Neko no ongaeshi (The Cat Returns)

Simple acts of genuine kindness at times cultivate appreciation and respect, the unsuspecting recipients flush with reciprocity should time's passage munificently flow.

Thus, in Neko no ongaeshi (The Cat Returns), the Kingdom of Cats regards Haru with admiration, for having generously gone out of her way while altruistically assuming death-defying risks.

She's rather mild-mannered yet inquisitive and enjoys sleeping in with no time for breakfast, teachers critical of her habitual tardiness yet still sympathetic to the studious cause.

Having naturally developed an intuitive love for animals she notices one legendary day, that a cat may be run over by a fearsome passing truck, which encourages genuine distress.

She quickly scoots into traffic and boldly saves the unobservant feline, who, as fate would have ceremoniously have it, happens to be the Prince of Cats.

Cat kind responds in turn with abundant gifts freely delivered, and even if Haru doesn't know what to do with the mice, she's still taken aback from all the attention.

But soon she's taken away to the exotic otherworldly mythological chillaxed cat kingdom.

Where she's betrothed to the very same Prince.

As she starts to transform into a cat!

Imagine a less self-obsessed world where sincere kindness and warmth played a role, and people looked out for one another like the Québecois while structuring their cultural and communal relations.

I don't hear it mentioned often anymore but the Pay it Forward movement was a very cool thing, I don't know what it transformed into but hopefully the thought behind it's the same. 

The movement as I recall sought to reward acts of kindness, self-sacrificingly shared between conscious individuals, conscientiously aware of the tender exchange.

If someone was kind enough to do someone a favour or help someone out without having been called upon, then the person who received the aid would then help someone else in the near future, or Pay it Forward.

Marrying the King of Cat's son and transforming into a cat may have taken things too far, but had there been a courtship ritual involved, perhaps the results would have been somewhat different.

An appealing idea nonetheless which effortlessly radiates cohesive collegiality. 

It exists in so many forms.

Constructively mutating across the land.