[EVA] Ryoji Kaji and cats

[Gwern Branwen]

Greetings everyone. I recently just joined this list, since I liked
what I saw in the archives. I don't have any special connection to Eva
or anything, but I recently began working on Evangelion-related
articles on Wikipedia (since I know a little about the subject and
noone else seems to be really working on them), which reawoke my old
interest in the subject.

One of the things that came back to mind was an interesting little
essay called "Dharma Cats"
(<http://www.geocities.com/sephkhan/rants/dharma.html>), by a
pseudonymous fellow named M Moneure're. What interested me was the
following claim:
"Can you apply this difference to our shared anime obsession, Eva
fans? Bodhisattva follows the example of Buddha. Kaji may destroy
falsehood, may strip away the false fronts of NERV, but he does so
while being thorougly human, and at the request of "a cat".
Do you know which character was originally intended to make their
first appearance as a cat, Eva fans? The "Buddha-smile" is something
of an archetype to watch for."

I'd never heard of Kaji originally intended to be a cat, and it would
be a nice interesting tidbit to track down for his lamentably short
article (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoji_Kaji>), but while some of
the essay's claims were easy to verify (like the 108 sins of Buddhism,
or Kaji's contact having cats with her both times, or things like
SEELE almost comparing him to a cat in episode 20: "Committee D: A
bell was attached but it didn't ring. Keel: A bell which doesn't ring
has no meaning. We'll make it work next time."), I still haven't
figured out whether any character was meant to be a cat originally,
what the source for such a claim is, and whether that character was
Kaji.

I'd greatly appreciate any light y'all could shed on this matter.

--
Gwern