Japan’s Beloved Cats Get the Whole Kit and Caboodle

To revise a familiar saying, every cat has his day. And, in Japan, that day is Feb. 22. So, on Sunday, more than 400 cat lovers gathered in a Tokyo auditorium to launch Japan’s first Cat Day, offering prayers for the longevity of their pets and honoring a “model cat” that journeyed 222 miles to return to its owner after it disappeared on a trip to the country. “Cats are more than just pets. They radiate serenity and are essential for the well-being of humans,” said Naoki Yanase, a professor of English literature at Seijo University. The Executive Cat Day Committee chose Feb. 22 after polling nearly 9,000 cat fanciers. The date 2-22 in Japanese is pronounced “ni-ni-ni,” which sounds similar to the Japanese words that would be the equivalent of “meow-meow-meow,” organizers said.

--”The Andy Griffith Show” lives on in TV reruns and in North Carolina courtrooms. Using what he calls the “Mayberry Defense,” Louis C. Allen III, a 32-year-old Greensboro lawyer, has found episodes of the show analogous to cases. The Mayberry Defense was born in 1985, when Allen was representing a client who was suing a man he claimed had beaten him. Allen’s client was a small, elderly man, and Allen decided the best way to convince the jury of how badly his client had been humiliated was to bring up Opie Taylor. In his closing arguments, Allen said: “You know, my wife always tells me I shouldn’t mention this, but I’m a big fan of ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ ” Allen then described an episode in which an older boy threatens to beat up Opie if he doesn’t give him his milk money. Opie was so embarrassed he never told Andy until Andy figured it out. The defense “just fit like a glove in that situation” and Allen’s client won. Even so, Allen said he is not sure whether he will use the thrice-successful defense again. “It always scares me that somebody will think it’s frivolous,” he said.

--The case of the missing boat slip has been solved. Since 1964, fans of author John D. MacDonald’s fictional detective hero Travis McGee had searched unsuccessfully for slip F-18 at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marina. That was the year MacDonald introduced the rugged McGee and the boat the Busted Flush--won in a poker game--in his book “The Deep Blue Good-Bye.” He set it in a real yachting center, Bahia Mar, with a fictional slip number. But city officials have renumbered boat slip F-602 as slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Yachting Center and Mayor Robert Cox unveiled a bronze plaque dedicating it as an official Travis McGee landmark. They even provided a real boat named Busted Flush. MacDonald, who lived in Sarasota, died in December at age 70.