With the adoration of a creature as wonderful as a cat it is not untypical to fill your life with cute, charming, delightful cat themed items. Figurines, pictures, decorated objects, mugs, tea towels and on and on. It isn’t enough having the actual animal around but doting parents often fill their spaces with replicas of them.

The Japanese love of cats goes to further lengths. They have cat cosplay.

What is this you may wonder.

Cosplay (meaning costume performance)  is something that was uniquely Japanese, but has spread through Asia and then globally. A form of performance art people dress up in costumes representing characters. Often drawing on Manga, cartoons, movies characters it is now  a huge industry. Possibly you have seen people dressed up as characters each summer at Comic-Con, or at the Science Fiction Convention or in Las Vegas? Probably more fringe than mainstream it is gaining fans and people go to amazing lengths to create the costume and become the character.

In Japan they have taken their adoration of all things feline and added cat cosplay as one of the forms. The most usual addition is of cat ears and paws and tail, or mask.

But there are also full costumes.

Next time you are invited to a fancy dress party, or are stuck for something for Halloween these might just be the purrfect idea!