My recent interest in fortune cats had been piqued by my dad who had been deeply fascinated by them himself for quite a number of years.
He had quite a vast collection of fortune cats which had been bought or given to him as gifts from his loved ones. As his home had been roomy enough for a shelf to be dedicated for the purpose of displaying his cats, you could see from the photo shown below that he had a good variety of these fortune cats which range from figurines to coin banks.
Recently, my hubby & myself bought him a reasonably priced fortune cat from Young Generation located at NEX (Serangoon central) for his birthday.
The birthday gift is to be added to his current collection as he had plenty of room on the shelf for fortune cats & other meaningful figurines such as his favourite fishes.
The birthday gift is to be added to his current collection as he had plenty of room on the shelf for fortune cats & other meaningful figurines such as his favourite fishes.
We placed in 18 one-dollar coins as a symbolic gesture which is best encapsulated in Chinese as "一直发" (Meaning getting lucky all the time).
The first fortune cat that I bought for myself dated back as far as 12 years ago when I first bought a really tiny figurine from a book store. I bought it just for fun and it had since then been seated on my study table until I had forgotten all about its presence.
As you could see from the photograph attached below, my first fortune cat isn't exactly well-made & apart from wearing a collar bell around its neck, it is holding on to a "crystal" ball (likely to be a glass bead) in its right paw with its left paw held high up too.
Due to the age of this figurine, the dark red colour is bleeding out onto the pastel pink which had aged beautifully into a light peachy sort of tone. The expression on this female fortune cat is one that is smiley & beckoning and I am still quite fond of this cat.
However, the red cushion in which it had been sitting on had been reduced to a flat piece of red cloth with unimpressive yellow threads serving as tassels. If I could find the time & energy, I might just stuff cotton into the cushion to give it a boost in terms of height & puffiness. Do you think she'll like it? Yes I supposed so if it's well done! :P
Shortly after we presented the above miniature fortune cat to my dad for his birthday, I did a search on-line casually & browsed through local sources selling such cats.
Then, I came across a seller known as ilovesales.sg on qoo10 selling such cats. Instead of purchasing online, I had decided to make a personal trip to their office at A'Posh Bizhub located in Yishun to see the fortune cats for myself.
For those of you who are interested in their fortune cats, kindly get in touch with them at the following qoo10 link as copied below:
They have quite a nice variety of fortune cats, ranging from coin banks to decorative figurines.
After browsing through & much contemplation, I bought the following female cat from the seller as I felt an instant "connection" or affinity with this cat design:
Perhaps the floral motifs struck a cord in my vanity streak as my style of dressing had always been soft & feminine. I love flowers such as lilies, roses, peonies and osmanthus which has been commonly used to worship deities in Buddhism.
Isn't she cute looking? Kawaii! (meaning cute in Japanese language)
I love the fact that she has a chubby & dressy outlook with a wide smile.
Let's call her Peony.
It took me quite a while to figure out where I should be placing her as we had the intention of purchasing a male version so that this female fortune cat wouldn't be lonely.
It took me quite a while to figure out where I should be placing her as we had the intention of purchasing a male version so that this female fortune cat wouldn't be lonely.
Initially, I had the idea that I should be placing on the shelf behind our headboard. However, we had decided to place it on top of our IKEA shoe cabinet which resembled a TV console so that Peony would have a larger space for fanning in wealth & luck as compared to being confined in our bedroom.
Let's take a closer look at the intricacies & details which are found on Peony.
Bells :
Bells seemed to have a great significance in the Japanese culture.
Starting from the collar bell which is typically worn on home cats that belong to owners, the bell would start jingling when a real cat (wearing a bell) is approaching. And it does make the fortune cat look more adorable when a collar bell is worn on. It is also probably a way of suggesting that the cat had been adopted already.
However, I am not sure about the larger hand-held jingle bell although I guess that it's to invite an abundance of good luck & wealth while chasing away the bad energy??
If any of you bloggers out there know of the significance of hand-held bells for fortune cats, please share with me - Thanks in advance!
Fan :
As for the folding fan (known as "ogi" in Japanese language) which is also hand-held on the right paw of the female fortune cat, it is probably to fan in all the good luck & wealth for her owners.
Sakura flowers :
Sakura blossoms (桜の花) are found on her body, hand-held fan and supposedly in the form of a bouquet of paper-made flowers perched at the top of her head.
In the Japanese culture, sakura flowers represents an omen of good fortune, an emblem of love & affection and a reminder of the transient nature of life & mortality as these flowers have a very short lifespan. And this idea is closely aligned to the Buddhist beliefs on the impermanence of human life & nature.
By displaying such a fortune cat with sakura blossoms, it would have served as a valuable reminder to us that we are to contemplate death regularly as nobody is exempted from life's final journey) and in letting go of negative emotions so as to remain happy which is extremely important in one's lifetime; and to live our lives to the fullest ... Afterall, isn't being happy the most important aspect of one's life in view of the impermanence of what we have now?
A close-up look at other interesting symbols found on Peony...
Other note-worthy details to take note of as I would be comparing Peony to another version which I acquired within the same week:
This version shows that the sakura blossoms are made of paper & decorated with glitter dust. It looks interesting under lighting effects though the glitter dust had been falling off the paper flowers. However, I figured out that I could easily get these miniature bunch of paper flowers replaced with artificial flowers.
The huge jingle bell for this version of fortune cats had been characterised by an opening shaped like a double-bladed oar at the bottom.
The second fortune cat which I bought from the same seller (ilovesales.sg) was a male cat which is carrying an ancient gold "koban" coin that says "10,000,000 ryo" as shown in the photograph below:
Since he is holding onto the ancient Japanese coin, let's call him Koban.
There are other symbolic items painted on the body of Koban, such as gourds (which means longevity as mentioned earlier in this write-up), hammer & a sakura flower drawn above its tail. You could take a closer look at these intricacies on Koban by viewing the photographs shown below:
Koban is definitely smaller in built and a lot lighter than his female counterpart (Peony). Not unlike his companion, he too is holding on to a huge jingle bell but in his right paw instead of the left.
I just realised after browsing through websites that Koban is a calico cat, which is supposedly, the luckiest of all cats as he has the best of what cats represent in the Japanese culture of fortune cats.
For now, Peony & Koban are seated side by side on top of my shoe console. Don't they both look cute?
If this blogging article interests you, please stay tuned to part 2 of it where I would introduce another relatively up-market version of the fortune cat ... named as Sakura.
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Disclaimer:
Kindly note that this blogging article is created strictly for the purpose of sharing my humble & objective views of products sold by the aforesaid company.
I am not affiliated to ilovesg.com mentioned in this blogging entry.
Reader's discretion is therefore sought when viewing this thread and making any purchases with the seller.
Thank you for your kind understanding.
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