SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.

TOP

» China
TOP

• Internet
TOP

• Japan
» The Cat in the Surgical Mask – Twitter user plans to raise money for charity with feline figurine

Featured

Weird
Studio Ghibli
Jobs

The Cat in the Surgical Mask – Twitter user plans to raise money for charity with feline figurine

Katie Pask Feb 24, 2020
Tweet

“Cats are gonna save the world!”

You may have seen Japanese Twitter user @meetissai’s creations floating around the Internet – he creates tiny figurines of animals, like the ones you’d find in capsule vending machines. His figures are inspired by photos of animals in a number of funny poses, and they’re surprisingly accurate, as you can see –

大気を操る猫とそれを見守る師匠を作ってみました。 pic.twitter.com/0QvtdrBbWW

— めーちっさい (@meetissai) October 30, 2019

Here’s a cat just chilling on a table, along with its figurine version –

猫さんが「やんちゃだった頃の俺」と言って見せくれた写真を立体化してみました。 pic.twitter.com/ymtNyNHfhX

— めーちっさい (@meetissai) October 17, 2019

One of @meetissai’s recent creations comes courtesy of Chinese social media platform Weibo. In the picture, a cat is wearing a surgical mask. With the recent coronavirus and everyone rushing out to buy masks, the cat’s owner appears to have attempted to keep his pet virus-free, although, as one Twitter user points out, coronavirus can spread through your eyes, so the mask is actually quite useless.

作る予定じゃなかったんですけどね… pic.twitter.com/6WGQAy8GXr

— めーちっさい (@meetissai) February 11, 2020

And while most of @meetissai’s figures are heavily liked and retweeted, this creation in particular seems to have struck a chord with the Twittersphere, with many even requesting to buy some of the figurines.

“Are you selling these? I’d like to buy two…”
“Please put these on sale! I’d buy them!”
“I want this sooooo bad! Is it for sale?”
“I am a Hong Konger and love cats very much. Please make it sellable!”
“Please start selling these! I’ll pay 10,000 yen! (US$90)

It seems that @meetissai read his Twitter replies because he announced the figurines would be for sale in China.

以前作ったマスク猫のフィギュアが中国で商品化されることになりました。
収益は武漢に寄付されるとのことで、応援の意味を込めて協力させて頂いています。
因みに写真の下手くそな「武漢加油！」は僕が書きました笑
頑張れ〜！ https://t.co/0Kj5DLbmny

— めーちっさい (@meetissai) February 19, 2020

“The figurine I made of the cat in the mask will be available to buy! We are supporting Wuhan and all the profits will go there. By the way, in the picture the messy ‘Go for it, Wuhan’ writing is mine, lol.”

Further updates from @meetissai announced that any profits from figurine sales will go to the Wuhan Charity Association. Japanese netizens reacted positively to the figurine maker’s kind act.

“I really hope this can help someone.”
“This is a win-win situation!”
“Please make a life-sized version!”
“Cats are gonna save the world!!”
“This made me laugh out loud for the first time this year. Fingers crossed this can help someone, be it one person or many people!”
“What a wonderful world. Can we buy this in Japan?”

However, like most things on the Internet, not everyone was happy with the announcement. Some Chinese commenters weren’t happy with the choice of charity the money would be donated to, worried that the money would be misused. Many implored @meetissai to donate the money directly to hospitals themselves, or to buy materials like masks and send them to hospitals.

And while we at SoraNews24 hope that this cute little critter creation can be used to help out people in need, we’ve also got our fingers crossed that this could inspire @meetissai to make even more figurines available to purchase! We need a loooooong cat figurine to go with our sushi cats and our public telephone toys.

Source: Twitter/@meetissai via Hamusoku
Featured image: Twitter/@meetissai
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!