About 400 years ago in Edo Japan a samurai lord was riding home through a sudden thunderstorm. He passed a tiny, run-down temple. At the gate sat a small white cat. The cat raised its paw at him. Almost like it was waving him over. Curious, he turned his horse. He stepped under the temple roof. A heartbeat later, lightning struck the road exactly where he had been standing. He survived because of a cat that beckoned him in. He spent the rest of his life making sure that temple never went hungry again. The temple is Gotokuji. It still stands today, in Tokyo. That cat became the maneki-neko — the lucky cat you’ve seen in every Asian restaurant in the world. It started as one cat saving one man’s life on a stormy afternoon.