Kitty Detectives! Week 7 Discussion 🐱

[Radish8]

Pages 70 - 82

Story 2: 犯人はカポネ？

Start Date: 9th December
Last Week: Story One Final Part
Next Week: Story Two Solution

にゃんにゃん探偵団 Home Thread

We’re reading the whole of the Story Two Case this week!

Upcoming Schedule

Week	Start Date	Part	Page Numbers
Week 7	December 9th	Story 2 Case	70 - 82
Week 8	December 16th	Story 2 Solution	84 - 89
-	December 23rd	Break	-
Week 9	December 30th	Story 3 Case	92 - 99

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Vocabulary List

Kitty Detectives Volume 2

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

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Discussion Guidelines

• Please blur/hide major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur) and any later content, like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
  Err on the side of caution!

• When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).

• Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn and someone else will probably be grateful you asked!

• People usually find that they engage with and enjoy the discussion much more if they don’t read ahead, though of course it’s up to you

• To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!
  
  

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Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

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• I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
• I’m dropping this book

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

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[Radish8]

Gah, I’m honestly excited to be reading this again it was good to have a break though.

[Rowena]

My first lot of notes:

p70

p72

p73

p75

[Rowena]

Page 70

I didn’t bother looking at what the kid was scribbling on the footpath until just now - it gave me a good chuckle: 駐車禁止

[Belthazar]

Done read it. That was faster than I expected.

My prediction: It’s the older kid. On page 76, he’s not holding his baseball bat when he leaves, so he doubled back to get it, and thought he’d sneak a bite of cake as he did so. Aside from the fact that Capone is The Watson and thus exempt from being considered a suspect, there’s a fork on the table that wasn’t there before.

No, the real mystery here is where on Earth Hanae was hiding the cake on page 71.

@Rowena

I didn’t bother looking at what the kid was scribbling on the footpath until just now

I noticed that first, and was trying to determine whether or not it was a clue. It’s not.

[Rowena]

@Belthazar

No, the real mystery here is where on Earth Hanae was hiding the cake on page 71.

p71

If you look carefully, she is shown carrying it with both arms.

p73

[Belthazar]

Yeah, provided she’s carrying the cake on its side. It’s evidently not big enough.

[Rowena]

TARDIS bag…?

[fray]

page 70

庭にたくさんさいている花をくれるというのだ。

Hanae is explaining (thus the のだ at the end?) why she is visiting her friend Emi (which is mentioned the sentence before). Hanae is the one who will be given the flowers from her friend Emi, not the other way around, right?

Does という mean in this context that her friend Emi told Hanae that she (can visit and) get the flowers from Emi’s garden?

[Rowena]

That was my interpretation also.

[Radish8]

@frayderike

くれる

OH MY GOSH I have been wracking my brains all day and only realised on reading your post that this is literally just ‘to be given’. Head, meet desk.

I had another question from the first couple of pages but it is nearly 1am so

[guillepolito]

Wow, this week’s was surprisingly fast. Also I felt that both grammar and vocab wise it was simpler… I only had to lookup a couple of words

[ChristopherFritz]

@Belthazar

My prediction

This matches my thinking.

In defense of the accused:

Spoiler

[_Marcus]

Page 80…

I know I said I wouldn’t be participating this week. But I find myself free today, and the pages are quite easy this week. My only real problem is here on page 80…

まさか, ケーキを 食べにくるどろぼう なんていないわ

まさか, - this seems to have a lot of meanings, I’m not sure which is being used here
ケーキを - the cake + を
食べにくる - this is the masu-stem of 食べる + に + くる, to come. “Come to eat”???
どろぼう - thief
なんて - such as / things like
いない - isn’t
わ - female sentence ending particle

“But there isn’t any kind of thief here coming to eat the cake”

Any help making this "translation” any better much appreciated!

[_Marcus]

the solution......

Belthazar has spotted the key to this case right away….

@Belthazar

No, the real mystery here is where on Earth Hanae was hiding the cake on page 71.

Indeed, there is no way that the cake on Emi’s table could have fitted inside Hanae’s bag…. But they are not the same cake!

Yes, Hanae did bring a cake around to Emi’s house, and even suggest that they eat it later, as you can see on pages 70 and 71, but is was a paltry little thing. Small, plain, overbaked, and with unpleasant cat hairs in it. Really rather gross. Hanae never even bothered to take it out of her bag.

Hanae knew full well that Emi had spent the morning baking - not for nothing does Hanae train her binoculars on the neighbours - and she had every intention of taking Emi’s wonderful cake for herself.

Not that the neighbourhood isn’t aware of Hanae’s evil character. Emi has seen her poor next-door-neighbour the painter set up and sent down by Hanae and she was terrified when Hanae knocked on the door. “Long time no see” she lied, despite that fact that Hanae had been hanging round her street for days with that fat gullible detective friend of hers as they persecuted the painter, who Emi used to give flowers to for still life pictures.

Hanae walked into the room (page 72 and 73) and pretended to be surprised at the magnificent cake on the kitchen table, and instantly started setting up the whole trick. “Have you heard”, she asked Emi, “that there has been a spate of cat-burglaries recently?” before hustling her out into the garden.

The boys leave and Hanae claims that ten minutes went by, yet in all that time Hanae only managed to pick a single flower. No, while poor, terrified Emi worked hard in the garden, Hanae silently crept back into the house and scoffed the entire cake into her mouth, leaving just a few crumbs on the floor for her cat, and the plate balanced precariously on the corner of the table where the cat’s chewing would be sure to knock it down, and Hanae returns to the garden.

Once the plate had fallen and the two women return to the house both are well aware of what had actually happened. Hanae hadn’t even bothered to remove the fork. But poor Emi. like the rest of the neighbourhood, daren’t protest. She doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as the artist. While Hanae feels proud of herself, Emi looks at the cat, too terrified to direct her gaze of fear and loathing at Hanae herself.

Then Hanae strikes. Not only is she taking flowers, not only has she eaten Emi’s cake, now her cunning and evil slyness will be put to use to terrorize Emi’s family. Which of her two darling children is Hanae going to frame for this crime?

[Belthazar]

@marcusp

まさか, - this seems to have a lot of meanings, I’m not sure which is being used here

Definition 1 - the rest of the sentence is positing a situation which is utterly ridiculous (a thief snuck into the house and ate the cake?), so まさか is functioning as “no way” or “certainly not”.

[_Marcus]

Thank you so much Belthazar!

[Radish8]

@marcusp

I know I said I wouldn’t be participating this week. But I find myself free today, and the pages are quite easy this week.

Hooray! I considered pinging you to see if you couldn’t be tempted, but I thought it wouldn’t be very considerate - so I’m glad to see you got lured in after all

[Delamet]

Hey everyone. I just joined the reading from case 2, hopefully, it is okay. I will try to catch up with the case one in my free time. I also just finished reading case 2 and had some questions. In page 73
このごろ、あきすがとてもおおいんですって。

このごろ - these days
あきす - couldn’t figure out the meaning whether it is 空き巣 - empty nest?
とても - very
おおいんですって - there are many?

Does she ask something like,

“Hey, do you know? There are really a lot of empty nests these days.”
and she replies “Oh dear, no.” which made no sense to me. Can anyone help?

[_Marcus]

Page 73

This is my take, though I stand to be corrected…

ねえ, しってる？
このごろ、あきすがとてもおおいんですって

ねえ, しってる？- hey, do you know / did you hear…?
このごろ、- recently, these days
あきす - cat thief, burglar (definition 3)
が - subject / identifying particle (referring back to the burglar)
とても - very (referring to the next word)
おおい - many
ん - explanation particle (explaining what the しってる？was all about, I guess)
です - polite ending
って - quotation particle

“Hey, did you hear? There’s been a lot of cat burglars around recently”