Significance of Cat figurines?

[Liu Bang]

This is one of those things I was always curious about but didn't know who to ask (without feeling silly):

What is the significance of those cat figurines? You know the ones with one arm raised and one to the side...usually with the character for, I think, luck on the belly. Some are just small white figures that aren't very noticable. Others are large and made of flashy gold and have an electronic arm that moves up and down.

I see these all over the place in NYC's Chinatown, but I don't know where it comes from originally. Chinatown has people from PRC, HK, and Taiwan plus various spots in South East Asia so I can't say where it comes from. Also I've seen them in Philipino and Korean stores in other parts of the city.

It probably doesn't mean anything especially profound but I always wanted to know what the deal was with those cats. I have a book that tells the history and meaning of various emblems you see (the carp for example) but it doesn't talk about these cats.

[skylee]

They are called 招財貓 (zhao1 cai2 mao1) in Chinese - "Fortune/Wealth-Inviting Cat". They came from Japan and are now very common in Chinese communities.

About Maneki Neko (招き猫) -> http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/~mono93/cat/english/index_e.html

[Claw]

You know the ones with one arm raised and one to the side...usually with the character for, I think, luck on the belly.

They usually are holding up a sign in the other paw against their belly with the characters 千万両. 両 is a variant of 兩 and when written that way means tael, an old unit of currency (it's originally a unit of weight but I think the unit of currency is derived from how much the coin weighs). So 千万両 literally means 10,000,000 taels, or figuratively, a lot of money.

[yonglan]

Though the cat now seems to be waving, originally it was grooming itself. I forget the whole story and the book I have it in (I think this it)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/459000982X/qid=1106281513/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-6668021-6612965?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

is on the other side of the earth from me at the moment. That web page doesn't seem to mention it, though I like the page. The story was something about a cat grooming itself just before a big sale making the shop owner think it was an omen. That's one version of the story.