The hardest working feline in the country. 

In Japan, people love cats. Like, really love them. Feline affection is so strong here you can even see cats on parade at traditional festivals and a giant cat towering over the city on a 3-D billboard.

Oh, and there’s another loveable furry resident that deserves mentioning — Miku, the giant cat that sells Japanese purin.

▼ Spot the cat at the mall!

The busy feline works for Saka No Ue No Neko, (“The Cat at the Top of the Hill”), a store that specialises in purin, (“pudding”), which are Japanese-style crème caramel desserts. A portion of the store’s sales goes towards supporting organisations that work to protect stray cats, which make these purin even more appealing.

▼ The Cat at the Top of the Hill sells its purin in cute jars.

While most cats would turn their noses up at the thought of having to work for a living, Miku is not most cats. In fact, Miku has been travelling across the country recently, selling purin desserts with the store’s owner at a number of locations, including Niigata and Hokkaido.

▼ “Please come and see me!” says Miku at the store’s pop-up at the Sapporo-Hiraoka Aeon mall, which wrapped up on 15 February.

▼ Taking a well-earned break from greeting customers in Sapporo.

If you were shopping at the Niigata Minami Aeon Mall from 17-18 February, this is what you would’ve seen at the counter.

▼ “Good morning! I’m waiting for you at the Niigata Minami Aeon Mall!”

Miku first caught everyone’s attention when she worked at a pop-up inside the Nishi-Umeda Station building in Osaka from 14-20 December last year. Her appearance in the big city catapulted her to fame after people snapped photos of Miku hard at work serving customers.

▼ Take a look at a day in the life of the fastidious kitty during her Osaka stint.

Miku’s enthusiastic approach to her work always begins at the store’s headquarters in Shikoku’s Ehime Prefecture, where she attaches sticky labels to the jars without getting any of them stuck to herself — an extraordinary feat for an animal covered in fur.

That’s what she did before setting off to Osaka, a city she’d never visited before, and when she arrived at the pop-up she worked hard to complete tasks like polishing the display case…

▼…working the cash register…

▼…and occasionally giving in to her feline urges to play feverishly with a cloth on the counter.

The part-time worker was paid for her efforts in iron-fortified gummy lollies. It appears that gummies are one of Miku’s favourite things, as she was gifted a number of packs of them by doting customers during her Osaka trip.

If you too would like to shower Miku with sweets, her next work shift will be taking place at the pop-up store at Aeon Lake Town in Saitama Prefecture from 24 to 27 February. It may be worth a visit just to try Miku’s purin, because online orders are taking a little longer than usual at the moment, due to the huge spike in demand for the feline’s sweets.

It’s nice to see Miku’s hard work strike a chord with cat lovers around the country. Be sure to give her a follow on Twitter to keep up to date with her sweet sojourns, and hopefully one day she’ll catch up with Mikeneko Yamada, the giant cat that sells sweet potatoes!

Store information
Purin Senmonten Saka no Ue no Neko Main Store / プリン専門店 坂の上の猫 本店
Address: Ehime-ken, Matsuyama-shi, Dogoyunomachi 13-3
愛媛県松山市道後湯之町 13-3
Website

Source: Twitter/@sakanouenoneko1
Featured image: YouTube/ミクちゃんねる
Insert images: Twitter/@sakanouenoneko1

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