Japanese monk’s breakfasts with cats are the most important/cutest videos of the day

Start your day with a healthy serving of adorable felines and their kind-hearted owner.

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but for a lot of people, it’s also the most hectic. With the clock ticking to get out the door and wherever you need to be for the day, breakfast often ends up as a hurried exercise in cramming calories into yourself, and it’s only busier if you have little ones to feed too.

Of course, it’s a different story if you’ve developed the sense of tranquility of a Buddhist monk, and if those little ones are adorable cats.

住職の朝ごはん。 https://t.co/PYHm6vvA3u
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那須の長楽寺 (@nasu_chourakuji) January 13, 2019

The video above shows the head priest of Chorakuji, a temple in Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture that has a special devotion to Kanon, the goddess of mercy. So perhaps it’s fitting that the temple’s head priest, the man seen in the video, is patiently indulgent of the temple’s cats’ desire to be as close to him as possible while he’s eating his breakfast.

In addition to the kitty he’s holding on his lap and the one perched at his left elbow on his chair’s armrest, the monk has two more cats keeping him company, both looking up from the floor next to the table with expectant faces as he slurps his breakfast of udon noodles mixed in with leftover hotpot broth and ingredients from the previous night’s dinner.

But the cats don’t want what the monk is having. Instead, what they’re waiting for is…

…the dried sardines he starts passing out from a small dish with his left hand, while he continues to hold his own chopsticks in his right.

We’ve taken a peek at the cats of Chorakuji before, but this is our first time to see them in motion. This wasn’t a one-time deal, either, as the temple’s official Twitter account (@nasu_chourakuji) regularly shares videos with the simple message “The head priest’s breakfast,” all of which could more accurately be described as “the head priest’s breakfast with four cats who really want their fish treats.”

住職の朝ごはん。 https://t.co/rVDznW6nFz
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那須の長楽寺 (@nasu_chourakuji) January 23, 2019

住職の朝ごはん。 https://t.co/cGguEKMJCv
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那須の長楽寺 (@nasu_chourakuji) January 23, 2019

Online comments have included:

“It’s so cute how they stretch out their little paws.”
“This right here is the essense of ‘iyasareru.’”
“They all look so happy (=^・^=)”
“What a wonderful table to have a spot at.”
“That’s what I call a warm meal.”

Oh, and don’t worry, the monk makes sure the cats have proper cat food as well…