is my beloved cat.
Her name is Tenzing.
That’s a Tibetan name.
We nicknamed her Tenten because that sounds lovelier and is easier to pronounce for Japanese.
It is also to avoid the inquisitive minds of people to ask,
“Why did you name her Tenzing?”
She is now 22 years old.

Once she had a job.
Her job was manager at the House of Tenten.
The House was open from April 2012 until September 2018.

It had five Japanese tatami mat rooms, a tiny modernized kitchen, and one renovated bathroom with a Western-style toilet.
But the exterior of the House remained as it had been built even though we can’t discover the exact year due to the lack of official documents.

It was a typical so-called “Kyo-Machiya”, the traditional Japanese-style house with wooden architecture and mud wall that fascinated non-Japanese and even Japanese people from other localities, as one of the historical assets of Kyoto culture.

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